A new mural now stretches across the Fulton Street viaduct in Chicago's West Loop, honoring four figures tied to the city's history, from an early Indigenous settler to a house music pioneer. Local leaders and artists unveiled the artwork on the viaduct Thursday, transforming a stretch of underpass at the corner of Fulton Street, Clinton Street and Milwaukee Avenue.
The mural highlights Chicago history by honoring early settler Kitihawa, early settler Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, labor activist Lucy Parsons, and DJ and house music icon Frankie Knuckles, according to CBS Chicago. Organizers said the mural is intended to bring new meaning to a space that, per organizers, has a history of crime and violence.
A Commission Years in the Making
The artwork traces back to a request for qualifications that invited Chicago-area artists, artist teams and arts organizations to submit proposals for a mural commission at the Union Pacific railroad viaduct at Fulton Street and Milwaukee Avenue, according to the call for entries posted on CaFE. The commission fell under Chicago's Public Art Menu Program, which funds neighborhood-based public art using discretionary capital funds allocated through city wards, per the same listing.
The RFQ specified a north wall measuring 16 feet by 101 feet and a south wall measuring 16 feet by 94 feet, with the finished mural intended to have a lifespan of approximately three years. A virtual information session for interested applicants was scheduled for September 24, 2025, and the submission deadline was set for November 10, 2025, at 11:59 p.m. A review panel was set to select three or four finalists, each receiving a $1,000 honorarium to develop a site-specific concept proposal, per the listing.
A West Loop Tradition of Honoring Local Icons
The Fulton Street project adds to a string of West Loop mural efforts, though the neighborhood's murals haven't always endured. Several West Loop murals were mysteriously painted over in recent years, including two that memorialized Frankie Knuckles and rapper Juice WRLD, according to Block Club Chicago. That earlier Frankie Knuckles mural had been commissioned in 2018 by the Frankie Knuckles Foundation, while the Juice WRLD mural was painted in 2020 by artist Corey Pane to commemorate the Chicago-born rapper. Both pieces were part of the B_Line, a collection of more than 250 murals along the nearby Hubbard Street viaduct.
Viaducts as Canvases Across the City
Chicago's viaducts have increasingly become sites for public art meant to connect neighborhoods and tell local stories. A mural beneath the CTA Red Line at Cermak Road and South Clark Street was described as the first of three planned murals intended to encourage residents to walk between Bronzeville, Chinatown and Pilsen, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. More than 30 children participating in People Matter school programs helped paint that mural.
Elsewhere in the city, a separate mural featuring Kitihawa and Jean Baptiste Point du Sable was painted on the front and side walls of the North Park Elementary School annex in Ravenswood, the Sun-Times reported in a related piece. The artists and the school went on to create a curriculum using that mural to teach students about the Indigenous people who lived in and around what is now Chicago, giving the pairing of Kitihawa and DuSable a growing presence across the city's public art landscape.
