FINAL - Documentary Methods

From the latter part of the 19th century into the 1990s, Maxwell Street was an important center of commerce in the city of Chicago and a landing point for several migrant communities from all over the world. The Maxwell Street Market provided immigrant communities the opportunity to start businesses. The Market was a fixture of Chicago’s near west side until the 1990s, when the surrounding property was bought by the University of Illinois Chicago.

Since then, the Market has continued in a more limited capacity, first on Canal St. then on Desplaines. But in the summer of 2024, UIC allowed the market to come back to the original Maxwell Street.

These images are a record of the Maxwell Street Market in it’s 21st century iteration. This new Maxwell street is a relic of a once important cultural institution that with the passage of time and the influence of new centers of power (DCASE, UIC), has become a significantly diminished version of what it once was. There are people on Maxwell street who still very much care about preserving the memory of what this place was. People like Steve Balkin, who is part of the Maxwell St. Foundation, a non-profit historical society that acts in the interest of expanding and preserving the Maxwell Street Market.