{"id":7817,"date":"2016-06-02T19:03:11","date_gmt":"2016-06-03T00:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maxwellhalsted.publish.uic.edu\/?page_id=7817"},"modified":"2018-02-19T10:13:28","modified_gmt":"2018-02-19T16:13:28","slug":"russian-hebrew-americans-maxwell-street","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/maxwellhalsted.uic.edu\/home\/alien-colonies\/russian-hebrew-americans-maxwell-street\/","title":{"rendered":"RUSSIAN HEBREWS: MAXWELL STREET"},"content":{"rendered":"

Named for a physician, Philip Maxwell, who settled and died in Chicago in 1859, the Maxwell Street area was among the oldest in Chicago. Located on the eastern side at the south branch of the Chicago River with a few industrial buildings, the street moved westward with increasing residential density around Jefferson Street, where outdoor marketing first appeared. In the 1850s the area became a port of entry for immigrants, initially Irish and German, living both in small wood cottages begrimed in soot and in two to three story clapboard buildings falling to pieces, on streets that were quagmires of black mud, rotten planks, and miserable lighting.<\/p>\n

In the 1870 and 1880 period, \u00a0Russian Jewish immigrants began to replace the Irish. As the most densely populated neighborhood in Chicago, an area known as the Maxwell Street District now extended from 16th Street on the south and Polk Street on the north and the Chicago River and Halsted Street on the east and west. The focal point was the intersection of Halsted and 13th Street named Maxwell. Storefronts and a trolley line fronted on 13th Street. \u00a0Pushcarts now spilled from the north-south Jefferson onto the wider and less congested east-west Maxwell. \u00a0Vendors began to prosper.<\/p>\n

In 1891, The Chicago Daily Tribune<\/em> described the distinctive appearance of the Maxwell Street District: \u201cOne can walk the streets for blocks and see none but Semitic features and hear nothing but the Hebrew patois of Russian Poland [Yiddish]. In this restricted boundary, in narrow streets, ill-ventilated tenements and rickety cottages …. every Jew in this quarter who can speak a word of English is engaged in business of some sort … everyone is looking for a bargain, and everyone has something to sell … The principal streets in the quarter are lined with stores of every description …. In a room of a small cottage forty small boys all with hats on sit crowded into a space 10 x 10 feet in size, presided over by a stout middle-aged man with a long, curling, matted beard, who also retains his hat, a battered rusty derby of ancient style. All the old or middle-aged men in the quarter affect this peculiar head gear.\u201d<\/p>\n

An estimated 50,000 people lived in the compressed area in 1910. Three story brick tenements were built in the early 1900s, with stores on the ground floors, and storage of merchandise on floors above. Upper floors in the tenements were often converted to garment manufacturing or sweatshops. \u00a0Rear structures were added to many buildings to accommodate expanding businesses.<\/p>\n

From morning to evening shoppers filled the streets in a bazaar of store-front shops, push carts, fruits and vegetable stands, used-clothing stalls, kosher meat and poultry shops, bakeries, dry goods merchants, vendors of kitchen-wares and notions, shuls (synagogues), tailor-seamstress and shoe repair shops, pawnshops, cheders (schools), mohels (circumcisers), shadchans (marriage brokers), doctor and lawyer offices. The consumption\u00a0along Halsted Street was more upscale. Literally \u201cpullers\u201d cajoled, shoved, and pushed bargain hunters into the department stores.<\/p>\n

In a narrow urban space, Maxwell Street matured into a full-service economy. In dollar terms, it became\u00a0the third largest grossing business district in Chicago. Enduring discrimination against their quaint appearance and alien tongue outside the West Side district, Maxwell Street area residents\u00a0had no good reason to leave the ghetto and spend their money elsewhere\u00a0with all their needs and desires for provisions, goods, and services immediately at hand.\u00a0 \u00a0bjb<\/p>\n