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 first appeared on a map in 1847.
From 1880 to 1920, the area was a neighborhood of poor Eastern European Jews, a legacy that lingered as late as 1982 when Tom Palazzolo made his documentary. One black clerk in a store refers to the area as "Jew Town."
His Jewish boss, looking on, tells the filmmaker that at that time there were only 10 Jewish merchants left in the area and that he expected the area would soon be Korean.
But from all the photographic and film records of Maxwell Street, it is clear that the market was diverse, "a thriving marketplace with a vibrant and lively street culture" and as one historian has written, "the only color that mattered was green."
The Maxwell Street Market became official in 1912. It provided immigrants with an outlet for their entrepreneurial skills, a livelihood, a social network and a sense of community, as well as the goods and services needed for everyday living.
It ran until 1994. As buildings were gradually condemned, services and improvements were withheld. The decline to justify redevelopment of the area was assured.
After a stint on Canal Street, the Maxwell Street Market moved to Desplaines Street between Harrison and Roosevelt, and it is there you will find it today with space for more than 500 vendors every Sunday of the year, weather permitting.
Remembering Maxwell Street
New book includes DVD documentary of historic market
By CHRISTINE VERNON Contributing Reporter -- Chicago Journal
Tom Palazzolo's new book At Maxwell Street (cloth, $45, ISBN 978-0-9789676-1-1, Wicker Park Press) is described by his wife, Marcia, a contributor to the book, as a "memoir of place."
Over the years, Tom Palazzolo has filmed what has become, by the passage of time, historic and archival footage of the city of Chicago from as far back as 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, and arrived in Chicago in 1960 enthusiastic to see that many landmarks still remained.
Included among the 50 or so films he has made is footage of Riverview, Clark Street, and the 1968 Democratic convention. But Palazzolo always had a particular love of and appreciation for Maxwell Street and its eponymous, now gone, market.
His book serves as a historic record about the phenomenon that was Maxwell Street. Along with the oral histories in the book, there is a DVD made with students from the School of the Art Institute in 1982. The book includes many still shots, images of the people, places and things where the market was in three layers-storefronts, tables on the street and small huts.
To see Maxwell Street through the eyes and lens of Tom Palazzolo with the help of photos and stories of his students, friends and wife, is to be transported back to a place that engages all the senses: images of the people, including merchants, shoppers and street performers, the products, and outsider art on a massive scale; the sounds of jazz and blues; the smells of street food, of Polish sausage sandwiches (of particular interest to Tom); and the feel of the market and the goods being sold by vendors, hawkers and pullers who drew people into the stores.
The documentary accompanying the book opens with Casey Jones, Chicken Man (aqua Chicken Charlie), a one-man band who was seen around Chicago and often at Maxwell Street, with his accordion and trained chicken.
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, Palazzolo found the people he filmed more open and interested in talking to him. When asked if Maxwell Street should have been saved, Palazzolo responds, "Absolutely, it is an antidote to the slickness the city is becoming."
Palazzolo book combines his love of the sociology, culture and aesthetics. "Chicago soul" he calls it, "a distinctly American phenomenon."
At a public reception for Palazzolo's new book the week before Christmas, each person in the audience seemed to have a personal story to tell about their experiences at Maxwell Street.
William Cowhey, a West Sider, former real estate professional with Arthur Rubloff & Co. and former head of the Civic Federation of Chicago, remembers that at one time, the rents on Halsted Street were more than the rents per square foot on State Street.
Cowhey recalled that Maxwell Street was always the place to go on Sundays when the other stores were closed and how much fun it was to go there as a teen. He said the heyday of Maxwell was in the 1930s and late 1940s.
Kathy Coleman English spoke of her great grandfather Katzen, a rabbi, who came to Maxwell Street from Georgia in Russia.
Palazzolo says he started out documenting Maxwell Street for a class at the School of the Art Institute. He would fill an assignment at the last minute by rushing to Maxwell Street on a Sunday and getting his prints ready for Monday class. Soon he found out that he loved the images.
Gradually, 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 great investment for the woman who became his wife, collaborator and mother of his three children.
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