Chicago's shrinking Maxwell Street Market
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Maxwell Street Market in the 1940s and in 2024. Photos: Courtesy of the Chicago History Museum and Steve Balkin
When Maxwell Street Market reopens for the season this Sunday, it won't look much like the wild workingman's bazaar that sprang up on the site 150 years ago.
Why it matters: Over the years, the city-run market has lost hundreds of vendors and shrunk from 52 to just six markets a year, leaving some longtime market fans worried the Chicago institution will become unrecognizable or disappear altogether.
- Professor Steve Balkin, a director of the Maxwell Street Foundation, which preserves the market's history, says he and the group have shared these concerns and potential solutions with Chicago officials, "but the city just ignores us and ignores me."
Catch up quick: The market opened in the 1870s (and the city recognized it in 1912) to sell food and building supplies in an area initially dominated by German and Irish immigrants. Migrants from Eastern Europe, the Mississippi Delta, Italy, Greece and Mexico followed and each left their cultural stamp.
- In the early 1990s, UIC's expansion pushed the market from Maxwell to Canal Street and then Desplaines Street, where robust weekly markets with food stands, bric-a-brac, and blues musicians continued until the pandemic shut it down.
- After the city relaunched weekly in 2022 on a May through October schedule, the market dropped to six times a year in 2024 and returned to the now gentrified intersection of Maxwell and Halsted. There, food stalls are no longer allowed because they'd compete with nearby restaurants.
What they're saying: "It just lacks what I defined as Maxwell Street," Balkin tells Axios. "A big part of the market for me was the nationally celebrated food stands, the authenticity, the funky used goods like old picture frames. Those are now replaced by people selling bourgeois things at high prices, like candles."
The ask: Advocates want the city to return the market to Desplaines Street, "where food vendors won't have conflicts with restaurants and big box stores," Balkin says.
- He also urges city officials to restore a weekly schedule that will allow the traditional vendors of tools, Mexican produce and used oddities to reestablish a regular following.
- Balkin says the Maxwell Street Foundation can help the city with grants and interns to see it through.
The other side: "The Chicago Department of Culture Affairs and Special Events is looking forward to a successful and impactful 2025 season of Maxwell Street in its historic and original location," DCASE spokesperson Bria Purdiman told Axios in an email.
- "Following the pandemic, the number of vendors and attendees decreased from prior years at 800 S. DesPlaines. Last year's decision to move the market back to its historic location created new energy and increased interest that we're sure will continue this year."
The latest: Purdiman says this year's markets will have themes and feature "art, vintage and rare finds, jewelry, health and beauty items and home goods, along with live entertainment, arts activations and fun for all ages."
- This Sunday's theme is "spring garage sale."
The Maxwell blues: June's market theme is "Celebrating Chicago Blues," with performers scheduled each hour.
Yes, but: "On old Maxwell Street there was no czar who decided who would play and where," Balkin said. "Blues musicians would pick out a spot on a street corner or next to a restaurant or record store or on a porch of a building or in a vacant lot next to an abandoned school bus and then express themselves with a bucket [to collect money] in front of them."
- "It provided unlimited opportunities for musicians to experiment with sounds that created narrative songs for the self and for their grassroots fans."
What's next: Balkin says he'll keep trying to convince the city to save the market and restore it as a place that "helps the survival of people at the bottom of the income ladder."