The tank, an ominous-looking thing, sits under the Skyway and near railroad tracks only a few paces from the Indiana line.
Much of the massive 10th Ward borders Indiana, and it is among the city’s most historically important and interesting areas, a proud and hard-working and altogether independent-minded place, almost a city within the city.
It was a “city” defined by steel, from the day the Joseph H. Brown Iron and Steel Co. opened on the east bank of the Calumet River near 109th Street in 1875 until the closing of the U.S. Steel South Works in 1992. About 60,000 jobs were lost when steel and other industries moved or closed, and that doesn’t do a neighborhood any good.
There is a haggard look to much of the 10th Ward and its future is on hold, awaiting tricky and big-money decisions about how best to develop its vast tracts of empty land, some of it on the shores of Lake Michigan.
Few people not from the neighborhood ever drive through it. It’s easy to avoid, to ignore. But it is a fascinating place with many compelling sights.
The tank is part of a small triangular park called the East Side Memorial formed by the intersection of Indianapolis Boulevard and Ewing Avenue at 100th Street. An American flag whips in the wind above it.
Installed in 1979, the park is a manifestation of the area’s patriotism, a symbol of that era an ever-decreasing number of people can remember, when the area’s steel plants turned out armaments, including tanks, during World War II.
A nearby mural is faded and chipped, and the memorial park is littered with such items as a doll’s head, a crumpled beer can and a rusty butcher knife.
One hears the constant rush of cars on the Skyway. It was built in 1958 to connect the Indiana Toll Road to Chicago — built also, one imagines, to further isolate the area, to save motorists from the chore of navigating the network of tracks and bridges that carve up the neighborhoods below.
