Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of ChicagosSouth Side is the first book devoted to the South Sidesrich and unfairly ignored architectural heritage. Withlively, insightful text and gallery-quality color photographs by noted Chicago architecture expert Lee Bey, SouthernExposure documents the remarkable and largely unsungarchitecture of the South Side. The book features anarray of landmarksfrom a Space Age dry cleaner to anineteenth-century lagoon that meanders down the middleof a working-class neighborhood streetthat are largely absent from arts discourse, in no small part because they sit in a predominantly African American and Latino section of town better known as a place of disinvestment,abandonment, and violence.

Inspired by Beys 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennialexhibition, Southern Exposure visits sixty sites, includinglesser-known but important work by luminaries such asJeanne Gang, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Eero Saarinen,as well as buildings by pioneering black architects suchas Walter T. Bailey, John Moutoussamy, and RogerMargerum.

Pushing against the popular narrative that depictsChicagos South Side as an architectural wasteland, Beyshows beautiful and intact buildings and neighborhoods that reflect the valueand potentialof the area.SouthernExposure offers much to delight architecture aficionados and writers, native Chicagoans and guests to the city alike.