The Infamous Ink

Urban Spelunking

I haven’t figured out how to directly post images to the site so, forgive me; but, if you click on the hypertext a psychogeographic map of the Chicago Urban Spelunking League’s first adventure of the summer should open in another window.  If you have problems please let us know.

The Infamous Ink

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 20^th 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.

Routes, Not Places

Ecological and historical context of community aesthetics and identity

Environmental issues, specifically environmental justice, have become a focal point of both politics and the economy. What is lacking in this global discourse on the human element in ecology is its affects on the aesthetics of cities, the cultures of their residents and what to do with the vast expanses of brownfields and crumbling industrial infrastructures. A prime example of this oversight exists in Chicago.

Using political-economic and geo-ecological analysis, this project addresses the devastating effects that both the boom and bust of America’s industrial economy have had on the Chicago neighborhood of Hegewisch. Like J.B Jackson in his essay Several American Landscapes; I want to be able to interweave historical narrative and context with specific cultural nodes–the Acme Coke Plant, superfund site, Memorial Day massacre statue–and their effects on the Chicago neighborhood of Hegewisch’s identity and ecology.

Keywords: Cultural Landscape Narrative, Urban Aesthetics, Neighborhood Identity, Chicago, Ecology

Cultural landscapes studies (CLS) has only “officially” been around since 1951 and, like most cultural studies fields, it didn’t become popular in the world of academia until the late 1970s to early 1980s with the publishing of LANDSCAPES magazine by academic-turned-rancher J.B. Jackson. CLS is not the most popular branch of the growing field of American cultural studies however; that has not prevented a variety of articles, authors and styles from being published. What started out as Jackson’s determination to change how Americans looked at their “everyday, ordinary landscapes” had evolved into a recognized academic field with a methodology rooted in six tenets.

It is important, for this paper, future research (and I feel) everyone to have and adopt the CLS definition of landscape. The term “landscape”, according to Jackson and how it is used in the field, denotes the interaction of people and place; CLS strives to better understand the interactions of a social group (i.e. classes, ethnicities, specific cities) and its spaces, particularly the spaces to which the group belongs and from which its members derive some part of their identity[1]. According to Paul Groth and Todd Bressi’s book Understanding Ordinary Landscapes, the bulk of CLS—holding true to Jackson’s definition—has been focused most on the history of how people have used everyday space to establish their identity, articulate social relations and derive cultural meaning.

Personally, my fascination with CLS grew out of Dr. Douglas Powell’s class called “The Power of Place”. Through the course I was introduced to CLS authors, academics, and writing specifically J.B. Jackson, Paul Groth, and Mike Davis; whose methods are important to my work. Of the three authors listed I am firmly rooting the theoretical framework of my paper in two books by two different authors. The first, Understanding Ordinary Landscapes, was co-edited by Groth and is a must own reader for any cultural landscape scholar. The second is a book titled Landscapes edited by Ervin H. Zube and is a selection of J.B. Jackson’s writings; the one most influential to my work is titled Several American Landscapes1.

Groth, following in the tradition of Jackson, is a leading American CLS scholar and has, through the analysis of Jackson’s work, developed six tenets to keep in mind while developing and researching any landscape study2. I am confident this information will prove to be invaluable throughout this whole process.

Because my topic is specific, finding literature that directly relates to it has proven to be difficult. There have been many published studies on the neighborhood that have yielded lots of field specific data on the geography, ecology, and history of the region however; I’m finding it difficult to locate any sort analysis tying how specific political-economic eras have shaped the contemporary ecology, aesthetics and group identity of the neighborhood. This logistical fact though daunting, excites me; I will be one of the first people to attempt extrapolate some sort of meaning from the nearly four hundred years of European history that has unfolded there.

A visit to my neighborhood branch of the Chicago Public Library has revealed census data (raw numbers), labor histories, immigrant histories, geographic histories, naturalist histories and literally thousands of newspaper articles from both the “big” Chicago papers and the neighborhood paper. Friends and family have also mustered some support by sending or providing me with copies of articles they find online, which has been extremely helpful.

The abundance of raw data and histories is quite a daunting task to complete especially considering I do not know how much of it will be of any value to my project which is tending more toward theoretical and speculative CLS than the visual and concrete. On the other hand, I fear but not being meticulous about said data I will miss something that possesses the possibility of making my research “that much better”.

CLS theory books and readers are great so, too, are newspaper articles especially from local sources but I am trying to incorporate other contemporary sources like magazine articles.

In addition to lots of “book work” I have conducted an interview with urban planner Allan P. Mammoser, Executive Director of Southeast Environmental Taskforce; a not-for profit organization dedicated to the preservation of greenspace, the publics’ and ecological health. I believe more oral narratives will become important because they bring both credibility and the human element I am seeking to capture. I do not believe there is a better way to get a feeling for a landscape than talking to those people that shape it everyday.

During some of my trips to the neighborhood over the summer and while taking Cultural Studies Capstone I, I took pictures. I plan on taking more and am currently working to secure clearance or an escort to enter the Acme Coke Plant site. The photographs will be included many in my final essay in order to provide a visual context to my final project.

As it stands right now, I have more information than I know what to do with. It is now just a matter of sitting down and critically reading everything.