One of Dr. King’s primary pulpits sits quietly on the street that today bears his name. Visible at the lower left, Liberty Baptist Church, at 49th and King Drive, is a landmark known by too few Chicagoans.  Yet the spirit and teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. remain potent and strong on the South Side.

King Drive, previously South Park Way, and before then known as Grand Boulevard, is a storied street designed also by Frederick Law Olmsted.  It is one of the United States’ most elegant thoroughfares, and one of the best examples of Olmsted’s invention, the Parkway.  Lined with Victorian greystones, stately Edwardian flats, and houses of worship, it forms the spine of several different African American communities that today comprise greater Bronzeville.

Making use of a jog in the boulevard as it approaches Chicago’s George Washington Memorial and Washington Park itself, Twin Embraces arranges the Beacon of Progress at the visual terminus of King Drive.  Beyond creating a proper focal point for this great American boulevard, this signature roots the Obama Presidential Center in the rich fabric of Chicago’s foremost African American institutions, and provides continuum between Dr. King’s legacy and the achievements of the Obama presidency.