Archival Research of the Bronzeville Trail Landscape Initiative

Archival Research is a collective act of repair. Before the Kenwood Line can be transformed from transportation infrastructure into a cultural and ecological public space, its story must first be told—through the lens of community, memory, and lived experience.
This research project investigates the historical life of the Kenwood Elevated Line from its emergence in the early twentieth century through its decline and present condition. While conventional historical records of the line proved limited—often fragmented, technical, or buried within trade publications—the research revealed how deeply the structure shaped the urban, racial, and economic landscapes of Chicago’s South Side. Infrastructure here is understood not as a neutral artifact, but as an active agent in the production of mobility, segregation, labor, and collective identity.
Drawing on qualitative archival and interpretive methods, the research traces how the Kenwood Line mediated relationships between Bronzeville, the Union Stock Yards, and the broader metropolitan region. Maps, photographs, planning documents, municipal records, press coverage, and institutional correspondence were analyzed alongside oral histories and site-based observations to reconstruct the line’s material presence and symbolic meaning across time.
The archival process was iterative and reflexive, recognizing the archive itself as an incomplete and contested space—shaped by institutional priorities that often excluded Black communities. For this reason, the project concludes that its most valuable findings are not only the assembled documents, but the human stories that surround them. These lived experiences—carried forward in the Lived Stories project—emerge as essential historical artifacts, grounding the future of the Trail in truth, care, and collective memory.