Elliot Zashin, Director/Hillel at the University of Iowa <hillel@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu> Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1996
Dear Chancellor Broski:
I have been informed that the University is moving ahead with plans to develop the area around Maxwell St. and is seeking proposals from developers for a hotel complex. I would strongly urge you to build an historic component into the planning, so that the rich history of the Maxwell Street Market area can be preserved for future generations of visitors to the campus, as well as for its students.
Several years ago, when we were planning the Maxwell Street Market colloquium, which took place at UIC in May 1993, we met with then-Chancellor Stukel to explore ways in which the University could use the market heritage to enhance the attraction of the campus southward expansion. We pointed out a number of examples where deteriorated areas had been rehabilitated around historic sites. At the time, we hoped the administration would incorporate this kind of thinking into their future planning, but the response was ambiguous.
Now that the University has acquired sufficient space for its curricular and extra-curricular programs through the use of eminent domain, it would be altogether appropriate for it to dedicate some portion of the area to be developed to historic preservation. I do not need to detail the history of the area; you know it was the gateway to greater Chicago for virtually every major immigrant group that settled here.
During the period that I was director of the Levine Hillel Center, we began to explore the role the area had played in the development of Chicago's Jewish history. It was readily apparent that the Maxwell Street Market area was the quintessentially Jewish immigrant center in Chicago, like the Lower East Side in New York City. The number of distinguished Jews who grew up there is impressive, and there are families throughout the suburbs who can trace their roots to the area. For many other groups, more or less the same can be said.
The richness of this heritage should not be confined to archives of the Chicago Historical Society or of the Hull House museum. It should be embodied and displayed in the very area where it actually was lived. It would be fitting for a university which was built to serve an urban multi-ethnic constituency to ensure the preservation of Chicago "roots" in the heart of its campus. I hope you will move the University to become an active participant in this process.
Sincerely,
Elliot Zashin, Director/Hillel at the University of Iowa
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