Biking Adventure #3: Ravenswood

Alderman: Gene Schulter (47th)

July 06, 2010 - Ravenswood

This up-and-coming industrial corridor known for it's vintage 1900-1920's factory buildings-turned-commercial-lofts is rapidly becoming a cross between Silicon Valley/tech powerhouses, and Wicker Park Artists lofts. These former factory buildings used to churn out ammunition for World War II, braziers, pressed tin ceilings, and even copies of The Saturday Evening Post and Playboy magazines.

Lillstreet Art Center, Beyond Design, and EveryBlock.com moved to the area in 2003 lulled partly by the creative energy, here, quiet neighborhood, and free parking. Also here, you'll find Stoner Communications, Rise Health, (Forrest Claypool's Health Care Reform start-up), Threadless.com, (customers design and pick their shirts online -adding a flagship store at 1260 W. Madison Street), Orbit Media, (20-something geek-squad Internet outfit), Squishy Press and Bioelements.

The Lillstreet Center, which houses 21 classrooms and 50 artist studios, is the largest ceramics education center in the Midwest. It attracts thousands of students from around the city for classes, including printmaking, textiles and jewelry-making as well as summer camp for children.
The corridor, which is runs along the Metra tracks, down Ravenswood Avenue from roughly Foster to Montrose or Waveland Avenue, with close to 67 industrial firms that employ about 2,000 people, according to Jane Addams Resources posted in the Chicago Tribune.

A new train station at Lawrence Avenue and a commuter parking garage are in the works, they also say.

Here's the entrance to Orbit Media, Rise Health and Threadless/skinny.com where I was scoping out businesses I'd like to work with, close to home. And below, is another building's directory:

Biking over to Ravenswood, we passed a group of kids creating a huge mural out of bits of broken glass, the likes of which you may have seen going up on the sides of schools and underpasses in the Chicago area. These are taken from the Uplift Comm. HS on Wilson Ave and roughly Broadway. I'll post some more photos of the progress, the next time I get over that way.

This is Anna, who is supervising today's art project: