{"id":51595,"date":"2017-02-17T16:00:51","date_gmt":"2017-02-17T22:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=51595"},"modified":"2017-02-17T19:00:54","modified_gmt":"2017-02-18T01:00:54","slug":"bronzevilles-historic-meyers-ace-hardware-closing-soon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/bronzevilles-historic-meyers-ace-hardware-closing-soon\/","title":{"rendered":"Historic Bronzeville hardware store and jazz archive set to close"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong> By Pat Nabong<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"dropcap\">Meyers Ace Hardware has two kinds of customers: those who buy paint for their walls and those who \u201clisten to the walls.\u201d For decades, hundreds of tourists and curious souls in search of jazz relics have been visiting the neighborhood store in Bronzeville. It has preserved remnants of what it used to be\u2014the Sunset Caf\u00e9, a famous jazz club in the 1920s to &#8217;40s.<\/p>\n<p>Driven out of business by changes in the neighborhood, loyal customers and jazz aficionados are now mourning as the hardware is preparing to close for good in February.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Historic Meyers Ace Hardware Closing Soon\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/204248356?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>\u201cMeyers was a landmark,\u201d said Betty Thompson, a long-time customer who lives in Bronzeville. \u201cHistorical landmarks are being dissipated, being destroyed and being taken away from Bronzeville.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Although Meyers Ace Hardware sold buckets of paint that they could have used on its own walls, three generations of Meyers left the jazz murals untouched, which they still are to this day. Some are hidden behind shelves and a microwave in the back of David Meyers&#8217; office. Tourists and customers are welcome to enter the office to admire them. Sometimes jazz enthusiasts \u201clisten to the walls,\u201d said David\u2019s brother Joel Meyers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy mother and my father both said, \u2018No, we can\u2019t get rid of it. This is part of history. This belongs to the building. This belongs to the history of the area,\u2019\u201d said Joel Meyers, whose grandfather started a pharmacy a few blocks away. The pharmacy was a neighboring business to the booming jazz club which was later renamed The Grand Terrace Caf\u00e9, co-owned by gangster Al Capone.<\/p>\n<p>It was one of the few places where the color of one\u2019s skin was neither a limit nor a privilege. Blacks and whites were regarded as equal. The Meyers\u2019 business expanded into a hardware store and moved to their current location in the 1960s, after the Grand Terrace Caf\u00e9 closed.<\/p>\n<p>As shelves are emptied and boxes are packed, it is still uncertain what will become of the jazz murals, the old phone booth, the posters and the two stages where Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and Earl Hines once performed. Although the exterior of the building was landmarked by the city in 1998, that\u00a0does not guarantee \u00a0protection of its interior. One of the wooden jazz signs is being auctioned for thousands of dollars. But David Meyers said \u00a0he thinks the new owner of the space \u201chas some respect for the jazz history of the building.\u201d However, he does not know if the new owner will preserve the original architecture or renovate the place completely.<\/p>\n<p>For some customers and Bronzeville residents who have been buying their supplies from Meyers Ace Hardware for years, this signals the end of an era.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe business community has changed in the city of Chicago.&#8221;said Daniel Meyers. &#8220;I can list you about a dozen good reasons why it\u2019s changed.\u201d \u00a0He says he can trace the beginning of the downward trajectory to when public housing was closed in the 2000s. They lost almost 40 percent of their customers, he said. As bigger businesses started to set up shop in the neighborhood, it was the combination of high property taxes, competition for customers and the increasing popularity of online shopping that caused sales to significantly decrease.<\/p>\n<p>Meyers Ace Hardware isn\u2019t the only business that is being driven out of Bronzeville, according to Daniel Meyers. Some neighborhood\u00a0residents think gentrification has a lot to do with it.<\/p>\n<p>Real estate prices have risen and middle-class African Americans have been moving in for the past 10 years, writes Emily Badger in Citylab. Big establishments like Mariano\u2019s opened as well. This does not come without consequence. Often, what is talked about when gentrification is mentioned is the rise of real estate prices and a higher cost of living. But residents are concerned about its impact on Bronzeville&#8217;s\u00a0history.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd because of gentrification, what has happened is that subliminally, a lot of Bronzeville [businesses] is being eliminated, and the historical value of Bronzeville and the status of Bronzeville is disappearing,\u201d said Thompson.<\/p>\n<p>Among stacks of papers in his office, David Meyers keeps newspaper clippings and pictures of the Sunset Caf\u00e9 and a scanned copy of its menu. \u201cI throw nothing away,\u201d he said. Although not a jazz fan himself, if he could have his way, he said that he would turn the space into a jazz museum and a jazz club to preserve and revive its musical past.<\/p>\n<div class=\"featurecaption\">Photo at top: David Meyers, one of the owners of Meyers Ace Hardware, sits in his office which is filled with papers, jazz mementos and a jazz mural. (Pat Nabong\/MEDILL)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Pat Nabong Meyers Ace Hardware has two kinds of customers: those who buy paint for their walls and those who \u201clisten to the walls.\u201d For decades, hundreds of tourists and curious souls in search of jazz relics have been visiting the neighborhood store in Bronzeville. It has preserved remnants of what it used to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":291,"featured_media":51601,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194,28,675,3516],"tags":[192],"class_list":["post-51595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-culture","category-general-interest","category-social-justice","category-winter-2017","tag-promo"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Historic Bronzeville hardware store and jazz archive set to close - 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\/bronzevilles-historic-meyers-ace-hardware-closing-soon\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Historic Bronzeville hardware store and jazz archive set to close - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Pat Nabong Meyers Ace Hardware has two kinds of customers: those who buy paint for their walls and those who \u201clisten to the walls.\u201d For decades, hundreds of tourists and curious souls in search of jazz relics have been visiting the neighborhood store in Bronzeville. It has preserved remnants of what it used to [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/bronzevilles-historic-meyers-ace-hardware-closing-soon\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-02-17T22:00:51+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2017-02-18T01:00:54+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/medill.wordpress.offload\/WP%20Media%20Folder%20-%20medill-reports-chicago\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2017\/02\/MG_2249-copy.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1100\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"619\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"patnabong\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"patnabong\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/bronzevilles-historic-meyers-ace-hardware-closing-soon\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/bronzevilles-historic-meyers-ace-hardware-closing-soon\/\",\"name\":\"Historic Bronzeville hardware store and jazz archive set to close - 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