Chicago, Monday, September 25, 2000
Recently, some friends of Maxwell Street who have written to Mayor Daley and President Stukel shared with us the replies they received. It is interesting to see what UIC and the City are telling people. Even more revealing is what they aren't saying.
First, neither of the return letters come from the person to whom they were addressed. Letters to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley are answered by his Commissioner for Planning and Development, Chris Hill. Letters to University of Illinois President James Stukel are answered by Stanton Delaney, Vice Chancellor for Administration and Executive Director of South Campus Development. (Click on their names to read their letters in their entirety.)
The most disingenuous part of both letters is the way they deal with the issue of preservation. The City's letter says:
"The University and the City considered many options in the process of developing this plan. While the option of preservation of the buildings on Maxwell Street was explored, the buildings were subsequently denied landmark status by the national and state Historic Preservation Councils. Most recently, the request for landmark designation was denied by the National Register of Historic Places."This wording makes it sound like the City wanted to preserve more buildings but they were prevented from doing so by the failure of the landmark status application. What they are trying to obscure is the fact that the City and UIC vigorously opposed landmark and other historic status designations and did everything in their power to prevent them from being granted. They also ignore the fact that the Illinois Historic Sites Advisory Committee, the body that advises the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, supported our National Register Application. So did the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois. Virtually every expert and authority not in the pocket of the City or UIC has sided with us.
UIC handles it this way:
"In 1994, the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency (IHPA) determined that the area lacked the integrity to achieve designation as a national historic landmark. The Keeper of the National Register of Historic Places, U.S. Department of the Interior, concluded that 'due to an irretrievable loss of historic integrity, the Maxwell Street Market Historic District does not meet the National Register Criteria for Evaluation and thus is not eligible for listing in the National Register.'"What they don't tell you is how UIC deliberately and cynically tore down buildings as fast as it could while the State Historic Preservation Officer, William Wheeler, accommodatingly sat on the National Register nomination for five months. When UIC finished creating the necessary "irretrievable loss of historic integrity" he sent the nomination, with his negative opinion, to Washington. In other words, UIC and the City of Chicago actively created the very situation they seem to bemoan in these letters.
Fellow citizens, we are being ill-served by the supposed official protectors of our historic birthright at the city, state and national levels, who too often are more concerned with protecting developers and other politically powerful interests from "building huggers." Rich people get tax breaks and status strokes by having their estates declared "landmarks," but ordinary people who want to preserve their legacy get a couple of phony facades and a lot of chin music.
This is much bigger than just Maxwell Street, "21st century urban renewal" is striking big cities everywhere, and it is just as hideous and destructive to culture and community as was the 1950s-60s variety. (See "Death of a Neighborhood" by Ron Gurwitt in the September/October 2000 issue of Mother Jones Magazine.)
Read the letter from Commissioner of Planning and Development Chris Hill.
Read the letter from UIC Vice Chancellor
for Administration Stanton Delaney.
Return to the Maxwell St. News Update page.
Return to the Maxwell St. page.
Return to Chuck Cowdery's home page.
Go to the Steve Balkin's Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition page.
Contact Us
TO REACH US VIA EMAIL:
info@maxwellstreet.orgTO REACH US VIA THE USPS:
Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition
P.O. Box 6435
Evanston, IL 60204