KEEPING ALIVE THE MEMORY OF MAXWELL STREET
Mural spotlights history of storied market and neighborhood
In the late 19th century and early 20th century, Maxwell Street was home to a bustling open-air market where you could find almost anything for sale and at a good price if you knew how to bargain.
Maxwell Street and the surrounding neighborhood was home, too, to many of the Jewish immigrants who operated those stalls and stores, often living in apartments above them.
From the 1940s on, it also was the center of a lively blues scene.
All of that faded over time as the Dan Ryan Expressway was built right through the fabled street, Mayor Richard J. Daley built the University of Illinois at Chicago and his son, Mayor Richard M. Daley, turned over what little remained by then of Maxwell Street to clout-heavy developers and further expansion for UIC.
You won’t find much in the faux Maxwell Street that’s there today to evoke the once-thriving marketplace.
But Nick Goettling says he aimed to keep the memory of Maxwell Street alive in the 82-foot-long and 12-foot-tall mural he painted on a retaining wall near 15th and Morgan streets in what’s known today as University Village.
It spotlights key moments in Maxwell Street’s history.
There’s a group of immigrants working on a railroad. Take a closer look, and you’ll see a train in the images of the workers and the faint outline of Chicago’s railroad system above.
“The mural itself is like a ‘Where’s Waldo?’ because there’s images within images in there,” says Nancy Plax, who’s lived in the neighborhood since 2007 and was involved in commissioning the mural.
Goettling says he wanted the mural’s impact to be felt whether people walk right by or live in an apartment building that overlooks it or even if they’re driving past.
“It was really important to have different scales of meaning and of detail,” says Goettling, 37. “When you’re up close, you can capture those little details.” Goettling says that by hiding little details within the larger images he hoped to make the mural feel fresh even to people who see it every day, giving them something different to notice each time.
That layering of imagery can be seen throughout the mural.
One section shows Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr, founders of nearby Hull House, the settlement house located on what’s now part of the UIC campus that, beginning in 1889, provided day care and other social services to the immigrants who poured into the area from Europe. Goettling gives a nod to the distances they had to travel by embedding the images of a suitcase and pair of train tickets in the figures of Addams and Starr.
The center of the mural features the Maxwell Street market, which drew people from all over and from a wide range of backgrounds, as buyers and sellers, everyone coming together in search of a bargain.
There’s also a scene of a man playing guitar as people dance across a backdrop of sheet music.
Next to that is a man with a chicken on his head — an homage to one of Maxwell Street’s famed characters.
“He was called ‘Chicken Man,’” says Plax, 70. “His name was Casey Jones, and he trained over 200 live chickens and performed with them and his accordion over the years in the market.”
University Village residents raised money and commissioned Goettling to do the mural at a cost of about $12,000, according to Plax. It took about six weeks to complete and was unveiled in late 2013.
The mural was among the first for Goettling, a Tacoma, Washington, native who says he has produced more than a dozen other works of public art around Chicago.
Plax says the aim was to bring Maxwell Street’s history alive and also to brighten the viaduct so people “can walk through and feel good and see some beautiful art.”
‘Murals & Mosaics’: Celebrating the beauty of our streets
This is part of an ongoing series on public art in the city and suburbs. Read related stories and view our interactive map at suntimes.com/murals-mosaics. More murals are being added every week.
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