Filmmaker Tom Palazzolo records Maxwell Street Market history in his new book

Memoir of Place
from Wednesday Journal - Oak Park, IL - 1/13/2009
CHRISTINE VERNON Contributing Writer

Tom Palazzolo's new book, At Maxwell Street, is described by his wife, Marcia, a contributor to the book, as a "memoir of place." Over the years, Tom has filmed what has become, with the passage of time, historic, archival footage of the city of Chicago, going back to his days as a student at the School of the Art Institute more than 40 years ago.

Growing up in St. Louis, he watched as many landmarks were torn down but when he arrived in Chicago in 1960, he was happy to see that many landmarks still remained here. The 50 or so films he has made include footage of Riverview, Clark Street, and the '68 Democratic Convention but Palazzolo always had a particular love of and appreciation for Maxwell Street, or The Maxwell Street Market, as it was properly called. The book serves as a record of the phenomenon that was Maxwell Street. Along with oral histories in the book, there is a DVD made with students from the School of the Art Institute in 1982. The book includes still shots of the people, places and things, showing the market in three layers: storefronts, tables on the street, and small huts.

Maxwell Street, as seen through the lens of Tom Palazzolo and friends, is a collection of merchants, shoppers, street performers, products, found and outsider art on a massive scale, jazz and blues being performed by original artists, food being cooked and prepared by street vendors (including Polish sausage sandwich, of which Palazzolo seems particularly fond), and the dynamics of the market-goods being sold by vendors and hawkers and "pullers" who drew people into the stores.

The documentary accompanying the book opens with Casey Jones, Chicken Man (aka Chicken Charlie), a one man band who was seen around Chicago, often at Maxwell Street, with his accordion and trained chicken. Populated with characters from all aspects of society, there are no bad actors on this set; everyone contributes to the festivities, which Palazzolo calls "more fun and more real than modern malls, sometimes dangerous, and often funny." Accompanied by students, he found the people he filmed more open and interested in talking to him.
Asked if Maxwell Street should have been saved, he responds, "Absolutely. It is an antidote to the slickness the city is becoming." The book is a manifesto of his love of the sociology, culture and aesthetics of Maxwell Street. "Chicago soul," he calls it and "a distinctly American phenomenon." The book and accompanying DVD, brings a heightened awareness of what Maxwell Street was really about and what has been lost in the sanitizing and extinction of a unique street market.

Many Chicagoans have personal memories of Maxwell Street. William Cowhey, former real estate professional with Arthur Rubloff & Co. and former head of the Civic Federation of Chicago, recalled that Maxwell Street was always the place to go on Sundays when the other stores were closed, and he remembers how much fun it was to go there as a teen. The heydey of Maxwell Street he said was in the 1930s and late '40s. Kathy Coleman English has memories of her great grandfather Katzen, a rabbi, who came to Maxwell Street from Georgia in Russia. Jose Alvarez, owner of Renaissance Furniture Restoration, in business 40 years, says that you will find "real" Mexican food there but shares Palazzolo's passion for the "Polish and black" sandwich, which he says you can smell from a mile away and is best with grilled onions and mustard.
Palazzolo began documenting Maxwell Street for a class at the School of the Art Institute taught by Ken Josephson. He would complete an assignment at the last minute by rushing to Maxwell Street on a Sunday and getting his prints ready for Monday class. "Socially conscious work" he says he favored back then. As he visited Maxwell Street with his girlfriend, Marcia Daehn, a photography student at IIT, he would pick up the tab for her "Polish," a sure sign for the woman who became his wife, collaborator, and mother of his three children.

Market history

Often referred to as the largest open air market in the U.S., Maxwell Street was named after Dr. Philip Maxwell, an early settler and it first appeared on a map in 1847. From 1880 to 1920, the area was a magnet for poor Eastern European Jews and even as late as 1982 when Palazzolo made his documentary, one black clerk in a store referred to the area as "Jew Town." His Jewish boss noted there were only 10 Jewish merchants left at that point. But as one historian wrote, "the only color that mattered was green."

Maxwell Street Market became the official name in 1912. It was a gateway both for foreign immigrants and domestic immigrants who relocated from the South, providing them with an outlet for their entrepreneurial skills, a livelihood, a social network and a sense of community, not to mention goods and services needed for everyday living. It ran from the late 1800s until 1994 when the University of Illinois at Chicago expanded and developers positioned themselves for the coming real estate feeding frenzy. The area was labeled "blighted," buildings were condemned, services and improvements were withheld and the decline to justify redevelopment was assured.

Although preservation authorities cited numerous buildings of significance, many were taken by eminent domain and lost to by the 1970s and '80s "erasing yet another chunk of the city's soul," as Palazzolo says. The area shrank with the construction of the Dan Ryan in 1957. At one time, the center was Maxwell Street and Halsted but the market eventually shriveled to five blocks, from Morgan to Halsted, then one block from Halsted east to Union. By the time preservationists mounted an effort to save this unique treasure, it was too late. They judged it "an irretrievable loss of historic integrity." A rich repository of information about the battle to save Maxwell Street can be found online.

After a stint on Canal Street, the market moved to DesPlaines Street between Harrison and Roosevelt (2008) and it is there you will find it today with space for more than 500 vendors every Sunday of the year, weather permitting. Roosevelt University Professor Steve Balkin, who maintains a website on open air markets, wants the public to know that the New Maxwell Street needs consideration and encouragement from the City of Chicago in order to thrive. He calls the area now "a sliver of a sliver, at great risk because of mismanagement by the city." In order to thrive, he suggests the city lower vendor fees (there was a recent substantial fee hike); allow vendors to park near their sites (rather than at remote parking areas); provide more parking; provide easy access for blues and other entertainers to perform there; and, eliminate "the harshness, capriciousness and corruption of market regulations enforcers."

Camera-ready couple

Tom and Marcia Palazzolo first met in the Art Institute of Chicago where Marcia was a waitress in the Garden Restaurant and Tom was a guard outside. They didn't even speak the first year except through a glass window.

As a couple, the Palazzolos' involvement on the Chicago and Oak Park art scene is extensive. Marcia was president of the Oak Park Art League for six years and before that a board member. Tom was frequently enlisted in the mechanics of maintaining the building. Now Tom serves on the OPAL board. Marcia has been involved in the Historical Society of OP-RF for over 30 years.
Oak Park historian Gary Schwab says the new book helps him to recall his own roots-a grandfather who took him to Maxwell Street almost every Sunday morning. "Our house and my father's camera shop were filled with stuff from Maxwell Street, much of which I still have," Schwab said. "My father was born in the neighborhood of Maxwell Street in 1910, and his family lived there until moving to the North Side. Maxwell Street was a great place to learn about Chicago outside of one's usual insular neighborhood experience."

Both Palazzolo resumes include years of teaching. Tom spent 36 years at Daley College where he taught photography, art and art history. He also taught film at the School of the Art Institute.
Marcia's jobs were closer to home. She spent 17 years teaching at Dominican University, two years at Concordia University and 21 years on the faculty of Elmhurst College where she has taught photography, bookbinding, water color, and printmaking.

With this labor of love concluded, Tom Palazzolo is interested in painting and completing forgotten projects from the past, mining old work that is still meaningful to him. In filmmaking, he admits he doesn't find learning all the new technology very interesting. At the same time, he notes the quality of modern filmmaking is improving. He appreciates the recent explosion of social documentaries, a genre he prefers over "artsy" works. When he was making his films, there were only about 10 other people doing the same kind of work in Chicago. He still finds people and places energizing but doesn't expect to be "in the thick of things," filming events on the street, as he did at the Democratic Convention of 1968.

When he shot Maxwell Street with his students, he had an inkling it might be a historic opportunity. There were rumors that Daley wanted to eliminate the market and make the city a showcase. He said it was the perfect venue to teach sound and lighting. He loved the "ruggedness" of it and the fact that it was the antithesis of Hollywood. "No one paid attention to the people at the lower end of society. People loved it when the students paid attention to them; they opened up, were sweet."