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At this point, I think my blog is more or less based around this campus, whether it's discussing how SSB used to be a shopping mall or the massive concrete walkways that crisscrossed campus for 30 years. Once I have something else to write about, I'll probably write about that, but I can't really think of any ideas tonight, save for one.
I showed a friend of mine "The Blues Brothers" recently, particularly the unrated version, which restores about 14 minutes of previously lost footage to the iconic Aykroyd-Belushi buddy comedy/musical/action movie. These 14 minutes pad several of the film's iconic musical scenes, including the prolific Delta Blues artist John Lee Hooker's "Boom Boom" sequence, which you can watch here.
During this clip, you might notice many signs mentioning Maxwell Street, which, for those of you who often frequent the University Village area, might be a name you recognize. Well, it turns out this clip, in its entirety, was filmed in what would become the University Village area only about 15-18 years after "The Blues Brothers." In fact, John Lee Hooker is playing his iconic scene directly in front of the future site of Marie Robinson Hall.
In 2024, there's not much to indicate that Maxwell Street was the site of this film, let alone any other part of this neighborhood's vast history save for a handful of plaques and statues, as well as the dutiful preservation of Jim's Original (Funny enough, the grill at Jim's is featured for a brief moment in this same sequence of "Blues Brothers," pictured below). Despite these monuments, many students who live and work in this area don't get to glean a lot of history from them.
First off, Maxwell Street has been a neighborhood for literal centuries, with the first settling of the area conducted in the 1840s and 50s by (as with most West side neighborhoods) Irish immigrants, come to help construct the Chicago Drainage Canal. In the 1880s, this shifted to immigration from Eastern Europe, and a thriving Jewish community would arise. Around the turn of the century, they would welcome a flourishing African-American community, who would call Maxwell Street home as well, creating one of America's first melting pot neighborhoods.
Out of this cultural exchange would come the Maxwell Street Market, a 24/7 open-air market known for selling every odd and end someone could need. The market would come to be incredibly influential in the neighborhood's significance, being the birthplace of the iconic Maxwell Street Polish, along with providing up-and-coming blues and gospel artists with a place to demonstrate their craft and spread their music to the masses.
Unfortunately, the West Side of Chicago was ravaged by urban renewal and freeway construction in the mid-late 20th century, and Maxwell Street was not spared this fate. The construction of the Dan Ryan expressway in the 1960s stabbed the market through its heart, and the construction of University Village in the late 1990s was but a finishing blow to an affair already declining in vendors. Long-standing businesses stood vacant, and UIC took the opportunity to shape Maxwell Street into its own image, building dorms, classrooms, and new restaurant spaces over the old.
As they say, though, it takes more than that to kill a bull moose. Maxwell Street Market remains, although it's less of a 24/7 shop-a-thon and more of a family-oriented swap meet that meets for a handful of weekends in the summer and fall.
All in all, they should definitely put a plaque or something of that variety at MRH to commemorate that scene; it's pretty messed up that they can have a mural of Elon Musk in the Science & Engineering Labs but do nothing for John Lee Hooker (who, in my personal opinion, is a much better role model), who actually came to campus. Maybe I'll start a petition?
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