Continuing southwest on Archer, it straighten out a bit at Pulaski and started heading straighter west. After passing Cicero, I entered the Garfield Ridge neighborhood. Garfield Ridge surrounds Midway Airport on the north and northwest sides. Planes pass overhead frequently, especially those from Southwest Airlines which runs major operations out of Midway.
Archer continues its southwest path until 55th street, where the two streets merge and continue straight west as 55th. This is also the junction with Narragansett, which runs north-south. I turned south on Narragansett and stopped at Wentworth Park, which is named for John Wentworth, a 6-term US representative in the 1840s and 50s and a two-term mayor of Chicago in the late 1850s and early 1860s. As mayor, Wentworth tried to clean up the local red-light district, known as the Sands. According to the book, To Serve and Collect, the mayor created a ruse by arranging a horse race and cock fight in another part of the city. This distracted many of the Sands' customers and while they were preoccupied with the other vices, the mayor led the deputy sheriff and 30 policemen in clearing out the remaining tenants and tearing down 5 buildings and several shanties. Sounds familiar. :)
Adjacent to Wentworth Park are Kennedy High School and Kinzie Elementary School. Kinzie has several nice mosaics on its walls, welcoming the kids to the school. John Kinzie was the first permanent white settler in Chicago.
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