What’s that dead zone in the 19th Ward?

Curious City

WBEZ Chicago

Investigation, Chicago, Radio, Arts, Society & Culture, Public, Education, Curious, City

4.6 • 661 Ratings

🗓️ 8 October 2025

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There’s a hole in the map of Chicago. It turns out, it’s a cemetery. But there are many other cemeteries in Chicago that don’t show up as holes on the map, so what’s up with this one? We take you to the 19th Ward and explore the history of this dead zone.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Curious City is supported by the Poetry Foundation, with a reminder that Chicago is the pulse of poetry.
0:07.4	Coming up, an evening of poetry and music, celebrating the Rappery, Chicago's library, preserving rap and hip-hop as vital literary art forms.
0:17.1	October 16th at the Poetry Foundation building in River North.
0:20.6	Learn more at poetry foundation.org.
0:24.2	Sources and methods, the crown jewels of the intelligence community,
0:28.7	shorthand for how do we know what's real, who told us?
0:32.6	If you have those answers, you're on the inside.
0:34.9	And NPR wants to bring you there.
0:37.0	From the Pentagon
0:37.6	to the State Department to spy agencies, listen to understand what's really happening and what it means for you.
0:43.9	Sources and Methods, the new National Security podcast from NPR.
0:49.5	It's Curious City, where we take your questions about Chicago and the region. And investigate.
0:55.2	Report.
0:55.9	Explore.
0:56.7	From WBEZ.
0:59.6	What's up, Chicago?
1:00.7	I'm Erin Allen, and this is Curia City.
1:03.9	Chicago is divided into 50 wards.
1:06.7	And when you look at a map of any one of them, they're weird looking.
1:11.2	It's like a bunch of zigs and zags and swerves that have been carved over the course of decades,
1:17.1	basically to benefit politicians who want to keep getting reelected.
1:20.9	You know, gerrymandering.
	...

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