Eyesore - New Jackson Hotel (high school, renewal, train station)

[dlong1991]

Fry?

....Fry?

[IntlFalls56649]

Anytime I visit Chicago I stay in Greektown kitty corner from that New Jackson Hotel (above the Parthenon), anyway, I asked my friend there what was going on with that old hotel and he said it's being converted into student housing - so I'm guessing they will completely gut it out and turn it into (probably expensive) apartments for students attending the various colleges downtown.

The SRO's are quickly disappearing. All that seems to be left downtown is the YMCA rooms on W. Chicago, or a few others but those don't count as permanent housing. I think, if I understand correctly, the area where the New Jackson is (Jackson & Halstead) used to be the skid row of Chicago, with lots of old hotels like that where single old men or pensioners or guys who worked in the lumber camps or railroads would live. Too bad those days are over and getting housing has become so hard that people without much money are having to go to places like Duluth, Minn or Grand Forks, North Dakota or other smaller cities where you can still survive on a modest income. The big cities are slowly being paved over for the 1%'ers. Everyone else will have to find somewhere else to go.

[chet everett]

No, "skid row" has not be anywhere near "Greektown" since they took the lead out of gasoline and stopped saying cigarettes "helped clear the lungs"...

[ChicagoMeO]

are there any skid rows left in chicago?

[chet everett]

The previous mayor had kind of a fetish for "neat & tidy" and put a lot of effort into making it hard for bums to find any place to loiter about, coupled with a whole lot of activity from real estate developers there are not really any "rows" that are regularly the domain of bums, winos, and mentally unstable types...

[ChicagoMeO]

Originally Posted by chet everett

The previous mayor had kind of a fetish for "neat & tidy" and put a lot of effort into making it hard for bums to find any place to loiter about, coupled with a whole lot of activity from real estate developers there are not really any "rows" that are regularly the domain of bums, winos, and mentally unstable types...

with the current trend of memorializing things, maybe they should have a historic museum of sorts with things that are not here any more, like a skid row, or something to show how old chicago was not too long ago. maybe at the history museum.. im not kidding. I think it has some kind of historical value. sounds crazy, but i think it may work. they could have the old hotels like the Wabash Hotel on Wabash and Roosevelt, complete with the old fashioned cage elevator.

[chet everett]

From what the oldsters tell me you don't want any "memorial" to the worse of that era. From the depths of the PRE-WWII era depression until probably sometime in the early Kennedy adminstration you'd have a hard time finding a more grim stretch of busted out losers. The lawlessness that came with organized crime dumping their "who knows what was in it" substitute for actual taxed liquor meant there probably bums sucking down bottles of industrial waste for a buzz. Whores hooked on whatever drug that the mob could get on the street meant that verneral disease was rampant. Even today legitimate businesses are basically "islands" all the way from the train stations at Canal to the edge of burned out 60s era race riots... People like the Wirtz family were the "buy low and build a fortress" kind of land barons that cut deals with polticians to steer "urban renewal" to bull doze the worst of the worst hoe houses and death trap tenements. Things like Malcom X CC, Young High School, the CFD Academy, the various hospitals and even the entrance ramps to the Kennedy & Ike along with all of the UIC campus are one big "tribute" to insiders cutting deals with polticians to funnel dollars toward the powerful and keep the dregs from overrunning the investors...

[oak317]

Wow. I've never seen 100% 1-star reviews (Yelp). Apparently you weren't exaggerating when you called it a "crime magnet".

I'm surprised that such a shady hotel could be located just a few minutes from a nice restaurant like The Parthenon... (I remember going there several times.)

[oak317]

Originally Posted by chet everett

From what the oldsters tell me you don't want any "memorial" to the worse of that era. From the depths of the PRE-WWII era depression until probably sometime in the early Kennedy adminstration you'd have a hard time finding a more grim stretch of busted out losers. The lawlessness that came with organized crime dumping their "who knows what was in it" substitute for actual taxed liquor meant there probably bums sucking down bottles of industrial waste for a buzz. Whores hooked on whatever drug that the mob could get on the street meant that verneral disease was rampant. Even today legitimate businesses are basically "islands" all the way from the train stations at Canal to the edge of burned out 60s era race riots... People like the Wirtz family were the "buy low and build a fortress" kind of land barons that cut deals with polticians to steer "urban renewal" to bull doze the worst of the worst hoe houses and death trap tenements. Things like Malcom X CC, Young High School, the CFD Academy, the various hospitals and even the entrance ramps to the Kennedy & Ike along with all of the UIC campus are one big "tribute" to insiders cutting deals with polticians to funnel dollars toward the powerful and keep the dregs from overrunning the investors...

You could pioneer a whole new genre of 'troll literary-historical fiction'.

[chet everett]

Originally Posted by oak317

You could pioneer a whole new genre of 'troll literary-historical fiction'.

Any dispute with my facts?


The West Side still has a whole bunch of problems, some of which stem from decisions made by railroads and landowners back as far a Civil War era, but is generally moving in a direction that is pretty positive. Time magazine chronicled the horror back in 1949 The Press: Land of the Living Dead - TIME

The current shifts in land use are certainly better than the wholesale "bulldozing" type urban renewal of previous periods, though that is no reason to "memorialize" other eras that are indisputably horrible examples of not just bad planning but the sorts of lawlessness that often better left to history books than made into a "Disneyland" attraction. I mean honestly the various little plaques that tend to be scattered about do little to memorialize things adequately and even when there is a more ambitious plan to "preserve" (or recreate) some structure the city / state never really provides the kinds of support for on going efforts that really is needed to keep things focused. Goofy mishmash of "programming" and pathetically short hours -- Jane Addams Hull-House Museum