Join Joe Zekas for a BlockWalk down a street he didn’t build on. Joe explains:
Back in the early ’80s I bought two lots in the 1800 block of Maud for $10,000 apiece, and optioned a dozen more at price ranging from $12,000 to $20,000. The guy I bought my two lots from had acquired them for back taxes for about $300 each. That tells you a great deal about the state of the area at the time.
I was living a block away and was convinced the area would soon blossom. I commissioned Bill Bauhs, a talented architect, to design a three-bedroom, 2.5-bath, 1,600 square-foot single-family home that I offered to sell on my lots at prices ranging from $139,000 to $159,000.
I had no takers. Buyers and especially brokers were blinded to the potential of the area by the black people who were living on the street and who tended to hang out on their front porches. These were solid, middle-class citizens who worked at the Chicago Boiler plant that then stood at the end of Maud. Race fear, as infuriating as it was to me, was a powerful negative motivator for real estate brokers at the time.
One thing I didn’t mention in the video was a feeble effort I made to change the name of the street. Maud, I thought, reminded people too much of an overbearing TV character, Maude.
I sounded out several of the property owners on changing the street’s name to Winding Oaks Lane. The reaction was not positive.
Well, perhaps in part that’s because the lane doesn’t actually “wind”.
Not that it matters, since street names largely have little to do with the geography around them.
There were no oaks there, either, tup. I was just looking for a hook for a news story and something that would change the image of the street.
I was also playing off the old architects’ saw that “developments are named for the most prominent natural features that were destroyed to build them.”
Was it named after Norway’s Queen Maud (or Sweden’s Maud Adams, of Andrea Anders/Octopussy fame)?
Joe,
Those numbers are sickening!
Nothing sickening about the numbers, Eric.
What was sickening was the prejudice and short-sightedness of area real estate agents at the time.
“At the time”?
It’s not like things are any different now. Same prejudices, just in different neighborhoods..
My parents have horror stories about realtors in the western suburbs in the early 70’s, whose entire answer about quality of schools were epithets about the racial composition of the schools. Needless to say, we didn’t live there (and later were reverse white flight).