When Chicagoans go to the polls to vote for mayor, there’s a crucial piece of information missing from their ballots: the candidates’ political parties. WTTW News Explains tells you the reasons why. 

(WTTW News)

A South Side community is getting up to $15 million to ensure it continues to tell the story of the Great Migration in the early 1900s. The Bronzeville-Black Metropolis National Heritage Area stretches from the South Loop to Woodlawn and is home to natural, historic and cultural resources.

How exactly are streets organized in Chicago? WTTW News gives you a guided tour of the grid system that organizes the city’s streets and addresses. 

(WTTW News)

For the first time in two dozen years, Illinois will get a new secretary of state. Former state treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, a Democrat, will be sworn Jan. 9 in to replace Secretary Jesse White, who did not run for reelection this year.

(Credit: Lee Bey)

What do you get when you put two of Chicago’s preeminent architecture critics together? A thought-provoking book about the city’s storied architecture.

“Latinos in Chicago: Quest for a Political Voice” by Wilfredo Cruz.

In his book “Latinos in Chicago: Quest for a Political Voice” author Wilfredo Cruz plumbs the history of Chicago’s Latino communities as they carved out a place for themselves in the city’s rough and tumble political climate. 

Katrina Quint, director of horticulture at Lincoln Park Zoo, stands in the shadow of the zoo's oldest inhabitant, a bur oak that's 250-300 years old. (Patty Wetli / WTTW News)

A bur oak has towered over the zoo’s south lawn, opposite the primate house, since before there even was a zoo. It even predates the founding of the United States of America. 

Mary Lane has been performing in Chicago for the last four decades. (WTTW News)

A local blues legend is receiving her flowers in a new documentary exploring her life. Now 86 years old, Mary Lane says she’s loved singing since she was 12 years old.

(Courtesy of Steven Walsh)

Through interviews with his grandfather and others who lived through the neighborhood’s rise and fall, filmmaker Steven Walsh shows what he says is the forgotten story of the area in his documentary “Southeast: a City Within a City.”

Michael Kutza, CEO Emeritus, of the Chicago International Film Festival. (WTTW News)

Michael Kutza was just 22 years old when he launched the Chicago International Film Festival. Decades later, he looks back on a life among the movie stars. 

Ramsey Lewis performing at Daley Plaza in 2015. (Provided)

Chicago is mourning the loss of one of its most celebrated native sons, as the family of Ramsey Lewis announced the award-winning musician died peacefully at his Chicago home Monday morning, at the age of 87.

Pullman porters. (WTTW)

In 1925, the all-Black, all-male workers organized and founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in hopes of forcing the Pullman Company to the bargaining table.

(WTTW News)

The city’s newest concert venue, appropriately called the Salt Shed, which just celebrated its opening day Tuesday. The concert hall is on the site of the renovated Morton Salt shed. 

(WTTW News)

Painter Eric Edward Esper creates accurate historical depictions of terrifying tragedies – fires, tornadoes and nautical disasters that took place in Chicago and elsewhere.

The Eugene Williams memorial marker at 31st Street beach. (WTTW News)

This Wednesday, the Lookingglass Theatre Company will honor Eugene Williams at 31st Street Beach with an artistic ritual. On July 27, 1919, 17-year old Eugene Williams was stoned to death after unintentionally swimming over to the “Whites only” section of Lake Michigan. 

Winner of the Front Garden award, Nestor Rodriguez, Avondale. (Chicago Bungalow Association)
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From planter boxes to koi ponds, these Chicago gardeners know how to create an oasis in the city.