Dear Carol Shull,
I am writing to urge you to accept the nomination of the Maxwell Street
area to the National Register of Historic Places. In doing so, you
will not only have helped to save a crucial place in American history,
but you will also have made a strong stand against those who would flagrantly
demolish places of historic import. I write to you from the vantage
point of a professor of
American history at Yale University, the former director of the Heritage
Preservation Program at Georgia State University in Atlanta, and a frequent
writer about American public history and historic preservation.
I will leave it to others to establish the many ways that Maxwell Street meets and exceeds the requirement of "significance" to gain admission to the National Register. Suffice it to say here that it is self-evident to virtually everyone who knows about Maxwell Street that it is supremely significant to American immigration history, to the history of the Blues, to the history of American Jews, Blacks, and Mexican-Americans, and to the history of Chicago. Even the most ardent critics of putting Maxwell Street district on the National Register - especially the University of Illinois-Chicago - agree that the area is significant. Indeed, the university advertises the history of Maxwell Street as one of the attractions of its planned developments in the area.
The National Register is widely viewed as the list of those physical places where American history can be seen and recalled. But I think you and I could agree that while great strides have been made in recent years to broaden the scope of the Register - to include those Americans whose places and histories have been left out - it remains dominated by the physical buildings and landscapes of the wealthy and the white.
One of the primary reasons that the National Register remains predominantly
a list of buildings and landscapes of the elite is because of the requirement
of "integrity" and the way it is abused by those who care little for the
past. "Integrity" is not a neutral term, but one that has class
and racial biases built into it. It is the wealthy, and white, who over
the passing of time are able to maintain the structural and aesthetic integrity
of their homes and institutions. Minorities and the poor have had neither
the money, nor necessarily the need or desire, to preserve buildings as
they existed at a particular moment. When buildings must meet a high
standard of "integrity," and when neighborhoods must have a majority of
"contributing" buildings, it is no wonder that the Register includes so
few buildings and landscapes of the poor, whose homes and places of business
were more likely to become run down and transformed. Maxwell Street has
always been, since its founding in the middle of the 19th century, a
working-class immigrant neighborhood. The market to which it gave its
name is by nature a changing place, based upon shifting buyers and sellers,
the rise and fall of the economy, the migration of artists and musicians,
the movement out of one ethnic group and the influx of another. To ask
for some standard notion of "integrity" to the buildings, is to doom this
central place in the development of American popular culture to oblivion.
Furthermore, those who would undermine historic preservation know full well about the rules of "integrity." The University of Illinois very recently tore down a Civil War-era building on Maxwell Street (and because of the Great Fire of 1871 there are, as you know, few buildings from that era) in part to undermine the efforts of the Coalition. To be very frank, if you deny the application of the Maxwell Street area based upon the argument made by the destroyers - that the neighborhood no longer has enough "contributing" buildings from that period - you put your important stamp of approval on their actions. You will be rewarding those who demolish historic places. This is, of course, in direct opposition to your purpose as Keeper of the National Register.
There are some at the University of Illinois who argue that history
does not need to be represented in buildings and landscapes. History can
happily reside in books and some photographs, they say. The National
Register, and the millions who protect buildings in their communities,
and the millions more who visit landmarked buildings and historic sties
around the country,
are living evidence that this belief is simply false. Our past, and
our collective memories of the past reside not only in books but also in
physical places. Landscape and memory are codependent concepts; memories
are literally impossible without physical landscapes to store and serve
as touchstones for the work of recollection. Over half a century ago, the
sociologist Maurice Halbwachs, asked a very simple question: "How can spatial
memories find their place where everything is changed, where there
are no more vestiges or landmarks?" Halbwachs forced us to reckon
with the intimate connections between collective memories and the physical
landscape.
To lose the "spatial memories" of Maxwell Street would be a tragedy, for it is on Maxwell Street, now and throughout its history, that we can write a more racially and ethnically and culturally inclusive history of the United States.
The Mexican author Carlos Fuentes has written that "people and their
cultures perish in isolation, but they are born or reborn in contact with
other men and women." In an era where identities are the subject
of intense and often violent struggle, we must be able to turn for instruction
to the history of places where races and classes and ethnic groups interacted
peaceably and productively. If there is hope for the renewal
of public life in modern America, it will require the celebration and protection
of
places like Maxwell Street.
Sincerely,
Professor Max Page
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Go to the Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition home page.