Before it was Roosevelt Road: A 1910 photo reveals forgotten Chicago
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This photo was taken in Chicago, 1910. Photo: Chicago Sun-Times/Chicago Daily News collection/Chicago History Museum/Getty Images
This week's "History Mystery" explored a 1910 photograph of a forgotten stretch of Chicago: Maxwell Street.
- Just north of Maxwell Street, to be specific.
Zoom in: This photo shows the stretch of Roosevelt Road looking east at Halsted Street, which was once a bustling shopping district, selling everything from clothing to fresh vegetables.
The intrigue: The photo presents some great clues, which our readers seized upon, including the "12th Street Theater Vaudeville" sign.
- 12th Street wasn't renamed Roosevelt Road until 1919.
- A sign in the background features the number "700," which is an address just east of Halsted Street.
The bottom line: Today, most, if not all, of the Maxwell Street merchant area has been bulldozed to make way for the Kennedy Expressway (now the Jane Byrne interchange) and the UIC campus expansion in 1994.