Krystin Grenon smiles out from behind the cluttered counter of her antique/curiosity/resale/junk shop on Newberry near 15th Street, at the southern tip of the Maxwell Street Market, and offers a visitor a cup of coffee. The sign out front says she’s got the “best coffee at the market–free with your purchase or 50 cents,” but this morning the coffee is cold; the machine is on the blink.
Once Grenon had proved her mettle (“There’s not very many white women selling down there–there were bets on the street whether I would last!”), she discovered that the market was more than a means of acquiring extra income. It was a social event, a once-a-week community, vibrant and close-knit. “I loved being down there on the street. I loved watching the people walk by and smiling and saying hi, and talking to them and realizing that there were people that came back every week! All my conceptions of Maxwell Street were shattered.”
Writer Ira Berkow interviewed the sons and daughters of many of these immigrants in his 1977 book Maxwell Street: Survival in a Bazaar, the definitive work on the community and the source of much of the history recounted here. They remembered the mixture of relief and trepidation that their parents had felt upon arriving. Chicago was big, loud, and dirty; public officials were uncaring at best and corrupt at worst, and nobody had money or resources. But here at least was freedom from persecution and the hope of betterment, and on Maxwell were the sights and sounds of home.
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By the 1950s, few Jews lived in Maxwell Street. Meanwhile, black immigrants from the south had been settling in the area since at least the 30s. As in similar neighborhoods in other U.S. cities, a complex pattern of racial distrust, real estate profiteering, and redlining brought Maxwell Street the tag of “Jewtown”–a slum community in which blacks lived, worked, and shopped but whose homes and businesses were owned mostly by Jewish landlords.
The worldwide fascination with Chicago blues in the 60s drew a generation of young pilgrims to the market. They knew that some of Chicago’s greatest bluesmen had played there; they knew that the first Chicago recordings of harmonica master Little Walter and guitarist Jimmy Rogers, among others, were made on the Ora Nelle label in 1947 at Bernard Abrams’s Maxwell Radio Record Company, 831 W. Maxwell. They knew they could hope to find living legends like Big Walter Horton, who performed in the market, off and on, until the summer before his death in late 1981. Still vibrant, more shrouded than ever in myth and legend, assimilating all cultures and generations, the market seemed vital enough to last forever. The market carried on even though the housing stock around it was old and dilapidated and steadily fell to bulldozers. Now blacks were moving out, when they could. Now no one ever moved in.
Price is a successful Chicago small businessman of diverse talents and interests, but he retains a good measure of the combative braggadocio that’s served him well on the street. His activities past and present include dog breeding (“My wife and I are the number-one breeders of any breed of dogs in the history of the world”); book publishing (his Will Judy Publishing Company is “the biggest dog book publishing company in the country”); and owning Heritage Jewelry at 114 W. Grand (“the finest collection of heritage jewelry and costume jewelry in the country!”). And he’s on 14th Street just west of Peoria selling jewelry every Sunday.
