The New York Times reported yesterday that the Lower East Side has been added to the National Register of Historic Places. The article cites this decision as being, "representative of a growing movement to expand preservation to include places that are important to ordinary people."

Last fall, the National Register refused to honor a virtually identical site, Chicago's Maxwell Street neighborhood.

"We applaud the New York decision," says Charles Cowdery, president of the Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition. "Unfortunately, the National Register had a chance to do the same thing here in Chicago and passed. Instead, the Maxwell Street neighborhood is being destroyed by a combine of greedy developers and corrupt politicians, led by the University of Illinois."

Most of the statements in the Times article used to describe the Lower East Side apply equally to Maxwell Street. As Renée Epps, a vice president at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, said to the Times, "It may not be significant in the traditional architectural sense that most historic districts use. It's designated for real cultural reasons. These drab little tenements, which many New Yorkers still live in, have shaped our lives."

As in the Maxwell Street neighborhood, most of the buildings in the Lower East Side district are tenements and street-level shops that have drawn bargain shoppers for generations. Also like Maxwell Street, the area once predominantly consisted of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. In addition to preserving history, National Register status makes tax credits available to property owners who meet preservation guidelines.

Placing the Maxwell Street neighborhood on the National Register has been a goal of the Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition for many years. Dr. Janelle Walker, folklorist and secretary of the Coalition says, "We are very pleased that the Lower East Side made it to the National Register. It is indeed a national treasure, but so is Maxwell Street. Why is the Lower

East Side being preserved and placed on the National Register while Maxwell Street was denied that status and is being destroyed?"

Steve Balkin, Vice President of the Coalition, says the answer has to do with the money to be made by politically-connected private interests through old-fashioned urban renewal. "We liken the policy to ethnic cleansing," says Balkin. "Erase genuine culture and replace it with something new and sterile. Maxwell Street had cultural continuity for more than 100 years. It is the birthplace of urban electric blues, the root music of rock n' roll, and it is being destroyed to make way for expensive town houses, a parking garage and a mall. Apparently, the people in New York are just a little more enlightened than we are here."

There are still 36 historic buildings in the Maxwell Street neighborhood and about a dozen businesses, including three hot dog stands, two tailor shops, and four Zoot suit stores. Blues musicians still play on the street in good weather. "Saving what remains will not interfere with the programmatic needs of the University of Illinois, but UIC still pushes on for total destruction," says Balkin.

For more information about the movement to save Maxwell Street visit <http://maxwellstreet.org>. 

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