The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) has reneged on it previous compromise stance concerning a Maxwell Street Historic District and has decided to demolish all of the 50 old historic buildings that remain. Why has the University, an institution supposedly devoted to the education of Chicago's residents, decided to eliminate all traces of this rich historical area -- to wipe off the face of the earth any remnant of what happened there. Why is UIC doing this?
This decision reflects a clash of cultures between elitist short-sighted university administrators who live in the suburbs and the ordinary and extraordinary people who have made Maxwell Street the center of Chicago's vibrant diversity. Clearly, these administrators have little regard for the dynamic working class communities that continues to exist in and around Maxwell Street.
William H. Whyte in his book, City: Rediscovering the Center (Anchor Books, 1988, p.55), seems to clearly understand UIC administrators when he writes: "There are dangerous places in the city, and dangerous times. There are dangerous people. But it is important to differentiate between kinds of people -- between the mugger, say, and the vendor. Many businessmen and civic leaders do not differentiate. Being themselves insulated from the street, they lump all of its people as undesirable, and some leaders would be quite happy if they were eliminated altogether, a result of that their policies in some cities are calculated to bring about. They should be working in the opposite direction. The time to worry is when street people begin to leave a place. Like canaries in a coal mine, street people are an index of the health of a place."
UIC administrators may work in the city but only in ivory towers. They never walk Maxwell Street to buy a zoot suit at Sandy's, or a Polish Sausage at Jim's Original, or a Muddy Waters tape at Blues Bus Music. They and their real estate developer partners are afraid of the people, the merchants, the street vendors, and the shoppers who still walk on Maxwell Street and they project that fear on to their students and to future $500,000 condo buyers. They want no part of that culture; not even to remember or honor it by respecting it as a historic preservation district. This is a deliberate policy to revise history and to minimize the cultural contributions of working class people. UIC provides formal technical education to working class and minority kids but they have demonstrated contempt for their culture. UIC's guiding urban design principle seems to be "class apartheid."
Apparently, university officials are loathe to admit that, except for Native Americans, we are a nation of immigrants. They are clearly disrespectful of Blues and the culture that produced it. They want it remembered only on the printed page or on CD ROM. UIC administrators want to make sure that grassroots working class people, except for tuition paying students, are not welcome in Campustown. They even want to shed the name Maxwell Street in favor of the more sanitized "Campustown."
There is conflict of interest operating here. UIC is abrogating its educational and cultural stewardship mission in favor of the needs of its real estate development partners, who stand to make a bundle of money if their condos sell well for really high prices. UIC is not a private business or even a private university. It is a public land grant university with a public purpose that should be operating in the long term best interests of Illinois. But, it has, instead, chosen to opt for short run narrow goals by fronting for private real estate development interests, and in the process, destroying our cultural heritage.
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