From Bob Kaufman (2 years ahead of us at South Shore, graduated Bradwell in 1953) regarding Bradwell Elementary School

Dear Class of June 1953 Classmates,

Bradwell was founded in 1886 by the Village of Hyde Park. That's 123 years ago! It was originally located on the second floor of a building at the corner of 75th & Coles. I believe a saloon occupied the first floor!

A separate building soon was built at 77th & Burnham. It was torn down by the time we attended there & replaced in 1937. It was originally named the "Duncan Avenue" school after the original name of Burnham Avenue

In 1889, the entire Hyde Park Township, which extended from Pershing Road on the North to the Little Calumet River on the South (138th Street) & from Cottage Grove Avenue on the West to Lake Michigan, was Incorporated into the City of Chicago. Chicago wanted to gain the land because of the planned 1893 World's Fair in Jackson Park. To woo Hyde Park, they promised gas street lights & sewers! If Hyde Park had remained separate from Chicago, it probably would have become the larger city.

After incorporation, the school was taken over by the Chicago Board of Education, & in 1894 renamed for Myra Bradwell, the first woman attorney in Illinois, following her death.

Additions were added to the building in 1895 (the school gym), 1926 (most of the classrooms & assembly hall, & 1937 (which replaced the original building).

The school colors, Black & Gold, are in memory of the Iroquos Theater fire in 1903 which took the lives of Bradwell's first principal, Miss Forte & two classroom teachers. You will remember her portrait hanging in one of the stairwells.

As some of you may have read in the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Board of Education recently approved a plan to construct a new elementary school at 77th & South Shore Drive on a portion of Rainbow Beach to house another school currently in a temporary building on the west side of South Shore Drive. That would mean two elementary schools within four blocks of each other.

Bob Kaufman