By Patrick T. Reardon

May 21, 2000

Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine

http://www.chicagotribune.com/leisure/tribunemagazine/article/0%2C2669%2CSAV-0005210368%2CFF.html

Stephen Mitchell is sold on Bronzeville.

A Loop attorney originally from Atlanta, Mitchell lives in a spacious three-bedroom condominium that he bought for $166,500 last year in a newly renovated building at 4744 S. Prairie Ave. Accustomed to the cramped, overpriced apartments for sale in trendier neighborhoods, the 27-year-old Mitchell was amazed at how far his housing dollar stretched in Bronzeville.

"When I came in (to tour the Prairie Avenue unit), I thought I was done after seeing the first part," he recalls. "But there was another part, and then another part. For what you get here-2,200 square feet this would cost you half a million dollars on the North Side."

An African-American, Mitchell also is drawn to Bronzeville's rich heritage as a center of black culture: Louis Armstrong played here; Richard Wright wrote here. And he loves the turrets and other architectural flourishes of his century-old building, to say nothing of the vintage character of the neighborhood's many graystones and redstones, dating back to the 1800s.

But for much of its history, Bronzeville has been shunned. During the first half of the 20th Century, it was the Black Belt, the place where white Chicago forced virtually all of the city's African-Americans to live, isolated and quarantined. Then, after court decisions and legislative mandates opened up other neighborhoods and the suburbs to blacks, those families who could leave, did.

The exodus of wealthy, middle-class and even working-class African-Americans, together with the construction of thousands of high-rise public housing apartments, left Bronzeville a slum of deep and unrelenting poverty, one of the poorest communities in the nation. In 1990, its population was down to just a third of what it had been 40 years earlier. The median family income was half what it had been just two decades earlier. And its landscape was dominated by vacant lots, acres and acres of desolate urban prairie.

Mitchell believes that he and the other young professionals in his seven-unit building are part of an affluent vanguard who can help turn the neighborhood around. "By me taking a chance, by me moving over here, all of my friends are saying, `Hey, it's not so bad,' " he says, noting that two of his friends have followed his example and moved into the neighborhood. "Hopefully, that will catch on. I want people to know: You've got the Gold Coast. You've got the South Loop. Now you've got Bronzeville too."

For more than 150 years, Chicago neighborhoods have evolved along a predictable path. When newly developed, communities are fresh and full of promise. Then as homes age, storefronts sag and sidewalks crack, what was once elegant becomes threadbare. It's a process that, in the decades following World War II, was accelerated by the suburban boom and the rise of the automobile culture. Entire neighborhoods emptied out.

As the 20th Century drew to a close, however, another trend emerged: Some neighborhoods started to rebound. The once-fashionable became fashionable again, particularly those communities near the lake and the Loop. Lincoln Park led the way in the 1970s, followed by Lakeview, Uptown, the Near North Side, Wicker Park, the Near West Side and the South Loop.

A neighborhood would suddenly get hot. Old homes would receive face lifts, and deluxe housing would be built. Boutiques, coffee shops and restaurants would blossom along formerly sluggish commercial strips. And the curbs would be crowded with BMWs and SUVs.

Now, it seems, it's Bronzeville's turn. And it's not just new residents such as Mitchell who are saying so.

"Bronzeville will be a thriving middle-class neighborhood for the city," says Christopher Hill, the head of the city's planning and development department. "This is a community that, because of its incredible proximity to downtown, will be one of the places that people will want to live in. It's really the South (Side) equivalent of Lincoln Park. . . ."

Hill's boss, Mayor Richard M. Daley, has a similar vision for the neighborhood, and has bestowed the greatest compliment in his vocabulary on the area. Speaking about a new park to be constructed between two schools, he said, "When we build this park, (Bronzeville residents will) feel like they are in Naperville."

From Daley's perspective, a Chicago neighborhood that looks and feels like an upscale DuPage County suburb has no downside. To him, it's another sign that affluent and upwardly mobile people are choosing the city rather than the suburbs. It's a boost to the city's tax base. And, in place of the disorder and mess that the mayor abhors, it's clean and bright and unspoiled.

But 81-year-old Timuel Black and other community activists aren't convinced that wealthy suburbs or gentrifying neighborhoods provide the proper models for reviving Bronzeville.

It's not that they don't welcome Mitchell and the infusion of energy and money that young African-American professionals represent. And it's not that the activists are ungrateful to the city for its help in saving some of the surviving remnants of the Bronzeville that once was-the Chicago Bee building, for example, which is now a library, or the old 8th Regiment Armory, now a school.

But they worry that the Bronzeville coming into being will be only a shadow of its namesake, that what was once a vibrant, economically diverse, tightly knit community-a neighborhood of character and zest-will be reinvented as yet another bedroom community for the city's affluent with no room for the poor.

"Bronzeville will probably wind up, in the next 10 to 15 years, becoming a well-organized, sanitized, middle-class, predominantly black but racially mixed community with . . . Starbucks scattered through the community," Black says.

What makes the expected changes even harder for Black and other neighborhood leaders to accept is that, unlike Bucktown or Wrigleyville or other recently gentrified communities, Bronzeville is a place of historic importance to more than a million black Chicagoans and millions of other African-Americans around the nation. In its heyday, Bronzeville rivaled New York's Harlem as a center of black culture in the U.S. It was the home of jazz and blues, of African-American-owned insurance companies, department stores, banks and funeral homes-and of hundreds of thousands of people. Not for nothing was it also called the Black Metropolis.

Virtually all of that was erased from Bronzeville by the urban renewal of the past five decades. In its place, for the most part, are fields of vacant lots. "There's not enough there to give the aura of what was-physically, culturally and socially," Black says.

The use of the name Bronzeville for the soon-to-be-reinvented community is misleading, he argues. It gives a thin veneer of historical cachet to a neighborhood that, unless current trends change, will have little connection with its past.

"It is a mockery," Black says of the emerging Bronzeville. "It is a caricature."

The wrecking company began work on the Mecca on the last day of 1951 and finished the job three months later, turning the massive, four-story apartment building at 3338 S. State St., once the home of 1,500 people, into a sand-covered empty lot. It was, in many ways, a metaphor for Bronzeville.

Designed by Daniel ("Make no little plans") Burnham, the Mecca was built in 1891 as an elegant home for the well-to-do. It took up half the block and was, at the time, the largest apartment building in Chicago, boasting 176 luxurious apartments, two covered courtyards ringed by wrought-iron balconies, Italian tile floors, one of the first central heating units in the city and a unique central refrigeration system that sent cooled water to the pantries in each apartment.

And it fit the neighborhood. The South Side east of State Street between the Loop and Hyde Park, called Grand Boulevard-Douglas, had been an enclave of wealth since the Great Fire of 1871. But the Mecca was constructed at the tail end of the area's age of elegance. Fashions were changing, and the newly developing Gold Coast north of downtown was emerging as the place to be for the city's movers and shakers.

Within 20 years, a genteel shabbiness had settled on Grand Boulevard-Douglas, now populated by working-class Irish, Italians and blacks. Perhaps 20,000 African-Americans were clustered in a narrow three-block-wide strip along State Street, from 22nd Street to 55th Street, an area that would come to be known as the Black Belt. But even more blacks were scattered among the white immigrant families in nearby neighborhoods. That, however, was about to change.

There have been two Great Migrations of African-Americans from the South to Chicago, the first around World War I and the second during and after World War II. Both involved a search for good-paying jobs, and even more for a better life. "There were . . . better opportunities (in Chicago)," wrote poet-artist Margaret Burroughs in 1950, "and best of all, no lynchings."

But that didn't mean there was no prejudice or anti-black violence. Between 1910 and 1920, Chicago's African-American population increased by nearly 150 percent, and the reaction of whites was to isolate blacks in their own self-contained community. One method was to attack any African-American who moved into a white area, and, over a four-year period, the homes of 58 black families were bombed, an average of one every 25 days. This was also the period in which the infamous 1919 race riot occurred, sparked by the murder of a black teenager at a segregated beach at 29th Street. Twenty-three blacks and 15 whites were killed during 14 days of rioting, and more than 500 people were injured.

Another method of segregating African-Americans was the use of restrictive covenants under which homeowners in a neighborhood would agree not to rent or sell to a black. The result was that, by 1920, nearly all of Chicago's 109,000 African-Americans were concentrated in the Black Belt.

Over time, the Black Belt expanded, but never enough to relieve overcrowding-its population rose to nearly 800,000 by 1960-and the graceful old mansions were converted into rooming houses or subdivided into kitchenette apartments. The Mecca was no exception. Poet Gwendolyn Brooks, who wrote about life in the apartment building, quoted one resident: "There's 176 apartments and some of 'em's got seven rooms and they're all full."

The overcrowding was oppressive, but it also gave a bustle and vibrancy to neighborhood life. Because white Chicago made no distinction among blacks, virtually all African-Americans, no matter their economic status, were forced to live in the Black Belt. Doctors and lawyers lived next to barbers and ditch-diggers. And there was a constant inflow of money, as many residents worked in white areas but were prohibited from spending their paychecks there.

The Black Belt, also called simply the South Side, grew to be a city within a city, owned and controlled, especially at the beginning, by African-Americans. It had its own commercial center-initially, at 35th and State Streets, later along 47th Street-and its own churches, social clubs, illegal gambling (the policy wheel, a forerunner of today's state lottery), beauty salons, nightclubs and theaters.

Even its own taxi firm, called Your Cab Co.

That name gives a hint of something else that developed in the neighborhood-a sense of ownership. Although it was a community created by the prejudices of the outside white world, the Black Belt was the one place in Chicago where African-Americans could be themselves. It was their home, and, as such, they gave it a new name of their own: Bronzeville.

The new name was initially popularized by a newspaper stunt, dating from the 1930s, that came to have special meaning for Chicago's African-Americans: the annual election of an unofficial mayor of Bronzeville.

"The `Mayor,' usually a businessman, is inaugurated with a colorful ceremony and a ball," wrote sociologists St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton in "Black Metropolis," their 1945 study of Bronzeville. "Throughout his tenure he is expected to serve as a symbol of the community's aspirations. He visits churches, files protests with the mayor of the city, and acts as official greeter of visitors to Bronzeville."

The election attracted tens of thousands of voters each year, a measure of the strength of community ties in Chicago's Bronzeville. So it was no coincidence that, when the tradition sputtered in the 1950s and finally faded away in the early 1960s, those were the same years that Bronzeville itself was disintegrating physically and socially.

A key element in that disintegration was the demolition of thousands of homes and apartments to make way for the wall of high-rise public housing-dozens of buildings-along the west side of State Street. Another was an urban renewal program initiated by two neighborhood institutions, Michael Reese Hospital and the Illinois Institute of Technology, in the northern portion of the neighborhood.

Great swaths of land were cleared in northeast Bronzeville to make way for new high-rise communities, such as Lake Meadows, which catered to middle-class individuals and families, most of whom were white or Asian. In the northwest corner, tenements were leveled to permit a campus expansion by IIT, which also served mainly whites.

The Mecca, first targeted by IIT in March 1943, was one of those tenements, and its 1,500 people had to find new homes.

One of the places the homeless could go for help in those days was the Wabash Avenue YMCA, a vital Bronzeville institution until it was shuttered more than two decades ago. Now, after a four-year, $9 million restoration project, the five-story structure at 3763 S. Wabash Ave. plans to reopen in June.

As before, the renovated "Y" will provide shelter and counseling for homeless people trying to pull their lives together, says Patricia Abrams, executive director of the Wabash Y Renaissance Corp. In the planning stages, Abrams says, is a second facility of 48 to 60 apartments for low-income people who have stable jobs.

Yet such facilities are far from enough, Abrams says, to serve the homeless and low-income residents in the neighborhood, to say nothing of the tens of thousands of poor in the soon-to-be-demolished CHA high-rises along State Street.

"Looking at what is happening in this neighborhood," she says, "most of the land is being developed for people who have incomes above $60,000. But the people who live here now-their incomes are $15,000 or $20,000 a year. Without there being some land held for people who live here now, this community will change so drastically that they will no longer live here."

Hill, the planning and development department chief, argues that the city is doing its share in Bronzeville and elsewhere to promote mixed-income housing.

"The low-to-moderate-income housing is just as important to Bronzeville as anyplace else in the city," Hill says. "Any projects that receive city funding need to have a significant affordable-housing component."

But that's a "requirement" that isn't always required.

Consider the news conference that Ald. Dorothy Tillman (3rd) held Feb. 25 to announce plans for an African-American Showcase of Homes for which 10 black developers, given vacant city lots for $1 each, will build model single-family homes in Bronzeville in the $150,000 to $200,000 range.

Several of those at the news conference, including community activists and even John Markowski, the head of Daley's housing department, were surprised that the project will include no affordable housing. Markowski said a city-owned lot that's given to a developer generally must be used for affordable housing. The requirement apparently had been waived, he said, by Hill's planning and development department.

Even if the project had included some "affordable" housing, that would have been no guarantee it would have been affordable--at least for the low-income residents who need it the most.

Under federal guidelines, there are two elements to affordability. One is that, in general, a household shouldn't have to pay more than 30 percent of its income for housing. The other is that affordable-housing programs should be aimed at households with incomes that are 80 percent or less of the metropolitan region's median family income-in other words, households with low or moderate incomes.

The problem is that the median family income for Chicago's metropolitan area is skewed by affluent suburban counties. Thus, the upper income limit of eligibility for a family of four last year was $47,800. That was 80 percent of the median family income for the metropolitan area, but it was actually right at the middle-income point for Chicago.

What that means is that solidly middle-class families are eligible for city affordable-housing programs, and, because they're much more attractive to developers than the poor are, more housing tends to be built for them. Based on federal guidelines, the rent for an "affordable housing" apartment for a family of four with a $47,800 income can be as high as $1,195 a month.

Gerri Oliver also worries about her chances of staying in Bronzeville. Since 1956, Oliver has operated Gerri's Palm Tavern, a blues club at 446 E. 47th St. with an international reputation.

Over the decades, this was an unofficial clubhouse--the place to stop and rest and recharge psychic batteries-for generations of African-American musicians, including Duke Ellington, James Brown, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Quincy Jones and Muddy Waters. Tribune critic Howard Reich once wrote, "It would be difficult to overestimate the room's role in nurturing black musical culture in Chicago and beyond. This was the place where ideas were exchanged, tunes discussed and collaborations conceived."

The club has a second claim to fame: It was founded by James E. "Genial Jim" Knight, a policy king who, in 1934, was elected the first Mayor of Bronzeville.

In February, Mayor Daley issued a proclamation honoring the 80-year-old Oliver and calling her "a cultural icon." Yet, rumors abound that the club is going to be closed-ironically, to make way for the redevelopment of 47th Street as a blues district, the brainchild of Ald. Tillman.

Asked about the rumors, planning director Hill is less than reassuring, saying only, "We don't have any current plans with that building right now." Even so, the city is in court, seeking ownership of the structure that contains the club.

Tillman sidesteps all questions about whether Oliver will be permitted to keep her club open once the city obtains the building. "We've got to clean that place up," she says. "Of course, we're going to place jazz in that club one way or the other." As for Oliver, Tillman has nothing to say.

Oliver says, "No one has come in and said, `Gerri, what do you think of this?' No one has invited me into the inner circle.' "

Community activists began working in the early 1980s to come up with ideas of how to redevelop Bronzeville and shape it as a tourist attraction by highlighting its history. In 1994, after extensive community meetings, a coalition of community groups, the Mid-South Planning and Development Commission, issued a detailed plan-which city officials have all but ignored.

The city has said very little about its own plans for Bronzeville. Tillman's proposals for the area, which include an "African Village" and an "African Bazaar," as well as the blues district, have been light on details.

Timuel Black, having lived so long and seen so much, is often called upon to lead groups around Bronzeville, recalling its past glories.

"When I take people on a tour," he says, "I have to point at some vacant land to talk about the Regal or the Savoy or the Metropolitan, the Binga Arcade, the Vendome, the Pythian Temple. All that's gone. You have to point to a site: `I used to live on the second floor of that vacant lot.' The imagination can only stretch so far to help the tourists understand the richness. I can't walk up the steps of a building that isn't there. When I look at the restoration (of Bronzeville) that's taking place, so much of the physical history's been demolished."

As the neighborhood's many remaining graystones and redstones are renovated and returned to something like their original elegance, they won't hark back to the overcrowded days of the Black Belt, but to the earlier time when this community was one of wealth and privilege.

And elegance is going to be the characteristic, as well, of most of the new housing to be built.

"As the changes take place," Black says, "the image (of what Bronzeville once looked like) will be very difficult to evoke, simply because so much of it has been wiped out. And so, when you want to learn about the history of Bronzeville, you're going to have to go to books and read about it."