Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2000; Email: mdietler@anthro.spc.uchicago.edu

Dear Ms. Stevenson,

I am writing to you to express my strong support for the appeal by the Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition to reverse the ruling of Ms. Carol Shull, Keeper of the National Register, that the proposed Maxwell Street Historic District is not eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. I would implore you to use your authority to both preserve a priceless cultural landmark of our national heritage and to insure that other landmarks of a similar kind are removed from comparable danger.

The appended text of the letter I sent previously to Ms. Shull conveys my reasons for believing that the preservation of Maxwell Street is both morally imperative and viable. However, I would also like to emphasize that the rather narrow ruling (on the grounds of "integrity") given by Ms. Shull goes well beyond Maxwell Street in its implications: it opens innumerable dangers for other sites that represent the heritage of Americans who were not rich and powerful yet who contributed greatly to the culture and history of this country. It also opens tempting strategic possibilities for wealthy developers who seek ways to evade the historic preservation system that was established to protect such sites from the depredations of those who place greed above the communal good. We urgently need to acknowledge and preserve sites that are of historic importance not because of great architects or the wealth that was invested to build and maintain them, but rather because they represent the few vanishing fragments of a history in which ordinary Americans accomplished extraordinary things. We need to understand the context in which great creativity emerged from humble and difficult circumstances. We need to remember how our immigrant and minority communities struggled to build a life for themselves and to craft the American cultural landscape that we have today. A remarkable site such as Maxwell Street, where the urban blues (the most influential music of the century) was formed by impoverished but brilliant African-American musicians in a place that served as the bottom rung in the ladder of upward mobility for waves of immigrants and as the meeting place for ethnic communities, is in need of preservation and valorization because it represents the very heart of America's history and culture. Such sites cannot be evaluated by the criteria used to judge our more usual monuments. If we do, we risk losing them all.

For all these reasons, I urge and implore you to weigh your duty to the nation above procedural issues and safeguard this precious piece of America's history by allowing Maxwell Street to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Thank you for your thoughtful consideration,

Dear Ms. Shull,

I am writing to urge you to place Chicago's Maxwell Street on the National Register of Historical Places. This is a matter of some urgency, as the University of Illinois at Chicago is intent on demolishing the remaining buildings in this remarkable place as part of its campus expansion plan.

It is astonishing to me that the University still does not recognize the historical treasure that lies in its backyard. In my view this act of destruction would be a tragedy that the University, the city of Chicago, and the nation as a whole, will come to regret bitterly in future generations.

Maxwell Street is not just another quaint neighborhood for which a few people have a certain sentimental regard. It is a uniquely important landmark in the history of music and in the history of Chicago.

This is the widely recognized cradle of Chicago's greatest, most influential, and most distinctive cultural contribution to the world: the Chicago Blues. As someone who works and travels frequently in Europe, I can assure you that the Blues constitutes Chicago's greatest claim to international fame. Even more than its impressive architecture, the name of Chicago is associated automatically, and reverently, with the Blues, the inspired music which is the source of a huge proportion of all twentieth century popular music. Some Chicago institutions still seem curiously indifferent to this incredible heritage, but the rest of the world looks on with admiration. If handled correctly, a preserved and revitalized Maxwell Street would become a site of pilgrimage for music fans, scholars, and tourists from around the world.

I would like to emphasize that it is not the architectural merits of the buildings themselves that count here in terms of the importance of preservation. Rather, it is the extraordinary historical significance of the place and the memory that is embodied in this collection of otherwise quite ordinary buildings. These old buildings provide a context for understanding the transformation of the Blues in Chicago into the music that is synonymous with the city, a unique context that will be increasingly important for future generations who will want to understand the identity of Chicago and the roots of American civilization. As an archaeologist, I am keenly aware of the importance of preserving apparently humble things that are of value for their singular historical importance rather than for simply aesthetic criteria. And I have seen many preservation projects of this kind around the world that have produced benefits far beyond the dreams of even their most ardent advocates. A very good example, which shows the way in which preservation can become an asset to commercial development, is the Centre Bourse project in Marseille, France. There, remains of the ancient Greek port were discovered in the course of building a large downtown shopping mall. The plans for development were altered to preserve the vestiges as a large archaeological park in the middle of the shopping mall and an impressive museum was incorporated into the mall itself. This plan was so successful that the museum and park actually draw people to the shopping center, and many people now proudly consider this to be the heart of the city.

In my view, Maxwell Street has similar potential as a focus of development for the University neighborhood. Something along the lines of Beale Street in Memphis would be a very feasible and successful venture. And as part of that project, I would argue for the importance of establishing in some of those buildings a museum and teaching facility dedicated to the Blues. This would create a strong intellectual link to the University and a central cohesive force in defining the historical character of the district. It would also provide a cultural center and source of pride for the still vibrant Blues community of Chicago, as well as a validation of the enormous (yet still underacknowledged) African American cultural contribution to this city. Moreover, if the city does agree to the establishment of a Jazz Museum at the proposed location on the corner of Roosevelt and Michigan Avenue, this would provide an excellent bridge to a Blues Museum at Maxwell Street. A Maxwell Street historical district would then be seen as the western anchor of Chicago's newly configured cultural core.

Maxwell Street is "ground-zero" for a unique phenomenon of immense cultural significance for this city and the world: the birth of Chicago Blues. The University of Illinois at Chicago holds in its hands an unprecedented opportunity to enhance its neighborhood and its reputation in the city, the nation, and the international community, by linking itself to a singularly important project of cultural preservation. Since its current administration appears too short-sighted to recognize this, I implore you to do everything in your power as Keeper of the National Register to preserve this marvelous cultural landmark.

This is an irreplaceable part of the heritage of the nation.

Sincerely,

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