The Legacy of Know Your Chicago | Classic Chicago Magazine

By Judy Carmack Bross

A Know Your Chicago Tour to an area farm

Know Your Chicago: no name could better state a mission accomplished.

No tour was ever repeated. No spot in our City with purpose and excitement not researched by a talented team. And no group more deserving of thanks for giving us 75 years to better know our Chicago as it ends its service to our citizens and guests who traveled here yearly to participate.

For so many years while deep into summer those three words Know Your Chicago offered anticipation of Fall as Chicagoans jockeyed to get reservations in early to be on the list to visit places often closed to outsiders and to attend insightful symposiums presenting top city leaders. There were 3000 plus subscribers to the mailing list, and extra days were routinely added due to the program’s great demand.

Mary Ward Wolkonsky

Begun in 1948 by Mary Ward Wolkonsky, the one-of-a-kind tours reflected the collective experiences, expertise, and resources of the KYC committee. The tour subjects couldn’t be more far reaching or more cutting edge or more extensively researched by a committee of usually 50 members, each of whom was actively involved. Tour trial runs were all encompassing, with members checking bus routes for construction, double-checking street addresses, and anything that could possibly go wrong. Committee members rode each bus, passed out programs, opened doors and did everything needed to make guests feel welcome. And often the tours encouraged activism among participants to support the projects visited.

Chair Linda Woloshin

Current Chair Linda Woloshin explained that changes in the ways people allocate their free time means full time day tours and accompanying symposiums are no longer easy to schedule. “We realized that careers, other time commitments and age have taken away our participants. In the future we would not draw the numbers we needed to financially support our programs. An anonymous survey sent to all members reflected acceptance of the inevitability of ending. It is with a great deal of pride in what we had accomplished that we made the tough decision to sunset Know Your Chicago,” Woloshin said.

“At the end of each season, we basked in being able to celebrate our City and all it has to offer. Seventy-five years of educating the public is a wonderful record and we have to accept its end even though it saddens us. There has definitely been a period of mourning. Gathering to talk about how KYC evolved and reliving our tours has been very helpful. We will gather once again this fall to celebrate our many years of educating our participants about the wonders and challenges of Chicago.”

A plaque commemorating Know Your Chicago was commissioned by Seth Green, Dean of the University of Chicago’s Graham School, which provides diverse educational programs for adults and which has been KYC’s long-standing partner. “Dean Green has been so supportive of us through this transition,” Woloshin said.

One of Woloshin’s immediate callings is inventorying seven and a half linear feet of Know Your Chicago archival boxes with members of her team. What exciting adventures those brochures, minutes, clippings and photographs will tell.

Longtime Know Your Chicago leader Susan Aaron with Kitty Freidheim, a past KYC Chair

Susan Aaron, a Know Your Chicago member since 1997, told us:

“Know Your Chicago has been on the cutting edge of civic engagement, education, and expansion since its founding in 1948 by Mary Ward Wolkonsky. It bequeaths to Chicago – and perhaps to other cities- a compelling 75 year legacy of extraordinary civic value. During its three-quarters of a century history, 14 US Presidents and 11 Mayors of Chicago have served; for many of them, KYC was a known and respected entity. Chicago’s mayors recognized KYC as a civic partner.

“The 1909 Plan of Chicago of Burnham and Bennett hints of expanded civic engagement over the next 50 years. “An enlightenment of young leaders-men and women who will advance civic causes in Chicago. New ideas in government, in civic improvement … art schools in Chicago with more than 4,000 art students are gathered; the theaters draw audiences from long distances; music in Chicago is gaining a worthy position; great political conventions are held, party policies are determined…” (Plan of Chicago, Chapter III).

“KYC was able to begin to address Burnham’s 1909 social agenda 40 years later in 1948. A never ending multitude of programs, projects, tours from business and commerce, the arts, architecture, planning, government, technology, health, community development, education, transportation, juvenile justice became the research, program development and presentation work of KYC.

“As we consider mentors in our personal lives, KYC is blessed to have Daniel Burnham and his contemporaries, as philosophical mentors: Bertha Palmer, Theodore Thomas, Ida B. Wells may have offered suggestions to Burnham’s Plan of Chicago. Certainly they would have been pleased to present, plan, and contribute to the civic contributions and critical thinking of Know Your Chicago.”

Throughout its history, some of our city’s most admired women, including Jo Minow, Beth Sonnenschein, Jan Jentes, Pam Sheffield, and Judy Block have led the program.

Members of the Know Your Chicago Committee

The late Jo Minow, once told Classic Chicago: “I have never seen a group of women who, when asked who wants to work on something, everyone raises her hand. They are movers and shakers who really care. Mary Ward Wolkonsky was so self-effacing, she never realized what she accomplished by starting Know Your Chicago.”

“When Mary started the organization she brought together her friends and said: “Let’s stop lunching and participate in civic minded projects,” Woloshin said.

Planning for the fall tours began officially in January although many members already had begun to develop ideas, Woloshin told us.

“Every January the committee would gather around a big white board where members would present ideas, some of which would already be far along and the proposer would bring a file folder filled with ideas. Some ideas would go together and individuals would join up. Some places wouldn’t be large enough to accommodate our large groups and those suggestions had to be dropped. Fifty ideas would then be reduced to 20 and then to the final five which would be voted on in March. A seminar was planned which gave a wider view of the subjects to be covered on the individual tours.”

Emerging trends and ideas for civic engagement offered by leaders of a wide range of Chicago institutions and businesses stimulated Symposium attendees to learn more and get involved.

Joan Blew and Judith McBrien scouting a tour

The group kept KYC alive during the pandemic with Zoom programs.

As each KYC member has worked vigorously on several programs, each probably has a favorite she remembers.

“I have lived in Chicago all my life and I love everything about it. I love walking down the street and looking at the architecture,” Woloshin said. “I worked on the transgender tour in 2014 and love that it made a difference. We visited the Center on Halsted, watched an autobiographical play written and performed by a woman who had transitioned and ended the day at Lurie Children’s Hospital to hear a range of perspectives from doctors, social workers, educators and the woman who founded Parents of Transgender Individuals (PTI). That program changed people’s hearts.

“We have seen so much, the neighborhoods for example, and heard from Chicago greats like Studs Terkel, Jeanne Gang, Chris Jones, Geoffrey Baer, Sir Georg Solti and so many more. We might revisit a major institution such as the Art Institute but it would be for different vantage points, from collections to framing to art fraud.”

What will Woloshin remember most, so many things but mostly the enthusiasm and commitment of the Know Your Chicago committee members. “As Jo Minow said: ‘It was the only room I have ever been in when you would say who will help on this and every hand would go up’.”