Maxwell Street

Maxwell Street grew from one of Chicago's original boundaries into the famed Maxwell Street Market, an open-air center of bargain commerce on the Near West Side whose development reflected the city's immigrant history and the broader shift from open-air market to retail store. After the Great Chicago Fire, the nearby area became a settlement point for many immigrants, and in the 1890s Jewish immigrants from Poland and Russia began selling produce, housewares, clothing, shoes, and sundries, mostly secondhand and at low prices, from pushcarts and barrels outside their homes, first on Jefferson Street and then on Maxwell. A 1912 city ordinance regulating the trade formally established the market, and by the 1920s its sales ranked third in Chicago. By the 1930s, the market was thriving, drawing 50,000 people on a typical Sunday and serving Depression-era Chicagoans seeking inexpensive food, clothing, and household goods while giving aspiring entrepreneurs a place to earn a living. In 1939, merchants organized the Maxwell Street Merchant's Association to manage booming commerce and improve the market's image, helping usher in a golden age in the 1940s and 1950s. In the postwar years, African Americans and Mexicans joining predominantly eastern European entrepreneurs added to the neighborhood's ethnic diversity and to its distinctive mix of foods, sounds, and electrified blues. Later changes in transportation and redevelopment reshaped the area: suburbanization and new expressways drew customers away, the Dan Ryan Expressway cut through part of Maxwell Street in the late 1950s and pushed the market westward, and the opening of the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle in 1965 displaced some long-time customers even as it brought thousands of students. The market remained lively through the 1960s and 1970s but declined by the late 1970s as redevelopment plans discouraged renovation. In 1994, the city relocated the market east to Canal Street while university expansion and redevelopment created new housing, academic facilities, and business space. Maxwell Street's spirit endured in the continuing ethnic diversity and entrepreneurship of new generations of Chicagoans.

Chicago, Illinois · United States