A springtime crowd shops at Maxwell and Halsted streets in the early 1920s as garment workers picket in the background.The Maxwell Street market, looking toward Halsted Street, on Nov. 21, 1935, after city officials forced merchants to clear the sidewalks of their wares. They were still allowed to use the street.
It will do so Sunday, settling in on Maxwell Street between Halsted Street and Union Avenue, as well as on Union from Rochford Street to Liberty Street. It’s been gone for a long time, moving first in 1994 to a portion of Canal Street and in 2008 to the 800 block of S. Desplaines Street. From the 1880s into the 1990s it was a human quilt of various immigrant groups, mostly Jewish, then Black, then Latin in substantial waves. It was where people lived and worked, many of them at the marketplace that dominated the area, south along Halsted Street from Roosevelt Road to 16th Street. It attracted others from across the city, to buy and sell things. People played and listened to the blues. They ate food and in other ways tasted new cultures.
There was an empty lot on the north side of the street, covered with wood chips, and next to it a makeshift shrine. A sculpture spelled M-A-X in 10-foot-tall letters made of railroad ties, and near it is the “Maxwell Street Wall of Fame,” a mural filled with names of former area residents such as bluesman Bo Diddley, jazzman Benny Goodman, boxer Barney Ross, author Willard Motley and former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg.
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