For immediate release, March 30, 2000

Contact: Chuck Cowdery, 773-477-9691 <cowdery@ix.netcom.com>, Steve Balkin, 312-341-3696 <mar@openair.org>

The Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition has nominated the Maxwell Street neighborhood to be an official historic district in the National Register of Historic Places. The extensive nomination application was prepared by Lori Grove and other Coalition members. It consists of hundreds of pages of detailed documentation about buildings and other infrastructure in the proposed district, and about the area’s historical significance, as specified by National Register guidelines.

"Maxwell Street has a 150 year history as the Midwest’s most important immigrant gateway and as the birthplace of Chicago Blues," says Coalition President Chuck Cowdery. "Forty-four buildings from the historic era remain in the proposed district. The University of Illinois at Chicago wants to demolish most of them for private development and campus expansion. Although National Register status in itself will not prevent their demolition, it will confirm the historic significance of the area, which the university and city have repeated tried to deny."

Although the Coalition is submitting its application through these normal channels, as required, it is also appealing directly to Washington due to serious doubts about whether the nomination can receive a truly unbiased review at the state level. On March 23, a copy of the nomination application along with a letter explaining the reasons for the Coalition’s direct appeal was sent to Carol Shull, whose official title is "Keeper of the National Register."

One reason cited for the direct appeal is potential conflicts of interest involving three highly placed individuals in the state’s historic preservation apparatus. One is the spouse of a University of Illinois trustee and two others are spouses of principals in companies hired by UIC to redevelop the Maxwell Street neighborhood. The spouses of the developers are members of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency's Board of Trustees, a six-member body. One of them is its chairperson. The spouse of the University of Illinois trustee is the governor’s policy director.

The effort to have the Maxwell Street area declared a historic district already has a checkered history, the details of which give the Coalition additional reason to doubt the fairness of the state process. In 1994, after the Maxwell Street Market was moved and all of the historic buildings between Morgan Street and Halsted Street, except the old police station, were demolished, a National Register nomination application was prepared and submitted by Grove and Elliot Zashin as individuals (before the Coalition was founded). That application focused on the Jewish immigrant history of the area and did not mention the blues history, because Grove and Zashin were not aware of it at the time. Still, the 1994 nomination received a 9-0 favorable vote from the Advisory Council.

What happened next was that William Wheeler, the State Historic Preservation Officer (SHPO), sat on the nomination for five months while the university demolished as many buildings as it could. Then he chose to disregard the Advisory Council opinion, conceding that he generally does not do this, and sent to Washington his recommendation against approval. Washington followed Wheeler’s lead and rejected the application due to the "irretrievable loss of historic integrity" in the area. The university had destroyed enough buildings while the application languished on Wheeler’s desk to get its way. Wheeler is still the SHPO.

UIC intends to break ground on its project this spring and demolition could begin at any time, another reason for the Coalition’s direct appeal to Washington. The Coalition is also urging Chicago-area members of Congress to write Shull in support of the new nomination. Representative Danny Davis, whose congressional district includes the proposed historic district, has already sent a letter of support.

The geographic boundaries of the proposed Maxwell Street Historic District are from Roosevelt Road south to Liberty and 14th Streets, and from Union west to Halsted and Newberry Streets. The ten remaining buildings on Maxwell, east of Halsted, include a Civil War-era wood frame cottage (a rare survivor of the 1871 Chicago Fire), a fine example of an 1880s tenement, and several classic 19th century storefronts. Halsted Street between Maxwell and Roosevelt is a virtually intact collection of 19th and early 20th century commercial buildings. Most of the Halsted buildings are in good condition and contain operating businesses, which still serve the same low income, largely African-American clientele that patronized them during the later part of the historic period. Live electric blues still is played on Maxwell Street on many weekends during warmer months of the year.

For more information visit <http://cowdery.home.netcom.com/page24.html> and <http://www.openair.org/maxwell/preserve.html>.

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