{"id":14128,"date":"2015-05-07T16:04:38","date_gmt":"2015-05-07T21:04:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=14128"},"modified":"2015-05-07T17:55:08","modified_gmt":"2015-05-07T22:55:08","slug":"preserving-k-town-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/preserving-k-town-history\/","title":{"rendered":"K-Town: Greystones, block clubs and a presidential library bid"},"content":{"rendered":"

Phoebe Tollefson
\nFor The West Side Source<\/a><\/p>\n

He is tall and his gait is easy. Aviators block the morning sun and a black jacket hangs from his shoulders. Without looking, he points his lighted cigarette toward the AME Church behind him.<\/p>\n

\u201cBack there on the same block with St. Paul \u2013 when we first moved here \u2013 there was a small butcher shop. There were plenty of businesses like that up and down both Pulaski and Cermak.\u201d<\/p>\n

He takes a puff.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat went away. The riot in \u201968 pretty much pushed everyone else out, anybody who was trying to stick with it. The riots were like the nail in the coffin.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nThis is Paul Norrington, a retired cop and vice president of the K-Town Historic District Association. He lives in the same brick two-flat where he grew up and rattles off local history like it\u2019s the alphabet.<\/p>\n

Norrington has seen a lot of change in the 16-block area of North Lawndale known as K-Town. Foremost in his mind these days is whether efforts to turn a vacant lot at Roosevelt Road and Kostner Avenue into the site of the new Barack Obama Presidential Library will succeed. He was eager, even anxious, to see it happen.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we don\u2019t get it,\u201d Norrington said, \u201cthere may be a depression that overtakes the community that has to be mitigated.\u201d<\/p>\n

With media reports crowning the University of Chicago bid as the unofficial winner,\u00a0he remains optimistic.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo what if we fall short? What do we do then?\u201d he asked. \u201cRegardless of the final decision, we have new opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n

With this dogged insistence on progress and a small but dedicated band of neighbors, Norrington is working to bring back the bustle and vitality he remembers as a kid.<\/p>\n

Hitting the Historic Register<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2010, after years of door-to-door organizing and seemingly endless property record searches by Norrington and others, K-Town \u2013 named for the four \u201cK\u201d streets running through it: Kostner, Kildare, Keeler and Karlov \u2013 earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places. Not only a boon for hometown pride in Chicago, this has become a tool to boost more home ownership in the West Side district. Residents say landlords hold too much of the property and foreclosures and boarded-up windows have begun to wear holes in the area\u2019s sturdy social fabric.<\/p>\n

K-Town is the mainly residential area bordered by West Cermak Road, South Kostner Avenue, South Pulaski Road and West Cullerton Street. The buildings inside those boundaries were\u00a0built between 1901 and 1931 and the area preserves Chicago\u2019s most concentrated collections of historic homes.<\/p>\n

\u201cK-Town\u2014moving four blocks, you cover 40 years of architectural history,\u201d said Matt Cole, who runs the Chicago Greystone & Vintage Home Program at Neighborhood Housing Services.<\/em>\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s got everything. It\u2019s got Greystones. It\u2019s got these Dutch gable single-family homes. It\u2019s got workers\u2019 cottages. It\u2019s got bungalows mixed in. There\u2019s nowhere else in the City of Chicago where you find that in this little tiny area.\u201d<\/p>\n

District leaders hope to use tax breaks from the historic register listing to attract new homebuyers. Under state law, homeowners who invest 25 percent of the market value of their property into historic preservation projects \u2013 like maintaining the limestone fa\u00e7ade on a Greystone \u2013 can get an eight-year freeze on the assessed value of their home. That is followed by four years of gradual increases, bringing the assessed value up to post-rehab levels.<\/p>\n

Norrington likes to tout these financial benefits, but he and others say they are only the latest chapter in the much longer, richer story of K-Town.<\/p>\n

Immigrant Gateway<\/strong><\/p>\n

K-Town was built as Chicago development moved westward, spurred by the need to house the city\u2019s new arrivals.<\/p>\n

Originally a Czech enclave amid the largely Jewish neighborhood of North Lawndale, the neighborhood makeup changed with the Great Migration, as African-Americans left the South for the economic and civic opportunities they believed awaited them in the North.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey wanted to find a better life up north in the city,\u201d said Tawanna Calvin, president of the K-Town Historic District Association. \u201cYou hear the stories about how people had to pick cotton. They walked miles to school. The kids had to work just as hard as the parents, which made them the people they are, but it was hard on them. So when people were moving here, they were very determined to keep it up.\u201d<\/p>\n

But as banks latched onto the discriminatory practice of redlining, most black Chicagoans found themselves unable to borrow and confined to\u00a0overcrowded, economically depressed areas. Those who did manage to access credit quickly found their fortunes reversed as realtors used racist scare tactics to persuade white homeowners to sell and then artificially inflated the new selling price for African-American buyers. In other cases, realtors sold \u201con contract,\u201d locking all rights to the property in the realtor\u2019s name until payment was complete.<\/p>\n

This was the story of housing for many African-Americans in Chicago.<\/p>\n

K-Town, too, experienced these attempts to segregate neighborhoods and squeeze more money out of African-American buyers. But these efforts were not as successful in K-Town as they were in the rest of North Lawndale. By the time African-Americans began moving into the district, organizers like the Contract Buyers League had succeeded in shutting down some of that activity.<\/p>\n

Tellingly, when people describe K-Town, they often use the word, “intact.”<\/p>\n

Calvin credits neighborhood stewardship during her parents\u2019 era for the\u00a0community cohesion. When her and Norrington\u2019s parents ran the neighborhood through their various roles as block club presidents, church choir directors and piano teachers, it was a time of vibrant civic involvement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey had things like prizes for the cleanest block or prizes for the best Christmas decorations,\u201d Norrington said. \u201cIf you came through at Christmastime, this whole area was just ablaze with lights. And that died out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. changed the West Side neighborhood.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat night, I had to go somewhere,\u201d said Norrington. \u201cI had to go downtown so I was on the \u201cL,\u201d and looking off to the north, it was just a ribbon of red, stretched for blocks. That was the buildings burning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Norrington\u2019s dad had taken him to the Marcy Center on Springfield Avenue just two years earlier to hear Dr. King speak.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so things started falling apart,\u201d Calvin said. \u201cAs far as with the block clubs, the parents sort of held that legacy. But then when they left, they left their houses to their children, which didn\u2019t have the same pride as purchasing a home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most of the white-owned businesses in the area were burned down during the King riots, and the owners decided not to rebuild. Companies that had supplied jobs to the neighborhood- like Sears Roebuck and International Harvester \u2013 closed up shop. This was the beginning of economic disinvestment.<\/p>\n

\u2018I chose this area\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stepping off the train at the Kostner Pink Line stop, the air is quiet. The \u201cL\u201d tracks are at street level, giving the place a small town feel, Norrington thinks. The yards are tidy and the streets look swept.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of seniors in the area, and this is a working class neighborhood, too, so people are at work,\u201d Calvin said, explaining the stillness.<\/p>\n

She and Norrington want to revive the block clubs and events that united neighbors a generation ago.<\/p>\n

At a ceremony last summer when K-Town Historic District Association members hung their new neighborhood banners for the first time, plenty of the older generation came out on a walking tour of their beloved community to share their stories.<\/p>\n

Christella Reynolds, Calvin\u2019s mother who passed away recently, lived to see it. She sat in a wheelchair that day wearing a red sparkly baseball cap and bright orange T-shirt, commanding the attentive circle of listeners surrounding her.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s my daughter there,\u201d she said, pointing to Calvin. \u201cAnd I got another one that\u2019s older than that, so I\u00a0know<\/em>\u00a0I got to be the oldest girl alive. Gimme a hand!\u201d She led her own applause.<\/p>\n

Willie Mae Bowling, another longtime resident, stood in a wide stance, hands folded behind her back, nodding and smiling at her audience.<\/p>\n

\u201cI chose this area because of Mason School. You may not think, \u2018Roswell Mason!\u2019\u00a0now<\/em>. But Mason was a very good school. And I would like to say I had five [children] to graduate from over there. PTA president for a number of years, out on the street, fighting for everybody. We made it worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Community Connects<\/strong><\/p>\n

Plenty of that pride and connectedness is still alive, if you ask Willie and Elise Porter. The Porters run a custom T-shirt retailer called The Goodie Shop, one of the busier storefronts on Pulaski. Before The Goodie Shop opened in 2007, the building housed Brenda\u2019s Texas Lady Lounge.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a very popular spot. Everybody who was anybody\u2014 they still come in sometimes and flash back,\u201d Willie said. \u201cThe people who migrated from Mississippi and Memphis, they had bars where they hung out and they all hung out together once they were here. So whatever bar they chose\u2014\u201c<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2014Yeah, they\u2019d socialize,\u201d said Elise, Willie\u2019s wife. \u201cIt\u2019s their meeting ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve created our own \u2018Cheers\u2019 type of atmosphere,\u201d Willie said, of his store.<\/p>\n

The Porters host an annual back-to-school party in August and partner with area churches on community events. Willie Porter also helps run B-ball On The Block at the end of the summer, which brings neighbors out into the streets to eat hot dogs, play basketball and tamp down crime.<\/p>\n

These events are good, but Calvin and Norrington would like to see more. They say there is a divide between renters and homeowners. A few long-term renters attend neighborhood events and take care of their area, they say, but in general it\u2019s the owners who have made a financial commitment to the area who are the most active.<\/p>\n

\u201cAh! Here\u2019s somebody else doing some work,\u201d Norrington said on a recent Friday, driving past a home with bricks piled outside and scaffolding climbing the front of the house. \u201cYesss!\u00a0Hah!<\/em>\u201d He pumped his fist and grinned wide, seeming ecstatic. Each renovation is a victory for Norrington, and each vacant lot and boarded window a loss.<\/p>\n

Challenges for Tomorrow<\/strong><\/p>\n

Getting buy-in from neighbors is the first step in moving K-Town forward, according to Calvin.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now it\u2019s almost like pulling teeth,\u201d Calvin said. \u201cEveryone thinks, \u2018We\u2019re OK. I clean up in front of\u00a0my<\/em>\u00a0house. I mow\u00a0my<\/em>\u00a0lawn. This community thing is just extra.\u2019 I think they\u2019re missing that the children that\u2019s coming up under them are watching.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, winning the presidential library would galvanize a huge community boost.<\/p>\n

Willie Porter said growing the business district with entrepreneurs native to Lawndale is another key ingredient.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe businesses are from people out of the community, and they\u2019re spending their money where they live,\u201d Porter said. \u201cSo we\u2019re spending our money with them to take it out of the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Porter hopes classes given by the local Chamber of Commerce will help more people like him open up small businesses in the area.<\/p>\n

Reckoning with outsiders\u2019 perceptions is another challenge. News hits and chat pages about drug busts and gang activity in K-Town populate the Web.<\/p>\n

\u201cBad news spreads much faster than good news,\u201d Calvin said. \u201cWe do have our issues. Block by block is just a little different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Porter thinks the media hypes the negative stories, perpetuating the idea that Lawndale is a beaten-down victim of urban ills.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not as organized as they make it look in the papers,\u201d he said, of crime in the district.<\/p>\n

Calvin said another challenge would be to develop a working relationship with the ward\u2019s newly elected alderman, Michael Scott Jr., in part to help ensure grant money the area receives serves the right purpose. She said the Lawndale Christian Development Corporation\u2019s new multipurpose building on Ogden upset some residents.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey think with that type of money, other things could have been built \u2013 maybe something more needed. I know a lot of the mental health facilities across the board have been shut down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Norrington might disagree with that attitude on the new LCDC multiuse outpost – he\u00a0 is a member of the fitness center and a regular at the Green Tomato Caf\u00e9. But he, too, is wary of the possible downsides of development. Even the presidential library could have posed a problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf a whole bunch of money is poured into an area, it\u2019s either going to push those people out, or the money is not going to do what it was designed to do,\u201d Norrington said. \u201cIt takes more than money. It takes change of attitude.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Phoebe Tollefson For The West Side Source He is tall and his gait is easy. Aviators block the morning sun and a black jacket hangs from his shoulders. Without looking, he points his lighted cigarette toward the AME Church behind him. \u201cBack there on the same block with St. Paul \u2013 when we first moved […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":14171,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194,27,28,30,436,26],"tags":[192],"class_list":["post-14128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-culture","category-business","category-general-interest","category-public-affairs","category-spring-2015","category-topics","tag-promo"],"yoast_head":"\nK-Town: Greystones, block clubs and a presidential library bid - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/preserving-k-town-history\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"K-Town: Greystones, block clubs and a presidential library bid - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Phoebe Tollefson For The West Side Source He is tall and his gait is easy. 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