Some look at a boarded-up building and see tragedy. Others see opportunity. All around Grand Boulevard, the perspective is certainly optimistic.
The boundaries of Grand Boulevard are Pershing Road on the north, 51st Street on the south, Cottage Grove Avenue on the east and the Metra tracks near the Dan Ryan Expressway on the west.
This is a part of the city endowed with a magnificent collection of buildings, both residential and commercial. It`s a neighborhood that has seen the best that good times had to offer and the worst that poverty, racial segregation and neglect can produce.
In the early 1900s, some of Chicago`s most influential families lived here. Remarkable mansions and churches were designed by names such as Willcox and Miller, Adler & Sullivan, W.W. Boyington and Burnham & Root. The centerpiece of the community was an eight-lane street divided by two medians: Grand Boulevard, since renamed Martin Luther King Drive.
Today, the Boulevard still offers a picturesque drive and provides easy access to the Loop. Along with excellent bus and train connections, the community has some excellent amenities for home buyers and businesses.
”Grand Boulevard is a patchwork,” says Cornelius Goodwin, a broker with Gremco Realty. ”There is a wide selection in the types of property available and in price. You`ll find pockets of rehab going on but there is no real continuity to it.”
Property currently on the market ranges from abandoned buildings listing for under $20,000 to a fully remodeled, 4,000-square-foot single-family home for $170,000. Rents vary considerably. In remodeled buildings, however, one-bedrooms can be found for under $400 a month and three-bedroom units run between $600 and $650.
Center for black history
By 1930, more than 60 percent of Chicago blacks lived in Grand Boulevard, creating a community with its own downtown, parks, theaters and shop-ping districts.
The Regal Theatre was in full swing at 47th Street and what is now King Drive, drawing performers such as Duke Ellington, Lena Horne and Nat King Cole. And the Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments was home to hundreds of middle-class black families.
The Regal was demolished in 1973 but the apartment building is now on the National Register of Historic places.
The fate of these two venerable buildings represents the contrast that exists in Grand Boulevard today. Empty lots and the facades of historic structures provide the framework for rejuvenation.
One old elegant but fire-ravaged single-family home recently sold for just $5,000. ”The building was slated for demolition. It was just a shell, but we found a buyer and they are doing a full renovation,” explains Barbara Johnson, vice president of Albert H. Johnson Realty.
Grand Boulevard is often identified with the high-rise public housing projects that line State Street. The Robert Taylor homes and Stateway Gardens together offer 5,996 units and house more than one third of the neighborhood`s total population. These buildings, bordered by the Dan Ryan on the west and a six-lane street on the east, are somewhat detached from the surrounding neighborhood.
Ironically, Grand Boulevard also features the first federal housing project and a model for what public housing could have been. The Ida B. Wells Housing Project, built in 1941, is an attractive low-rise development with a human scale.
When the government opted for high-rise projects in the 1950s, Grand Boulevard started a slow decline. Blacks who could afford to, began moving out, leaving the area without a strong economic base. From 1970 to 1990, the population of the community fell from just over 80,000 to just under 36,000.
Throughout Grand Boulevard there are prominent reminders of the community heroes past and the present. A statue of George Washington and the Victory monument, which commemorates a black army infantry unit that fought in World War I, stand along King Drive. On 35th Street is the monument and tomb of Steven A. Douglas. New heroes are etched in street signs: Muddy Waters Drive. Rev. George H. Clements Boulevard. Sammy Davis Jr. Drive. Rev. Joseph Wells Drive. Wells is pastor of the Mt. Pisgah Missionary Baptist Church, a majestic edifice along King Drive.
Beginnings of rehab
Today, throughout Grand Boulevard impressive developments and renovation projects are signs of progress. The Paul C. Stewart Center is a large, multi- use complex that includes 707 apartments for seniors, 90 apartments for families, and commercial offices. The Indiana Avenue Pentecostal Church of God is an impressive new building at 35th Street and Indiana.
Just to the north of Grand Boulevard is the 2,000-unit Lake Meadow Apartment complex. Nearby, at 35th and King Drive, is a large shopping center that includes a Jewel Food Store and a Goldblatt`s Department Store.
Along Vincennes Avenue from 43rd to 47th Street is an excellent example of block renovation in progress. And at the end of that strip is a boarded-up building with a modest sign hung across the doorway: ”Future home of the Black Economic Network`s Institute for Economic Change creating jobs for the community.” A sure sign of optimism.
