Bloomington

Former Bloomington Mayor Judy Markowitz, a groundbreaking leader whose passion for downtown helped bring a controversial arena and performing arts center to the city's core, has died.

The Normal Town Council on Monday OK’d spending about $150,000 on a three-year agreement with Midwest Fiber to continue the decades-old drop-box recycling program.

The Bloomington City Council on Monday narrowly approved a change to how the city's Public Safety and Community Relations Board makes recommendations and handles outreach. 

But before the 5-4 vote, council members disagreed in a lengthy discussion about whether the change constituted slightly amending bylaws to clarify the board’s purpose, or significantly broadening its mission. 

Bloomington Mayor Tari Renner announced Wednesday he won’t seek re-election to a third term next spring.

A Bloomington-Normal woman helped wage the fight for women to get the vote a century ago. Now, a newly digitized archive from Hazle Buck Ewing shows it was a long and bitter struggle.

The care of orphaned, abandoned, and rejected African American children in Bloomington Normal has not always been kind or good, or even wanted in certain parts of town.

This episode of McHistory offers an unflinching perspective of Bloomington-Normal's past.

Louise Calimese and her husband Napoleon led the McLean County Home for Colored Children for nearly three decades.

WGLT's Mary Cullen produced this episode of McHistory, featuring Bill Kemp of the McLean County Museum of History and Jennifer Rusk with the Evergreen Memorial Cemetery Walk.

He’s not a craftsman or guilder, nor artist or tradesman. Andy Birkey makes his living carving, casting, and decorating traditional gothic furnishings for Catholic churches, but he said he struggles to consider himself part of Bloomington-Normal's community of artists.

Sojourner Truth made a stop in Bloomington in 1879 to hold a speaking engagement on women’s suffrage and equal, just treatment of former slaves like herself. 

Trisha James Davis of Springfield will portray Truth  at Second Presbyterian Church's Sojourner Truth Celebration,  honoring the 140-year anniversary of that speech. When discussing her approach to portraying the iconic figure, Davis emphasized the vocal aspects. 

“She had a heavy voice,” Davis said. “When I’m doing a presentation on her I will affect a heavier voice with a twinge of an accent.”

The Historic Preservation Commission had been set to hold hearings on two historic landmark nominations for the downtown building State Farm is offloading.

But Mayor Tari Renner said those won’t be needed.

The old Laborers' Local 362 union hiring hall is being demolished this week. The building featured a mural created by Kari Sandhaas in the 1980s, which displayed Bloomington-Normal’s historical relationship with labor and unionizing.

Vicky Edwards travelled over 800 miles from Arlington, Texas, to show her 14-month-old Maine Coon, Brutus, at the Cat Fanciers’ Association All Breed Cat Show at the Interstate Center in Bloomington this weekend.

People dressed in bustles and goggles, carrying jetpacks made with what appear to be ceiling fan blades. Yes, it's Steampunk.

From the Industrial Revolution to the Wild West, Steampunk is a creative way to picture what history could’ve been. It’s a re-imagining of history with art, science, and modern technology.

Women and members of underrepresented groups are at a disadvantage in STEM fields across the globe.

A group of business owners and west Bloomington advocates has launched an effort to bring a full service grocery store and shopping plaza to that part of the community.