@ TerryBarbarato: “Little Jack’s” was a locally-famous restaurant on Madison just east of Kedzie, and as you noted, they were famous for their ricotta-and-raisins cheesecake. The restaurant closed around 1962, but the cheesecake recipe (or one close to it) can be found on the internet with some searching.
I seem to recall seeing a daytime color view of this marquee from a movie promoting advertising, billboards etc. around Chicago. I can’t recall the name of it offhand, but it is out on YouTube.
<< I notice that the main entrance to the strip mall at the SE corner of Pulaski and Madison has the word “PARADISE” in large letters above the doors. >>
That’s the old Goldblatt’s store, the onetime anchor of the Madison-Pulaski shopping district. My mother’s family lived on the West Side for about ten years in the 50s and early 60s, and she remembered shopping there many times (no memories of the Paradise, unfortunately)…perhaps her most painful memory of the 1960s was seeing the Goldblatt’s being looted on the TV news during the King riots.
Found a photo of the E.A.R. Theater just now while looking for something else. Apparently the building lasted well beyond 1952…this collection is from a photographer employed by the Chicago Department of Buildings to document structured officially condemned by the city.
For an understanding of what was behind the collapse of the Great West Side after WW2, I recommend the book “Block By Block: Neighborhoods and Public Policy on Chicago’s West Side” by Amanda Seligman.
My mother lived with her parents on the West Side from about 1954 to 1958; she remembers West Madison and the Marbro fondly. From her memories, even in the 1950s it was apparent that the area had seen better days; by the early 1960s things were spinning out of control and it was time to get out.
As an example, in the summer of 1961 the owner of the fabled Graemere apartment hotel at Madison and Homan was literally chased out of Garfield Park by a group of local street youths; he sold the area landmark that December. My mother remembers other instances of street crime flaring up around the time her parents left the area in 1964.
That is indeed Lake and Austin. Before 1962 the Elevated descended to grade level just west of Laramie; the streetcar line crossed it at Pine Street and ran on the north side of the C&NW tracks to Austin. Note the waiting West Towns bus in the background, on the Oak Park side.
Car 78 was renumbered from 1781 to free up the number for a new order of buses in the early 1950s. It was scrapped within a year of this picture being taken.
You’re thinking of “Little Jack’s”. Zoom down the Street View until you see Edna’s on the left. That’s where it was. Somewhere in CTA’s photo archives is/was a picture of a westbound Madison streetcar with the restaurant (and the Senate) plainly visible.
Yes, they were legendary for their ricotta-and-raisins cheesecake (the recipe can be found on the ‘Net with some effort) and lasted until 1962, another casualty of the changing neighborhood.
This may bring back a few memories of Little Jack’s:
My recollection (from the book) is that the early start to the decline stemmed from the West Side being the last major area of Chicago to develop and grow before the Depression set in, and as a result there were few major industries that would “anchor” communities, and few to no upper-middle-class/rich residents, that would have a vested interest in staying where they were and supporting the area.
The West Side was mostly working-class and lower-middle to middle class residents (with some very overcrowded areas, especially after the war); as their economic situation improved after the war, they were naturally inclined to move up to better living circumstances than the by-then “dated” and worn-down neighborhoods they lived in…which essentially meant people were already moving out of the West Side en masse before the collapse of the 1960s. In addition, the Madison Street and Roosevelt Road shopping districts had to compete with downtown and, after the war, the nearby suburban shopping malls.
One of the saddest chapters in that book involves the placement of what is today UIC. The greater Garfield Park community was literally desperate to secure the siting of the campus in their neighborhood, as they believed it would stop the already visible neighborhood decline of the late 1950s. But, Daley and his minions won out, and they instead sited it in the Harrison-Halsted area that fought tooth and nail to keep it out.
The story of how and why the West Side slid downhill like an avalanche in the 1950s and 60s is a long and involved one, and it goes far beyond the fabled “blockbusters”…indeed, one can trace its roots back as far as the 1920s and the Great Depression.
There’s a fascinating (if grim) book called “Block By Block: Neighborhoods and Public Policy on Chicago’s West Side”, by Amanda Seligman, that sheds a lot of light on the subject.
Some time ago, I spoke to a friend who spent his first eleven years of life in West Garfield Park, several blocks from the West End. He didn’t recall much about the place, other than that “it looked as if it had been closed since before I was born”.
His recollection was that the Cicero Avenue shopping district that included the West End was “slowly dying” in his time (1950s-1965), and that there was a lot of vacant business space when he lived there. Just down the street, at Cicero and Monroe, was a somewhat more memorable area landmark…the “Sky-Hi Drive-In”, a fast-food restaurant that had been made from a retired DC-7C airliner.
Aerial maps on historicaerials.com (?) show the West End. It was an L-shaped structure with a narrow, deep lobby connected to a rather plain rectangular auditorium with no stagehouse, exposed overhead trusses (probably no dome or balcony inside) and commercial/apartment structures along Cicero. By the last view (early 1960s), the roof was already looking pretty rough.
I followed the Granada quite a bit in its last years and I question if it was closed due to its “poor condition”. The land banker that came to possess the theater at the end purposely let it go to pieces in the mid-late 1980s. Before that, from my recollection, it was in good shape.
@ TerryBarbarato: “Little Jack’s” was a locally-famous restaurant on Madison just east of Kedzie, and as you noted, they were famous for their ricotta-and-raisins cheesecake. The restaurant closed around 1962, but the cheesecake recipe (or one close to it) can be found on the internet with some searching.
I seem to recall seeing a daytime color view of this marquee from a movie promoting advertising, billboards etc. around Chicago. I can’t recall the name of it offhand, but it is out on YouTube.
<< I notice that the main entrance to the strip mall at the SE corner of Pulaski and Madison has the word “PARADISE” in large letters above the doors. >>
That’s the old Goldblatt’s store, the onetime anchor of the Madison-Pulaski shopping district. My mother’s family lived on the West Side for about ten years in the 50s and early 60s, and she remembered shopping there many times (no memories of the Paradise, unfortunately)…perhaps her most painful memory of the 1960s was seeing the Goldblatt’s being looted on the TV news during the King riots.
Found a photo of the E.A.R. Theater just now while looking for something else. Apparently the building lasted well beyond 1952…this collection is from a photographer employed by the Chicago Department of Buildings to document structured officially condemned by the city.
http://collections.carli.illinois.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/uic_pic&CISOPTR=11733&CISOBOX=1&REC=19
For an understanding of what was behind the collapse of the Great West Side after WW2, I recommend the book “Block By Block: Neighborhoods and Public Policy on Chicago’s West Side” by Amanda Seligman.
My mother lived with her parents on the West Side from about 1954 to 1958; she remembers West Madison and the Marbro fondly. From her memories, even in the 1950s it was apparent that the area had seen better days; by the early 1960s things were spinning out of control and it was time to get out.
As an example, in the summer of 1961 the owner of the fabled Graemere apartment hotel at Madison and Homan was literally chased out of Garfield Park by a group of local street youths; he sold the area landmark that December. My mother remembers other instances of street crime flaring up around the time her parents left the area in 1964.
That is indeed Lake and Austin. Before 1962 the Elevated descended to grade level just west of Laramie; the streetcar line crossed it at Pine Street and ran on the north side of the C&NW tracks to Austin. Note the waiting West Towns bus in the background, on the Oak Park side.
Car 78 was renumbered from 1781 to free up the number for a new order of buses in the early 1950s. It was scrapped within a year of this picture being taken.
You’re thinking of “Little Jack’s”. Zoom down the Street View until you see Edna’s on the left. That’s where it was. Somewhere in CTA’s photo archives is/was a picture of a westbound Madison streetcar with the restaurant (and the Senate) plainly visible.
Yes, they were legendary for their ricotta-and-raisins cheesecake (the recipe can be found on the ‘Net with some effort) and lasted until 1962, another casualty of the changing neighborhood.
This may bring back a few memories of Little Jack’s:
http://chuckmanchicagonostalgia.wordpress.com/2009/08/31/little-jacks-restaurant-3175-west-madison-at-kedzie-four-images-plus-logo/
My recollection (from the book) is that the early start to the decline stemmed from the West Side being the last major area of Chicago to develop and grow before the Depression set in, and as a result there were few major industries that would “anchor” communities, and few to no upper-middle-class/rich residents, that would have a vested interest in staying where they were and supporting the area.
The West Side was mostly working-class and lower-middle to middle class residents (with some very overcrowded areas, especially after the war); as their economic situation improved after the war, they were naturally inclined to move up to better living circumstances than the by-then “dated” and worn-down neighborhoods they lived in…which essentially meant people were already moving out of the West Side en masse before the collapse of the 1960s. In addition, the Madison Street and Roosevelt Road shopping districts had to compete with downtown and, after the war, the nearby suburban shopping malls.
One of the saddest chapters in that book involves the placement of what is today UIC. The greater Garfield Park community was literally desperate to secure the siting of the campus in their neighborhood, as they believed it would stop the already visible neighborhood decline of the late 1950s. But, Daley and his minions won out, and they instead sited it in the Harrison-Halsted area that fought tooth and nail to keep it out.
The story of how and why the West Side slid downhill like an avalanche in the 1950s and 60s is a long and involved one, and it goes far beyond the fabled “blockbusters”…indeed, one can trace its roots back as far as the 1920s and the Great Depression.
There’s a fascinating (if grim) book called “Block By Block: Neighborhoods and Public Policy on Chicago’s West Side”, by Amanda Seligman, that sheds a lot of light on the subject.
Some time ago, I spoke to a friend who spent his first eleven years of life in West Garfield Park, several blocks from the West End. He didn’t recall much about the place, other than that “it looked as if it had been closed since before I was born”.
His recollection was that the Cicero Avenue shopping district that included the West End was “slowly dying” in his time (1950s-1965), and that there was a lot of vacant business space when he lived there. Just down the street, at Cicero and Monroe, was a somewhat more memorable area landmark…the “Sky-Hi Drive-In”, a fast-food restaurant that had been made from a retired DC-7C airliner.
Aerial maps on historicaerials.com (?) show the West End. It was an L-shaped structure with a narrow, deep lobby connected to a rather plain rectangular auditorium with no stagehouse, exposed overhead trusses (probably no dome or balcony inside) and commercial/apartment structures along Cicero. By the last view (early 1960s), the roof was already looking pretty rough.
I followed the Granada quite a bit in its last years and I question if it was closed due to its “poor condition”. The land banker that came to possess the theater at the end purposely let it go to pieces in the mid-late 1980s. Before that, from my recollection, it was in good shape.