In 1913, when Junius Gaten was 13 years old, he left the South and moved to Chicago. He was part of a steady migration of African-Americans–more than 50,000 people–who came here around the time of World War I.
Now 97, Gaten easily recalls what it was like settling in Bronzeville, a section of the city’s South Side that for years was the center of African-American culture in Chicago.
“It was a pretty nice set-up,” says Gaten, who for 30 years delivered ice to the many nightclubs and restaurants that flourished in the neighborhood before World War II. “People had jobs and everyone was making money. We all did pretty good.”
The good times didn’t last, though. After its heyday in the 1920s and 1930s, Bronzeville deteriorated, suffering its share of blight, vacant lots and decaying houses. “When the jobs went away, the neighborhood got hurt,” says Gaten, a firsthand witness to the change.
But today, things are improving. Community organizers and developers are recapturing a bit of Bronzeville’s lost luster by renovating its neglected buildings and polishing its tarnished image.
A handful of commercial buildings in the area–roughly bounded by 31st and 39th Streets, Martin Luther King Drive and State Street–are being fixed. Eight old buildings, important to the heritage of the black community, are being considered for historic landmark designation by the Chicago City Council. The hope is that these efforts will lead to more investment in the neighborhood. That should help jump-start local business, community organizers say.
“We are building on the history of African-Americans, linking it to the industry of heritage tourism,” says Harold Lucas, executive director of the Black Metropolis Convention and Tourism Council. “That could be a catalyst for job creation.”
New housing development is gaining a foothold in the neighborhood, too. Residents are rehabbing their homes. Small developments of three and four townhomes are being built on vacant lots around the neighborhood. Most significantly, one developer is constructing 71 single-family homes on lots that had been empty, bleak reminders of the recent blighted past.
“People are moving back into the community,” says Pat Dowell-Cerasoli, executive director of the Mid-South Planning and Development Commission, a community group that has purchased and is now renovating one of the historic buildings in the neighborhood. “Abandoned buildings are being rehabbed and when you have more people, you have more spending.”
Seventy years ago, Bronzeville wasn’t called Bronzeville, but the “Black Belt,” according to long-time resident Gaten, who never left the neighborhood. By his recollection, some time before World War II, a few community leaders, local lawyers and doctors got together in Washington Park to give their neighborhood a name. They coined the term “Bronzeville.” Others familiar with the neighborhood claim an editor at the Chicago Bee, a black newspaper, invented the “Bronzeville” designation.
Whatever the name’s origin, Bronzeville was a thriving community where black-owned businesses prospered and people had jobs. Around World War I, Bronzeville was Chicago’s largest black neighborhood.
The so-called great northern migration brought thousands of African-Americans to Chicago, and a restrictive housing market meant most blacks were compelled to live together in the same neighborhood.
On the plus side, businesses flourished. The first African-American owned and operated insurance company, Supreme Life, was opened in the neighborhood. Doctors and lawyers occupied the professional space in the neighborhood’s commercial buildings. Anthony Overton, a prominent citizen, built a small cosmetics firm into an industry and went on to found a bank, an insurance company and the Chicago Bee.
Musicians such as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Scott Joplin and Nat King Cole called Bronzeville home. It was also the birthplace of ragtime and Chicago-style jazz.
“Bronzeville got to be a big thing,” says Gaten. “We would dress up and go to all the clubs. There were really good shows. We could walk the streets at night. People acted like they had some sense.”
Gaten says things were good until after World War II when the nearby stockyards started laying people off and local steel mills cut back the number of employees. “When the jobs went out, a lot of independent business left,” Gaten says.
By the 1950s, about one-third of the houses in Bronzeville became vacant. A more open housing market encouraged many people to move away. During urban renewal in the 1960s, land was cleared and tracts of public housing were created. The deterioration of the neighborhood was in full swing.
In 1993, the Mid-South Planning and Development Commission released its plan to reconstruct Bronzeville. Developers and community leaders spent three years assessing the community’s housing needs and how they might restore the vibrancy that was once part of the neighborhood.
The city eventually adopted the plan and Mayor Richard Daley created a blue-ribbon committee on Bronzeville to help spur development. The idea was to bring more resources, and money, to redevelop the area.
Recently, there has also been talk about creating a tax increment financing (TIF) district in Bronzeville. Though the details of a TIF district for Bronzeville have yet to be ironed out, tax money would be used to pay for improvements to streets and parks.
Residential building is key to the redevelopment of the neighborhood, community organizers say. They figure new houses and new families will have a positive ripple effect.
Efforts to attract developers are paying off.
This month, families started to move into a handful of tidy brick single-family homes being built in Bronzeville. “There is a market for these homes,” says Stephen R. Ballis, managing member of The Omnibus Group LLC, Chicago, which is building the homes along with the Ahkenaton Community Development Corp.
Called The Homes of Bronzeville, the development will eventually include 71 single-family houses priced between $182,000 and $216,400. “Since June, we’ve had 400 people look at our houses. A year ago there were none,” Ballis says. He adds that his company now plans to offer a new unit for about $160,000 because he believes there is a market for homes in that price range, too.
Gwenda Newsome Jones and her husband, Edwin, will move into one of the homes next August. The couple had contracted to build a house in south suburban Hazel Crest, but then had second thoughts. “The commute would have been too much,” says Gwenda Jones, who works in the Loop.
The couple attended some community meetings in Bronzeville and they liked the idea of helping to rebuild the black district there. “I’m skeptical about being a pioneer, but the area shows a lot of promise,” she says.
Other new houses are being built in the neighborhood.
Bronzeville Pointe is an 18-unit development of rowhouses and townhouse condominiums that should be ready next spring. Ten of the units have already been sold, according to Zeke Morris, sales agent at Bronzeville Pointe, a joint venture of Best American Builders Inc. and Urban Equities Inc., Chicago. Prices there range from $125,000 to $249,000.
Buyers, many of whom come from the resurgent “Gap” neighborhood just north of Bronzeville, say they like the relatively low housing prices in Bronzeville. They also feel safe knowing that the City of Chicago plans to build its new central police headquarters at 35th and State Streets, bringing a strong police presence to the neighborhood.
In addition to new construction, rehabbers are making a dent in the neighborhood. Couples are buying greystones in need of repair. In 1990, Paul Price and his wife, Robin, bought a three-story house on the 3500 block of King Drive. “My wife called me crazy,” says Paul Price, who renovated the house. He says other rehabbers have arrived in the area and he can see “a lot of positive changes.”
Commercial development in Bronzeville is moving forward, too.
For example, the Mid-South Planning and Development Commission has purchased the Overton-Hygienic Building at 35th Street and King Drive. Built in 1920, the structure was originally called the Negro Thrift building. It was used to support African-American business development in the neighborhood. “We are trying to restore the building in line with the original use,” says Dowell-Cerasoli of the Mid-South Planning Council.
To reach that goal, she says the building will have retail space on the first floor. Upper floors will have professional office space. Suites with some kind of subsidized rent also will be available for start-up companies.
The Alco Drugs Building at 35th and King Drive is now being renovated by Gappie Development Corp., a group of local merchants. The building will include retailers, such as a bakery, bank and convenience store. Plans call for a restaurant and jazz club, too. The first new shops are slated to open this fall, according to Gappie Development President Esther Barnett.
Community groups are also trying to make Bronzeville a tourist destination. For instance, the Black Metropolis Convention and Tourism Council has purchased the Supreme Life Insurance Building at 3501 S. King Drive. The building will eventually include an African-American tourism visitors center, a historic house museum and a teleconferencing center, according to organization executive director Lucas. He hopes to start construction next spring.
Also, the Chicago Public Schools has announced plans to purchase the shuttered 8th Regiment Armory at 3533 S. Giles Ave. to be converted into an ROTC academy for high school students. The building would include an African-American military museum honoring the 8th Army Regiment, which served in World War I.
The armory and Supreme Life buildings belong to a group of eight historic Bronzeville structures now being considered for landmark designation by the city. The owner of the former Chicago Defender building, however, is fighting to exclude his building from the designation. Planners hope the designation, scheduled for a committee vote later this month, will help add greater significance to the neighborhood. “New York’s Harlem has remained prominent in people’s minds, but Bronzeville has not,” says Charles Thurow, deputy commissioner at the city’s Department of Planning and Development. “This is a history that has disappeared and it is important to bring it back.”
Long-time resident Gaten thinks things have gotten better in the neighborhood. He hopes more people, and jobs, will return to Bronzeville. “Nothing is precious,” he says, “but what you make precious.”
