Home / Cities / Chicago

Maxwell Street Market

The area around Maxwell Street and Halstead became a destination for immigrants in the late 19th century and those immigrants formed a thriving peddler's market. The Maxwell Street Market was officially recognized by the City Council in 1912, and in the 1920s the area became a destination for African-Americans migrating from the South. The area became known as the birthplace of the electrified blues style called Chicago Blues. In the early 1990s, Hispanics became the next immigrant wave to wash over Maxwell Street. When the University of Illinois gentrified the area, the market was moved to Canal Street in 1994 and moved again to Des Plaines Avenue in 2008, which is where I visited it in the Fall of 2011.

Reference: Molz, Jennie Germann and Sarah Gibson. 2007. Mobilizing hospitality: the ethics of social relations in a mobile world. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. http://books.google.com/books?id=j988ec6lt1oC

Next: Museum of Surgical Science