Maxwell Street - 1932

Copyright 2005 David R. Phillps

Maxwell Street is an east-west street in Chicago, Illinois that intersects with Halsted Street just south of Roosevelt Road. It runs at 1330 South in the numbering system running from 500 West to 1126 West. The Maxwell Street neighborhood is considered part of the Near West Side and is one of the city's oldest residential districts. It is notable as the location of the celebrated Maxwell Street Market and the birthplace of Chicago Blues and the "Maxwell Street Polish (sausage sandwich)." A large portion of the area is now the campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), as well as a new private housing development sponsored by the university.

[edit] History Maxwell Street first appears on a Chicago map in 1847. It was named for Dr. Philip Maxwell. It was originally a wooden plank road that ran from the south branch of the Chicago River west to Blue Island Avenue. The earliest housing there was built by and for Irish immigrants who were brought to Chicago to construct the first railroads there. It continued to be a "gateway" neighborhood for immigrants, including Greeks, Bohemians, Russians, Germans, Italians, African-Americans and Mexicans.

Hull House, the largest and most famous of the 19th Century settlement houses, established by Jane Addams, began here to help immigrants transition to their lives in Chicago. The Great Chicago Fire, of 1871, started only a few blocks away but burned north and east, sparing Maxwell Street and the rest of the Near West Side.

A few blocks north of the Maxwell Street neighborhood are the city's historic Greek and Italian communities. Taylor Street is Chicago's Little Italy and one can still find Italian cuisine, pastries and lemon ice. Pilsen, the neighborhood to the south, was originally Bohemian and today is Mexican.

The neighborhood's historic church is St. Francis of Assisi. St. Francis has evolved through the years with the surrounding community. It originally started as German Catholic, then Italian, and now is Mexican, with almost all of the masses in Spanish.

Beginning in the 1880s, "Russian" (i.e., Eastern European) Jews became the dominant ethnic group in the Maxwell Street neighborhood, which remained predominantly Jewish until the 1920s. This was the heyday of the open-air pushcart market for which the neighborhood is most famous.

After 1920, most of the residents were African-Americans from the Mississippi Delta, who came in the Great Migration (African American), but most of the businesses continued to be Jewish-owned. During and after the period of Jewish predominance, the area was colloquially known as "Jew Town." In the 1980s and 1990s, both the neighborhood and market became predominantly Mexican-American. Most of the older Jewish merchant families had gathered wealth and moved to the suburbs but the area was still widely known as Jew Town.

During the period when the neighborhood was predominantly Black, and especially in the decades following World War II, it became famous for its street musicians, mostly performing Blues, but also Gospel and other styles.

In Maxwell Street, by Ira Berkow, the author heads each chapter, from 1905 onward, with a newspaper quotation showing a prevailing belief at the time that the city was about to abolish the Maxwell market. The street itself began to shrink in 1926 when the Chicago River was straightened and new railroad tracks on its west bank pushed the eastern end of Maxwell Street further west. The 1957 construction of the Dan Ryan Expressway cut Maxwell Street in two and pushed the market west of Union Street. In 1967, UIC started to expand south of Roosevelt Road, into the Maxwell Street neighborhood. A few years later, a subsidized housing development called the Barbara Jean Wright Courts Apartments chopped off Maxwell's western end at Morgan Street (1000 west).

In October 2008, Maxwell Street Market moved to the intersection of Roosevelt Rd. and S. Des Plaines Avenue.

The Maxwell Street Market Although there were many fine stationary department stores located in it, the area's most notable feature was its open air market, precursor to the flea market scene in Chicago. One could almost buy anything there, legal and illegal, even though the old Chicago Police Academy on O'Brien Street was adjacent to it.

In need of jobs and quick cash, fledgling entrepreneurs came to Maxwell Street – many say it was the largest open-air market in the country – to earn their livelihood. From clothes, to produce, to cars, appliances, tools, and virtually anything anyone might want, Maxwell Street offered discount items to consumers and was an economic hub for poor people looking to get ahead. Merchandise was often considered to have originated from hi-jacked or pirated railcars/railyards and transport rigs for quick resale and dissemmination of articles. Few questions were ever asked about the origin of a vendor's items for sale, particularly if the price was "right".

Maxwell Street Market represented a fundamental change in American retail and economic history. The market was a response to and rejection of stand-alone retail establishments and their price structures. This microcosm of commerce recognized the availability and influx of Asian and world imports and markets (Taiwan, Japan, China, Mexico) priced dramatically lower than American produced goods. Wholesalers lined Roosevelt Boulevard with goods from all over the world; savvy vendors would buy from them to resell on the market at a profit, usually at a 100% markup. The resulting price(s) fell well below goods available elsewhere, due to low overhead. The market also responded to the spending power of immigrants and minorities; they could take their cash where they were welcome, accepted, and could shop. This transition and market did not go unnoticed; subsequent retailers such as Kmart and Walmart built upon these opportunities. The economic impact and spending dollars of Maxwell Street Market were not unnoticed. It may have become obvious to corporate interests that "cash was green", regardless of clientele.

In an era of civil unrest and political change, Maxwell Street Market thrived as a multi-cultural phenomenon. Each culture and "group" respected and honored the other and mostly interacted outside what were then current national issues. This milieu of culture and ethnicity was a distinctly American phenomenon; Maxwell Street has been called the Ellis Island of the Midwest. Local politics had an interest in the market's audience. Election time often brought many placards and signs (some billboard-like). Everything seemed to work and run as a well-oiled machine. "Spot-holders" (allegedly of mob influence) roamed the streets and interacted with vendors to maintain regular vending sites for which unobtrusive cash payments were accepted. Those not being gratuitous often arrived only to find their "spot" taken by another vendor.

In 1994, the Maxwell Street Market was moved by the City of Chicago to accommodate expansion of the University of Illinois at Chicago. It was relocated a few blocks east to Canal Street and renamed the New Maxwell Street Market. It has now moved to Desplaines Avenue since September, 2008.

The documentary film Cheat You Fair: The Story of Maxwell Street, by award-winning filmmaker, Phil Ranstrom, was first shown at the Chicago International Documentary Festival in April, 2007, at The Sundance Film Festival in January, 2008 and in Belgium and Poland. This film details the rise and fall of the great Maxwell Street and examines the history of the market, the development of the electric urban blues, the fight to save the market, and the gentrification of the Maxwell Street neighborhood. This is considered by many to be the definitive work on Maxwell Street and Chicago journalist Rick Kogan called it, "One of the most remarkable pieces of work I've ever seen".

[edit] Blues on Maxwell Street In the 1930s and '40s, when many black musicians came to Chicago from the segregated South, they brought with them outdoor music.

But when the early blues musicians began playing outside on Maxwell Street – the place where they could be heard by the greatest number of people -- they realized they needed either a louder than standard Resonator guitar (e.g. Arvella Gray) or amplifiers and electrical instruments (e.g. Jim Brewer) in order to be heard. Over several decades, the use of these new instruments, and the interaction between established city musicians such as Big Bill Broonzy and new arrivals from the South, produced a new musical genre – electrified, urban blues, later coined, "The Chicago Blues."

This amplified, new sound was different from the acoustic country blues played in the South. It was popularized by Blues giants such as Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Bo Diddley and Howlin Wolf and evolved into rock & roll. From the first, the Blues signified a lament or elegy for hard times, though it outgrew that limitation. When economic decline in the American South after World War I caused many Delta Blues and Jazz musicians - notably Louis Armstrong - to migrate north to Chicago, the first economically secure class willing to help them was the mostly Jewish merchants of the area around Maxwell Street, who by that time were able to rent or own store buildings. These merchants encouraged Blues players to set up near their storefronts and provided them with electric extension cords to run the new high-tech instruments. Shoppers lured by the chance to hear Blues music could be grabbed and hauled into the store where they were sold a suit of clothes, shoes, etc.

[edit] The end of the Blues The last Blues performances on Maxwell Street occurred in 1999-2000, on a bandstand erected by Frank "Little Sonny" Scott, Jr., near the north-east corner of Maxwell and Halsted Streets, on land recently vacated by the demolition of a historic building.[citation needed] The extension cord ran from the last remaining building in use, the Maxworks Cooperative headquarters, 300 feet (91 m) east, at 716 Maxwell Street. One day a University crew arrived and erected a chain-link fence between the bandstand and the sidewalk, effectively banning the performances though they continued a few weeks longer on the too-narrow sidewalk.

[edit] The University of Illinois at Chicago's expansion into Maxwell Street The University of Illinois at Chicago was established at the Harrison/Halsted area in 1965, the location chosen by Mayor Richard J. Daley. This was especially unpopular with the locals, who had been promised more low-income housing by the city, and there were numerous protests, especially by the Italian-American and Mexican-American communities. The University had little interaction with the surrounding community and decided against keeping local businesses in its plans for expansion in the 1980s. The university slowly began buying land in the Maxwell area and demolishing the buildings . It had been rumored that the University never officially announced their plans in the '80s, but circulated speculation that they were going to exercise eminent domain, which was in fact backed by state legislation. This strategy may have saved the school millions of dollars, not only because people slowly moved out and did not have to be compensated, but also because real estate prices continued to drop in the area through the '80s and early '90s, because of the rumors. When the school finally made public its' plans to move the Maxwell Street Market and demolish the buildings, the community tried to petition to designate the Maxwell Street Market area a National Historic District, in 1994, and again in 2000. The proposal was eventually turned down due to the efforts of the University, backed by Mayor Richard M. Daley (son of Richard J.).

[edit] Maxwell Street in history and popular culture Maxwell Street is where the Maxwell Street Polish Sausage sandwich (sometimes advertised as Jew Town Polish) originated. The famous direct-sales entrepreneur, Ron Popeil, began his career as a street vendor at the Maxwell Street Market. The clarinetist and band leader Benny Goodman was born in 1909 near the Maxwell Street neighborhood and spent most of his youth there. The Maxwell Street Police Station, at Maxwell and Morgan Streets, was "Hill Street Station" in the 1980s television series, Hill Street Blues. Maxwell Street was featured in the 1980 film, The Blues Brothers, in which it was portrayed as a thriving ethnically African-American community. The scene features the two stars, "'Joliet' Jake" and "Elwood Blues" - played by John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd - looking for "Matt 'Guitar' Murphy" and "Lou 'Blue Lou' Marini," to get their band back together. They enter the, "Soul Food Cafe," the exterior of which is actually Nate's Deli, formerly Lyon's Deli (the interior is a set). As they are entering, John Lee Hooker is playing, "Boom Boom," on the street, and some typical street scenes can be seen, including the famous, "Cheat You Fair" sign. Once the song ends, "Jake" and "Elwood" encounter "Matt's" wife, played by Aretha Franklin. When Matt becomes excited about the band getting back together, Aretha launches into, "Think." In the end, much to Aretha's dismay, "Matt" turns his apron in and hits the road with the "Blues Brothers." In February, 1988, United Artists filmed an occult thriller, Child's Play, featuring sets on Maxwell Street including a disabled bus with the word "Auto" spray painted on it which had been sitting in the lot at 709 Maxwell since 1984. Scrap wood was purchased from Maxworks Cooperative for a bonfire which occurs in the movie in front of the old bus. Simultaneously co-owners United Artists and Frank Sinatra re-released The Manchurian Candidate starring Lawrence Harvey, which had been kept out of circulation since 1963.

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