Below in italics you will find the first draft of my Senior thesis. Please feel free to make comments or suggestions for future drafts… I have this idea, stemming from Zinn, of a democratic history of a place.
In the hustle and bustle of the post-modern global American metropolis it is easy to lose a neighborhood in the backdrop of its municipality. In the case of Hegewisch, it is less lost in the backdrop of Nature’s Metropolis as it is covered up with more tourist friendly landscapes like the Skyline, Navy Pier or North Avenue Beach. Hegewisch is not an ugly place rather, it is a place to be understood as an intricate community where the heart of Chicago’s industrial past, its polluted present and its global future lay in a unique juxtaposition.
The neighborhood is more vibrant than the “gray landscape with little vegetation” and “a clouded sky hovering over dark buildings” that is described by William Cronon in his book Nature’s Metropolis[i] and that I think exist in most people’s minds. Ask most any North Sider about the South Side and you get a description resembling that of the fifth circle of hell in Dante’s Divine Comedy; a place of murky and polluted marshes full of dark people. Or, as so eloquently put by a close friend of mine when discussing this project, “I don’t go down to the numbered streets because it’s, like, the ‘ghetto’”.
Even though most of the smokestacks that once emitted “plumes of white and unwhite steam” no longer do, the now crumbling facades of steel mills and coke plants and their subsequent ecological impacts are a constant reminder of Chicago’s (and ipso facto America’s) industrial heritage. Though Cronon recalls only one smokestack that produced the “dense orange vapor” that was formally synonymous with Chicago’s rust belt, Hegewisch is dotted with these defunct cultural nodes that are semi-permanent testaments to the world that Chicago is in fact “the city of broad shoulders.”
Ironically, many of those same smokestacks that once exhaled the greasy rust colored byproducts of industrialism and steel production have been converted to recycle scrap metal o or modified for waste disposal. The area, though most industry has moved out, still feels, looks and smells like the “old” Chicago Cronon takes us to in his book.
It is important to remember that smoke still lives in Hegewisch and that it roosts on many of the same smokestacks Cronon encountered during his childhood trips through “the City”, even though the smells and soot aren’t so greasy, and the smog not so thick, many of the repercussions of those distant and quaint collective Chicago memories are just now being realized.
The majestic and all to nationalistic spread eagle smoke, a symbol to some of Chicago’s rebirth after the great fire of 1871 and to others of America’s economic and industrial superiority at the turn of the 20th century, has raised a brood of problems that are beginning to rear their heads and are increasingly difficult to handle.
Those smokestacks that once produced both white smoke and unwhite smoke now sit crumbling are still signifiers of urban blight and epitomize a “ghetto” to some, while on the other hand, there exists a handful of us that see brownspace, superfund sites and rusty smokestacks as great of historical importance to the Western identity as the Greek Parthenon or the Basilica di San Lorenzo.
Downtown Hegewisch, at first glance looks like any largely working class community. The one way streets are lined with classic brown stone bungalows, some local diners and businesses, churches and the several decaying relics of what was once one of the most highly industrialized regions in the world. Though not as aesthetically striking as the Basilica di San Lorenzo, the banks, bars, barbers’ and sandwich shops resembles something more out American Graffiti[ii] than Fred Fisher’s (later covered by Frank Sinatra) 1922 hit “Chicago”. It is an area pocked by low-wetland forests and the marshes that much of Chicago is built over. Only a few miles away from downtown lies Lake Calumet which is naturally fed by the three branches of the Calumet River System which is largely responsible for the incorporation of Chicago in 1837 and the later urbanization and industrialization of this southeastern corner of the city. The regions topography, which is a direct result of the recession of the large glaciers that covered much of North America at the start of the most recent ice age, has directly impacted the history and people of the area.
It is because Hegewisch acts as such a unique intersection of politics, geography, ecology, and history that it is like a low hanging fruit, ripe to be picked as a cultural text. The relics of industrialism and one way streets lined with brown stone bungalows have stories that often go muffled or buried in the footnotes of Chicago’s often more exciting and romantic historical narratives.
The interaction of all these unique quirks and odd clips of local history are overwhelming, to throw issues of public space into the mix can make it just plain confusing. Issues of land ownership and responsibility (accountability?) constantly come up in discussions with people working close to the place. There is a lot of unused real estate in CICSD, much of it lots where factories once stood or a crumbling few still stand. An in depth political-economy analysis would reveal that there is a lot of capital and clout riding on these brownfields. Many of the areas that have been “reclaimed”- used here in the contemporary environmental health context- for human use have been privatized. For example, parts of a garbage dump (another superfund site) have been reclaimed as a country club. In a city as large as Chicago, and given it’s seedy past, space, even seemingly worthless space, is worth top dollar
One is hard pressed to take a step anywhere in Hegewisch without feeling the heavy yoke of history and ecology thrust upon them. From glacial Lake Michigan to the streets named after French missionaries to the decaying cultural nodes of America’s industrial heritage, Hegewisch will not let you forget that human beings are forever woven into the tapestry of landscapes narrative.
