Steve Zeitlin<Fax 212-529-5062>, Date: Sunday, Nov 30, 1997
Dear Chancellor Broski:
I write to urge University support for the Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition. The remaining blocks along South Halsted Street and Maxwell Street mark that particular confluence f history and geography that Michael P. Smith calls a city's "cultural wetlands." Preservationist James Marston Fitch argues that the real value of a place is defined not in terms of dollars and cents but in terms of the quantifiable human energy that was put into it. That energy is more than materials and labor. It consists, too, of all that happened within - the stories, customs and memories that adhere, generation after generation. Maxwell Street in Chicago harbors a chain of associations and memories; it is part f the collective memories of African Americans for its blues heritage, along with Jewish Americans and Mexican Americans for their immigrant history. If Maxwell Street is taken over for university buildings, the chain is broken and Chicago itself is diminished.
To offer some background on my commitment to this issue, I have doctorate in Folklore and Folklife from the University of Pennsylvania, and I am the director of City Lore: the New York Center for Urban Folk Culture, a non profit organization dedicated to the documentation and preservation of New York's living cultural heritage. One of our projects is entitled Endangered Spaces, a program to document and advocate for local establishments and cultural landmarks threatened in the ebb and flow of New York's rapidly changing cultural landscape. While historic preservationists work to preserve buildings and facades, we work to conserve the cultures that bring those buildings to life.
What is an "Endangered Space?" We consider Endangered Spaces to be local institutions with a demonstrable significance in community life. We are interested in those locales and institutions that provide continuity and character to the neighborhood, and that are seen as an integral part of the community by those who use them. Certainly, Maxwell Street in Chicago fits our definition of an Endangered Space.
Recently, City Lore participated in a city-wide task force on Historic and Cultural landmarks, led by the Municipal Art Society in New York. In 1992, MAS brought together a group of concerned individuals to ask the question: "What are we doing to protect our historical and cultural sites, and is it enough?" The group included preservationists, folklorists, urban geographers, community leaders, government officials, educators and architects. There recommendations form the basis of a comprehensive plan for New York's historical and cultural sites that was released to the public in the fall of 1996. The report with scholarly comment will appear in the next issue of the national Humanities magazine, culturefront.
Concurrently, the Municipal Art Society and City Lore organized a remarkable public forum exploring the future of New York's endangered historical and cultural sites. An overflow crowd of almost 300 attended History Happened Here: A Conference on Saving Our Sites, Telling Our Stories, Keeping Our Traditions Alive, at the Museum of the City of New York in November, 1996. At the conference, professionals and community activists with a wide range of backgrounds and affiliations shared thoughts on issues of common concern: how places in our city embody history, memory and tradition; how preservation ca work in tandem with community development; how changes in public policies and the ways we collaborate might achieve our preservation goals. Participants left the conference energized by the dialogue and eager to work towards these goals.
All over the United States, historical and cultural sites are attracting increasing attention. Community activists are becoming alert to their value as cultural anchors in strengthening neighborhoods; folklorists are turning their attention to them as places that nurture traditions; and preservationists are realizing that a landmark can be m ore than a fine building.
However much some of us may profit from the progress, we can not let what is most distinctive and most human about our city to be destroyed. Maxwell Street is as important to Chicago as Coney Island is to New York. Its loss would be nothing less than a tragedy of history and memory. As Alan Lomax warns: "if we continue to allow the erosion of our cultural forms, soon there will be nowhere to visit and no place to truly call home."
Thank you,
Sincerely,
Steve Zeitlin, Ph.D.
web page provided by OPENAIR-MARKET NET
return to Preserve Maxwell Street