Nancy Campbell Hays

Photographer. Activist. Preservationist.

ABOUT

Nancy Campbell Hays, 84, passed away on May 31, 2007. Upon learning of her death, former alderman Leon M. Despres commented, "She was Hyde Park's photographer, a champion of the parks, and an extraordinary person." Through her last month, Nancy remained curious about and alert to happenings in Hyde Park and Chicago; friends were reading aloud to her from Despres' book Challenging the Daley Machine: A Chicago Alderman's Memoir. Nancy was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on May 26, 1923. An uncle taught her photography when she was twelve, and her father helped her build a darkroom in the family home. She began undergraduate studies in architecture at the University of Michigan. Her parents hoped she would complete her studies there, but she headed instead to the School of Modern Photography in New York City. In 1948, at the age of 25, she was sent by the American Friends Service Committee on a year-long assignment to postwar Europe and the Middle East as a volunteer photographer. During the 1950s, Nancy established herself as a professional photographer using Campbell Hays as her professional name. She worked through the Monkmeyer Press Photo Service in New York City until the agency closed in 2001. Many of her photographs were used to illustrate school textbooks and the Weekly Reader, distributed to schools across the country. Nancy moved to Chicago in 1958 and found her life-long home in the Hyde Park-Kenwood community. She did advertising layout and photography for the Hyde Park Co-op and undertook weekly assignments for the Hyde Park Herald, including extensive coverage of children and post-urban renewal Hyde Park. Every year for almost four decades she supported and photographed the 57th Street Art Fair, the Hyde Park Garden Fair, the July 4th parade and picnic on 53rd Street along with countless school and community events. Beginning in the 1960s, Nancy became deeply involved in saving trees and safeguarding the lakefront and parks. She joined the Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference as a member of the Parks Committee and, in 1965, helped form the Daniel Burnham Committee to protest the city's plans to put a freeway and feeder route through Jackson Park. Every Sunday the group tied strips of sheeting around the many trees that would be sacrificed for the road; for this the group was arrested. Her name is associated with all the subsequent struggles to preserve and protect Jackson Park and Burnham Park: the dismantling of the Nike bases, the protection of Wooded Island, the preservation of the 63'd Street Bathing Pavilion, the rehabilitation of the lagoons, and the preservation of the limestone revetment at Promontory Point. She was instrumental in founding Friends of the Parks in 1975 and served on its board for three decades. She was one of the founders of the Jackson Park Advisory Council in 1983 and served in some capacity with the council ever since its founding, notably as its president from 1999 until her death. Nancy has been recognized for her achievements numerous times including by the Chicago Audubon Society in 1997 and the South East Chicago Commission in 2002. She bequeathed the entire body of her photographic work-prints, slides, and negatives that span fifty years-and related documentation to the archives of the Hyde Park Historical Society. The collection is stored at the Special Collections Research Center of the University of Chicago's Regenstein Library. "Nancy was one of Hyde Park's great and caring human beings and a superb photographer. Her work will have meaning to generations of people to come." (Stephen A Treffman, HPHS Board Member Emeritus) Contributions to support the archiving of the Nancy Hays papers may be made to the University of Chicago Library. Please mark contributions to indicate that they are for the Nancy Hays Memorial Fund and send to: Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library, 1100 E. 57th Street, Chicago, Illinois 60637. Contributions may also be made in Nancy's name to Friends of the Parks, 55 E. Washington, Suite 1911, Chicago, Illinois 60602. Nancy Hays is survived by her brother's wife, Frances Lukens Hays of Milton, Massachusetts; and her brother's children and their families: Frances Blakiston Hays of Silver Spring, Maryland; James Griffith Hays IV of Cincinnati, Ohio; Edward Lukens Hays of Milton, Massachusetts; and Charles Campbell Hays of Burlington, Vermont.

The time has come to explore her legacy, to open up the boxes of mostly never before seen images that were closed for 12 years, and to celebrate the individual that was Nancy Hays. 

​The Nancy Hays collection comprises almost 200 boxes of material. Through the years, Nancy documented Hyde Park – the 57th Street Art Fair, the 4th on 53rd Parade, the countless community events, Promontory Point, the children, the parks and the trees.  

​Her passion was preserving Hyde Park through her photographs as well as her activism. She was a founding member of Friends of the Parks, joined the Hyde Park Kenwood Community Conference, helped found the Burnham Committee to save the trees and was a founding member of the Jackson Park Advisory Council.