Rib Hill Restaurant in Pill Hill

Something see on Pete Kastanes' Vanished Chicago Businesses on instagram. This business was located at 9129 S. Jeffery Blvd. What you see here is a menu from that long gone business.

Chicago's first streetcar #fbf

I know I did an earlier throwback post on Monday. In this case it was a throwback post regarding 63rd & Stony Island. Today we look at Chicago's first electric streetcar.

In October 2017, J.R. Schmidt did a post at Chicago History Today about the date of the first electric streetcar in Chicago. More than that it was the day "modern" mas transit came to Chicago. An electric street car line ran on Chicago's south side - well more specifically the line ran between Stony Island and South Chicago along 93rd Street on October 2, 1890.

Just think about this, this was about two years (June 6, 1892) before the first L line from Congress to Pershing Rd (39th Street) between State & Wabash entered service.

Here's a 1940 photo provided by Schmidt that shows a street car at 93rd & Jeffrey - so you get to see a 78-year-old view of what the Pill Hill community once looked like.

This is what Schmidt wrote:

The later 19th Century was the age of electricity. Cities were beginning to string overhead wire for street lights and telephones. Naturally there was talk of running street railway cars using electric power. After a few false starts, a successful electric line was launched in Richmond in 1888.

A live electric wire was strung over each set of tracks. A pole on top of the car connected to the wire, gathering power to run the car’s electric motor. The pole was called a “trolley,” so the new vehicles were often known as trolley cars.

Like most big cities, Chicago had many competing local transit companies in 1890. The city’s initial electric line ran on 93rd Street, between Stony Island and South Chicago Avenues. Rival railways tried to sabotage the effort, spreading dark rumors about passengers being accidentally electrocuted while riding the “death cars.”

But the trolley cars were triumphant. They were cleaner, faster, and cheaper to run. By 1906 both horse cars and cable cars were gone from the city’s streets.

The various local street railway companies were eventually unified. During the 1920s Chicago operated a fleet of over 3,000 cars on 172 routes over 1,060 miles of track. With 3.6 million fares each day, it was the largest city transit system on earth.

Basically we know how this story ended. 60 years ago streetcar service ended in Chicago. Streetcars after the second world war were phased out in favor of buses. So far the city hasn't shown a lot of interest in bringing back streetcars although with future development on Goose Island there is some interest in looking into a plan for light rail - which is today's version of streetcars.

At least there is footage of Chicago's last streetcar run which finished near 79th & Wentworth on the south side back in 1958.

Chicago Tonight: How Gentrification Takes Shape Across Chicago Neighborhoods

How often is it that I share a video from the news program of WTTW, Chicago Tonight?

Today we take a look at a segment aired on Tuesday further discussing the "strategic gentrification" comments of Chris Kennedy - a member of the Kennedy family who's running for the Democrat nomination for Governor. On this segment the discussion is between Natalie Moore of WBEZ Radio and Lynda Lopez of Streetsblog.

If I may focus on Moore for a second if there is this so-called "strategic gentrification" she's not seeing it in the Black areas of Chicago:

“We see many challenges in black South and West Side neighborhoods,” Moore said. “I don’t dispute his evidence is there about the challenges that those neighborhoods are facing but we are not seeing a replacement of people in those neighborhoods. We’re seeing population decline.”

In the above video, she specifically notes that the people who are leaving these areas aren't being replaced by more affluent people.

Also want to note this comment written to this particular segment:

 Some historical perspective. In the 1960's , 70's and 80's , many of us baby boomers and yuppies, moved into and changed neighborhoods like Old Town, Lincoln Park ,, De Paul, Lakeview , what became Wrigleyville, Ravenswood, Lincoln Square and Uptown. These were old, crumbling neighborhoods with old housing that badly needed renovation and/or replacing . Many of us did that work, or paid to have it done or paid the increased rents that ; incentivised landlords and developers to have it done.. In the process we pushed out or priced out the poorer residents who lived there. We didn't ask the questions posed by Lynda Lopez such as what is our impact and should we be doing this. We knew what we doing. We were making better housing for ourselves in an urban environment, near to where we worked and not in suburbia. We were buying housing we could afford and building up personal equity in the process. I and many other had no regrets about who we replaced, priced out or pushed out. Its a good thing we didn't because in the process, we changed the North side and made it into what it is today: a part of the city that is growing and a destination for new residents and tourists alike. It also provided tax revenue to support the city's taxing and spending plans. Some of the existing residents saw what was happening, jumped on the improvement train and improved their lives. Others were content to sit on their porches , watch the changes until the rising tide of improvement and higher prices swept them away. Overall, this process was no different than what others had been doing in Chicago for almost 200 years . Chicago was built on real estate speculation, development, building and improvement. Navel gazing questions like those raised by Lopez in her self indulgent tweet such as "Should a white person move into Pilsen" "What will be impact if I do" run counter to the very essence of Chicago. These are not the kind of questions to be asking if this City is to grow and prosper. We cannot build walls around islands of stagnation and poverty and say "hands off ". If our city is lucky enough to get Amazon's second HQ waves of improvement and change are going to come fast and furious and everyone living here had better be ready to handle it. Those who cannot handle living in a capitalist city that is always changing and growing should find a tranquil backwater where they can live out their days in peace and mind numbing tranquility.

I wonder, what if someone with the resources in a depressed neighborhood could do the work necessary on their home. It could be mostly outside with work on windows, roof, sidewalks, garage, outward appearance, etc. It could also be inside work as far as plumbing, electrical, redecorating, etc. It's your property and it's in your best interest to do the work necessary to keep it up. Perhaps if you're concerned about being squeezed out that's the best thing one could do.

Regardless this whole "dreaded G word" angle still has us talking since Mr. Kennedy made those remarks.

My Block My Hood My City: Helping hands in Pill Hill

[VIDEO] We had our first serious snow of 2017 earlier this week. Jahmal Cole and his volunteers go to Pill Hill to help the senior citizens and retirees to shovel snow on their sidewalks.

Tribune: Trouble in Pill Hill

[VIDEO] Above you see a nine minute video of Joe Zekas of YoChicago driving around the Pill Hill neighborhood on the south side of town with a resident in 2007. It's neighborhood that's known for nice houses many of them distinct from each other. And reading an article from the Tribune, it's undergoing changes even the police doesn't understand. The story is more human interesting talking to the family of a woman who was one of the first Black residents to move in and the story of the two later generations of her family:

No one expected gangs to find their way to Pill Hill.

That was one thing that attracted Bernice Mack to the neighborhood more than 40 years ago. More than the quiet streets, though, it was the charming red brick trilevel on South Chappel Avenue that grabbed her attention.

Mack fell in love with the four-bedroom house with a chain-link fence and a rose garden in the front yard the first time she saw it in fall 1970. Here, the registered nurse and her husband, a suburban bus driver, could live among like-minded people, building a prosperous legacy for their budding family that they would pass on through generations.

Their South Side neighborhood was named for the many doctors and pharmacists who once lived there. When whites moved out in the late 1960s, well-to-do African-Americans — entertainers, morticians, lawyers — bought their sprawling Prairie-style homes atop the Stony Island Ridge.

The nurses, police officers and teachers who moved into the bungalows at the bottom of the hill were not as affluent, but an address in Pill Hill firmly established them in Chicago's black middle class. The bottom of the hill was a step up for Mack and her husband, Gordon Dennis, who had previously rented an apartment a few miles north in Chatham.
...
After she and her husband separated, Mack raised her three children there without worries. Pill Hill was shielded from gangs by an imaginary barrier, built on class and wealth, that relegated violence to impoverished neighborhoods.

But over time, the gangs showed less and less respect for geography. With every generation, families in Pill Hill became more vulnerable.

By the time Mack's daughter, Angela Hongo, 44, an office manager at a Chicago publishing company, bought the beige brick Georgian next door in 1999, gangs had slid in from the outskirts. And by the time Hongo's children, Jarius and Jordonea, entered grade school, gangs had claimed the corner outside their classrooms.

By the time they reached high school, Jarius had fallen into their grips and Jordonea was on the fringes.

The story of teenagers being lured into gangs is a familiar one in Chicago. But not in a neighborhood like this, not in a family like this. Once gangs broke through, even a tenacious grandmother and a committed mother couldn't keep the seductive forces at bay.

Not even the police can explain what happened.

"You normally relate gang issues and gang fighting to war-torn neighborhoods, but that's not the case. The homes are well-kept, the lawns are manicured and when you go there, you feel like you're in a suburban community," said Cmdr. Scott Ruiz, of the Police Department's South Chicago District. "The violence is puzzling when you come into a neighborhood like this."

Mack, who said she is one of only three of the early black settlers still living on the block, believes she knows exactly what happened. Two decades ago, when young men started hanging out late at night at a basketball court across the street from her house, the neighbors got together and forced the city to tear up the cement and replace it with grass and flowers.

But Pill Hill is a different place now, with a new set of people living at the bottom of the hill.

I hope you'll read the whole thing.

This article helps remind why when I first started this blog I avoided doing crime stories here. The communities I hoped to cover didn't need to be saddled with news of crime that could only perpetuate the idea that the south side has nothing but crime. The truth is we have neighborhoods worthy of investment and my thinking was news of crime wouldn't only cause someone to not buy a home.

Still that's not to say this isn't a necessary conversation to have. We have to find a solution such as the one above to keep the gangs at bay from a community who don't want them in the neighborhood. If many of the gang members are young people do we shun them or do we find ways to help them?

Well, I wish there was an easy answer and that we could solve the problem at the push of a button.