Alan Paul Mammoser <amammo1@uic.edu> Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997
Dear Chancellor Broski;
As a graduate student at UIC during this past year, I became aware of the importance of the Maxwell Street area as a deeply historical and cultural place in Chicago. The old street and market area comprise an irreplaceable piece of the city's urban fabric; made irreplaceable through the rich coalescence of cultures coming together there across many years of city history. As an open-air market, the place is timeless, manifesting the ages old commercial activity which brings urban life into existence. As a market in Chicago the place is historically unique, a place full of the memory of the special cultures which mingled here to buy and sell while creating unique artistic expressions.
Before coming to study at UIC, I read in the newspapers of the week-end market's movement away from the original location. I was saddened by this, as I sensed a missed opportunity for historically-minded development; for a kind of development which builds upon the existing urban fabric rather than over the top of it. Popular marketplaces in other cities of the world are so designed as to interact closely with city residents and even with universities.
The role which UIC played in the loss of the Maxwell Street market particularly bothered me, for our university makes the claim of standing out as a great urban institution. There seemed to be such a paucity of creative thought in urban redevelopment, leading to the destruction of the historical city rather than enhancement through regeneration and interactive development.
Perhaps some opportunity for preservation of the city still exists,
with support for the local merchants and the conversion of the
remaining areas along Halsted and Maxwell as a historical district.
I, for one, am hopeful the University's administration will
really work in cooperation with local people and merchants to
preserve the remaining part of the Maxwell Street area, and demonstrate
a true commitment to culturally and historically sensitive urban
revitalization.
Alan P. Mammoser
Graduate Student, University of Illinois at Chicago
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