The Original Maxwell Street

There are no more blues on Maxwell Street.
It is a sunny Sunday morning market day and the street is nearly empty. A fellow named Lockhart who has sold tube socks on the street for the last fifteen years is still hawking his wares to anybody that stops for a Polish at Jimmy’s on Halsted and Maxwell. Business is not good. He looks down the deserted street and sees only ankle deep garbage piled in the gutter. If the city of Chicago ever provided services to this area of town, they have long since stopped. The buildings are abandoned and boarded up. They wait for the wrecking ball that the folks down at city hall have been trying to wield for over a hundred years.

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For about one hundred years, Maxwell Street was one of Chicago’s most unconventional business—and residential—districts. About a mile long and located in the shadow of downtown skyscrapers, it was a place where businesses grew selling anything from shoestrings to expensive clothes.

Maxwell Street Market, 1917

Its immigrants arrived from several continents and many countries shortly before the turn of the century. First to come were Germans, Irish, Poles, Bohemians, and, most prominently, Jews, especially those escaping czarist Russia, Poland, and Romania. In the 1940s, Southern blacks worked in Maxwell Street’s stores and entertained its crowds with Delta-style blues. Later, Mexicans, Koreans, and Gypsies joined its teeming environment. From its own poverty-stricken homes came many famous—Arthur Goldberg, William Paley, Benny Goodman, Barney Ross—and infamous—Jake Guzik and Jack Ruby—people.  Goods on card tables and blankets competed with goods in sidewalk kiosks and stores. Sunday was its busiest day since the Jews worked on the Christian Sabbath, when stores were closed in most other parts of the city.
Blues Musicians on Maxwell St., c.1950
Merchants battled city officials to keep Maxwell Street alive despite its reputation for crime and residential overcrowding. Its eastern section was destroyed in the mid-1950s for the Dan Ryan Expressway. In the 1980s and 1990s, virtually all of the rest was razed for athletic fields for the University of Illinois at Chicago. What remained of the market was moved several blocks to a place with none of the flavor of the old street.

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Chicago is famous for its signature deep dish pizza, Italian beef sandwiches, the Maxwell Street Polish and the Chicago hot dog, which is made of Vienna beef and loaded with mustard, onion, tomato, pickle relish, celery salt, sport peppers and a dill pickle spear; putting ketchup on a Chicago ‘dog’ is completely taboo. A few of the city’s best pizzerias are Bacci Pizzeria, Pizza Broker, Pizza Ria, Edwardo’s Natural Pizza, Pizzeria Ora, Pizano’s Pizza & Pasta, Rosati’s Pizza & California, Pizzeria Uno, Reggie’s Pizza Express and more.

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Exploring the “Home of the Blues,” the Chicago Blues Audio Tour narrated by Chicago-local Buddy Guy has found an astonishing audience in just six months. The podcast has been downloaded more than 97,000 times and is currently averaging over 1,000 downloads per day. The free, 50-minute tour combines an interactive map, tour stop directions, archival photos, video, music clips, and interviews – a true multimedia experience unlike anything else available.Listeners are abl

I can remember every day I spent in that building that had no air conditioning but for a single window unit in the training director’s office. Rank has its privilege. The classrooms were large and noisy. You could smell the Vienna Sausage Company’s products in the air from several nearby hot dog stands on Maxwell Street.

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The quick answer to your question is “yes.” Maxwell Street Market is still there, and it goes on year round. Chicagoist even shows up once in awhile. Every Sunday from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. along Canal Street at Roosevelt, even when there’s a wind chill of 25 below, 450 vendors line the street (and even more vie weekly for the limited spaces) to sell their wares and serve up Mexican food. Plus, when it’s a little more reasonable outside weather-wise, there’s live music. We should quickly point out that the market hasn’t always been in that exact location, and for that reason is officially referred to as the New Maxwell Street Market. Historically speaking, the market, which was once the largest open-air market in the country, was on (not too surprisingly) Maxwell Street, just a few blocks west of where it is now. Founded in the 1870s, it was a place Chicago’s immigrant community could go to start to earn their livelihood in the city. Pretty much everything, legal and illegal, was sold at one point on Maxwell Street, creating a vibrant community and social gathering place. The city of Chicago moved the market in 1994 to its current location, causing quite a bit of controversy. UIC wanted the take over the market in order to expand, and had actually been slowly creeping into the area since 1965, gradually shrinking the size of the market until finally officially moving it with the backing of Daley in 1994. Community activists tried to make the area an official historical landmark in 1994 and 2000, but failed. The historical location aside, one of the biggest complaints about the current location is that it lacks the “flavor” that the historical market had. Hopefully this news will help remedy that — the market’s slated to move one more time in September of this year to its permanent home (so says the city) on Desplaines from Roosevelt to Harrison. Well, maybe we should believe them this time, as the plans include an official entry gate at Roosevelt and Canal, 85 more spaces for vendors, permanent booths, street banners (oooh), and sponsorship opportunities which they promise doesn’t mean the name will be changed to something like “The Chase Bank Market.” With any luck this is a true sign that Chicago’s finally behind the history of Maxwell Street (even when it’s not actually on Maxwell Street). So enjoy the market next weekend, Julie, if you want. We’ll probably wait until spring before heading over there, but it’s nice to know that if you don’t mind the cold it’ll be there.

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If you stand at the intersection of Halsted and Maxwell streets on Chicago’s Near West Side and take a look around, you won’t really see anything special. About a mile southwest of the Loop, it’s just like many other gentrified areas of the city, complete with modular brick housing, bars, a Caribou Coffee bar and a Jamba Juice. Once one of the city’s busiest crossroads, this was the nerve center of the Maxwell Street Market, an old-world-style bazaar that brought together people of all nationalities and religions, but all that remains is a sanitized version of its former self. Noisy curbside vendors no longer hawk their wares to throngs of eager customers, and racks of rumpled men’s wool suits no longer line Maxwell Street. The smells of polish sausages, onions and mustard linger no more here, but several blocks away on Union Avenue.

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Maxwell Street is significant to the history of blues not just because music was performed there, but because music was created there. Beginning in the 1920s, Maxwell Street was the first stopping place for thousands of African-Americans newly arrived from the Mississippi Delta. There, the newcomers could hear established city musicians, and vice versa. This continuous interaction over the course of several decades produced, in the period immediately following the Second World War, what is usually called Chicago Blues, but which could just as easily be called “The Maxwell Street Blues.” Where in previous decades, recorded Delta Blues had been modified to fit the popular song styles of the day, on Maxwell Street it was left raw and simply amplified, both in volume and dramatic intensity. When recorded, the result became not only the dominant form of blues, but radically changed the emerging sound of rock and roll. The sound of bands like the Rolling Stones, Cream, Led Zeppelin and many others came about when English teenagers tried to duplicate the music of Maxwell Street bluesmen.

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Chicago’s Maxwell Street Market has a long and richly diverse cultural history. The one aspect of this history is its musical heritage. Chicago Electric Blues, born on Maxwell Street, was an inspiration to other blues music and blues rock. Its influence can still be heard in some of today’s music. I have selected blues music that originated on Maxwell Street to accompany my photographs of the Old Market.

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Cats like me, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Memphis Minnie, Jimmy Reed, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter Jacobs, all of us came to Maxwell Street. This is the backbone and the roots of what everyone is listening to today. It started right here.”

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Give Your Tongue A Kick In The Taste Buds
One taste and you’ll know that where there’s hickory smoke, there’s fire! Our Vienna Beef Spicy Polish is a skinless, hot and spicy beef sausage made with a special blend of cayenne peppers and zesty seasonings, then hardwood hickory smoked for our famous mouthwatering taste. It’s a delicious way to add spice to your life!

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Plump, flavorful and loaded with snap, Vienna Beef Polish Sausages are made with our century-old family recipe featuring fresh, domestic beef and our secret blend of spices. Hardwood hickory smoking adds the famous Vienna taste in every hearty Polish Sausage. Try it with your favorite condiments like mustard, grilled onions and pickles.

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You can smell the grilled onions from 290 when you’re driving with the windows down in the summertime! Exit at Independence Ave. and on the south side of 290, 24 hours a day, here lies the gate to the best polish sausage you’ll find in Chicago. Hidden in a heap of grilled onions lie several cooked polish sausages waiting on a hot grill to be served on a soft bun with sport peppers and mustard. Juicy, flavorful, the grease squirts in your mouth…*Homer Simpson drool*…it’s like a cigarette after sex…a cold beer after mowing the lawn…seeing Flanders lose. Anyhow, despite the destruction and ruin that Maxwell Street has seen (thank you, sterile University Village for ruining another great Chicago tradition), another Chicago gem still holds ground. Yes, Jim’s Original is stil there at Roosevelt/94, but for how long? The richies from their overpriced new condos have already been complaining about the onion smell. I simply can’t stand the sight of the new Maxwell St., which is why I have been frequenting this location for many years. And frankly, the fries are better here! I swear, they must use red potatoes… Like I said, you can smell this from the freeway, and it a’int the nasty smell of McDonalds! (or Taco Bell)

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VIENNA® BEEF MAXWELL STREET POLISH DOGS – THE BEST IN THE WORLD!! With a sharp knife score both ends with an X or score diagonally along every inch of a Vienna® Beef Polish Sausage (either a 6-inch or footlong cut in half). Grill or deep fry to a crispy, charcoal brown to release the distinct and delicious flavor. Place in a steamed poppyseed bun or warm roll and top with the following condiments:

Yellow or Dusseldorf Mustard

Grilled Onions (See “Tip” below)

Garnish with Sport Peppers

Tip: To grill onions, add a teaspoon of sugar to each whole sliced onion. Then add a pat of butter or grill with the natural juices from the Polish Sausage to give the onions a sweet taste and an even gold brown color.

Joey Clams Answers Your Questions: Old Chicago Dogs

A Maxwell Street Polish consists of a grilled all-beef Polish sausage topped with grilled onions and mustard on a bun. The sandwich was first created by Jimmy Stefanovic, a Macedonian immigrant, who took over his aunt and uncle’s hot-dog stand (now Jim’s Original) in Chicago’s Maxwell Street marketplace in 1939.[1] It is sometime referred to as a “Jewtown Dog,” or “Jew Dog”[citation needed]. (Part of the market was called Jewtown after the original Jewish merchants.) The Maxwell Street Polish soon grew to be one of Chicago’s most popular local dishes, along with the Chicago hot-dog. It is served by restaurants around the city, and is common at sporting events. Many small vendors specialize in the Maxwell Street Polish along with the pork-chop sandwich. Some variations exist. For example, some hot-dog vendors offer a “Maxwell Street hot dog” in which a hot dog is substituted for the Polish sausage. Others like to add sport peppers to the Maxwell Street to give it more heat.

Best Chicago Hot Dog: What is a Maxwell Street Polish ??