Touring South Shore with Jeff Heilbrunn, Part 1: History and the Highlands

Jeff Heilbrunn spent the first 20 years of his life in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood. Today, as a marketing advisor for the Builders Center of Chicago, he helps develop new homes in the community. In Feburary 2010, Jeff and Joe Askins of YoChicago.com and NewHomeNotebook.com spent a couple hours touring the neighborhood.

In this video, Jeff starts off by driving past many of South Shore's larger single-family homes, located in an area known as the Jackson Park Highlands. He also describes the nature of the neighborhood in the 1950s and 1960s, a time he says was marked by diversity in race and religion.

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• Chicago
• Illinois
• South Side
• South Shore
• Jeff Heilbrunn
• Builders Center of Chicago
• neighborhoods
• YoChicago

[drzlecuti]

Hi Jeff, I really like your series of videos. I was born in South Shore in the mid-50s; we moved to Jeffrey Manor and then Beverly. Now I'm way out in Elmhurst. I get back to SS often, sometimes as a commercial r.e. appraiser, otherwise just for fun. I've amazed friends showing them the Highlands. My dad has always told us to buy real estate in South Shore, because it will come back.

(One very small nit: when driving more or less into the sun, a cleaner windshield gives a better view!)

[Chicag0rilla773]

The hood

[ChicagoSouthDan]

@bry456 Also Nobel prize winner James Watson, of Watson and Crick fame, who discovered the structure of the DNA molecule; Robert Conrad, the star of the Wild, Wild West TV show; Marv Levy, the coach of the Buffalo Bills football team; Larry Ellison, founder and CEO of Oracle Corporation and one of the world's richest men; and playwright David Mamet.

[bry456]

Suze Orman, Mandy Patinkin came out of South Shore.

Wow.

[Lybaby]

I've always loved the Highlands and wish I could afford to live there.

[SOHIMKE]

Great history and housing stock!