Chicago's Downtown for Whites
SHAPIRO, HARVEY D.
National Reports CHICAGO'S DOWNTOWN FOR WHITES by harvey d. shapiro Chicago Downtown—where the biggest and best stores, offices and entertainment facilities are usually concentrated?has...
...Some of the old theaters successfully sought new audiences by booking black-oriented action and kung-fu shows...
...and some undoubtedly prefer to shop without the blacks, who generally stay downtown...
...By the mid-'60s, though, several factors combined to threaten the Windy City's integrated downtown...
...The change in the daytime mix of people was paralleled by trends in entertainment that left the large downtown legitimate theaters dark more and more frequently, and forced several movie houses to close their doors...
...The most important one, of course, was the move by whites to the suburbs...
...The end result of the bifurcation currently going on in Chicago retailing seems almost certain to be the same kind of racial segregation that has characterized housing in this city...
...As whites have taken their business to North Michigan, Loop merchants have felt compelled to cater more specifically to the needs of minority shoppers...
...Bonwit's decision set off a spiral of retailing expansion on North Michigan...
...Meanwhile Marshall Field & Co., whose downtown store is a landmark, shocked and puzzled Loop merchants by announcing it would construct a branch on North Michigan Avenue...
...By mid-1977, when the Water Tower arcade is expected to be fully occupied, a 44-story Marriott Hotel should be completed nearby as well, and work should be under way on a new Neiman Marcus store...
...Soon everybody was shopping in the Loop, be it in the bargain basements or the exclusive fur salons...
...That is, not until the early '70s when an alternative began to develop on North Michigan Avenue, the broad boulevard a mile north of the Loop that already had a five-block shopping strip featuring elite stores like Saks, Bergdorf Goodman and Stanley Korshak, a designer dress salon...
...Some observers are convinced this "tipping" process—a phenomenon usually associated with residential areas—is beyond reversal because of the merchandising techniques being used...
...became the first big department store to hire blacks as sales personnel, signalling to the newcomers that they were welcome in the whites' Loop...
...Yet the effect of the changes they have made in their lines has been to send even more whites to North Michigan Avenue, where a separate but increasingly equal set of shopping opportunities is now being vigorously created...
...Nonetheless, to substantial groups of whites the Loop remained an integral part of life...
...they have broadened their stocks to include less expensive items, and middle-income white shoppers have been flocking to the former carriage-trade district...
...And the development of Chicago's immense black middle class brought growing numbers of black shoppers downtown during the decade...
...Its focal point was State Street (that great street), like Fifth Avenue or Hollywood Boulevard, familiar even to those who had never seen it...
...But the North Michigan stores have not only increased in numbers...
...North Michigan Avenue is clearly emerging as one of the nation's major shopping districts, whether measured by the cachet of the labels to be bought there or by the volume of business...
...The block-square development also has a 1,300-seat legitimate theater, four cinemas, a health club, and the all-important four levels of parking...
...The relationship between Chicago's two shopping centers remains unsettled...
...The two department stores are separated by an eight-level arcade with space for 100 shops and restaurants...
...recently, in fact, it spent several million dollars to refurbish its main store...
...But if the Loop becomes a de facto black downtown, and North Michigan Avenue becomes the white downtown, there will be no common ground left in Chicago, no place where everybody feels comfortable...
...National Reports CHICAGO'S DOWNTOWN FOR WHITES by harvey d. shapiro Chicago Downtown—where the biggest and best stores, offices and entertainment facilities are usually concentrated?has traditionally been a common ground in America...
...Young whites were turning to the Off-Broadway-style theaters on Chicago's Near North Side or to suburban cinemas with first-run films and free parking...
...Still, many Chicago retailers and residents are deeply concerned that the rising proportion of black and Hispanic shoppers in the Loop will drive out the white trade altogether...
...For years Chicago's Loop—so called because of the intersecting elevated transit lines—was one of the world's legendary downtowns...
...its dazzling new stores are more interesting to browse in...
...Local sources estimate the area's retail sales surged from $75 million in 1974 to $100 million last year, and a gross of $160 million is being predioted for 1976...
...Rising above them is a 74-story tower containing the luxurious new 17-story Ritz-Carlton Hotel and 40 stories of condominiums, the cheapest of which sells for $135,000...
...Conversations with suburban women a few years ago turned up vague and ill-defined complaints about the downtown area, yet the root of their uneasiness was clear: the expanding presence of minority shoppers...
...It is closer than the Loop for Chicago's whites, who live on the North and Northwest Sides...
...More fundamentally, the development of mixed-use structures insures a place that will always be active, day and night, weekday and weekend...
...metropolis with two centers, one predominantly for whites, the other mainly for blacks and Hispanics...
...Those stores had for several years been experiencing a dramatic increase in customer traffic as a result of rapid population growth along the adjacent Gold Coast, the solid phalanx of expensive apartments on the shore of Lake Michigan...
...Recognizing the boulevard's potential, Bonwit Teller committed itself to opening a lavish store in a new 95-story John Hancock Building scheduled to go up on North Michigan...
...Today some 40 per cent of Chicago residents are black or Hispanic, and they make up a rapidly increasing proportion of the people working in Loop office buildings and shopping in Loop stores...
...For those with special tastes and sizes, or who regarded shopping as a social event, an occasion to get dressed up and have a nice lunch, there was nothing to match its selection of stores...
...This city, with its long rigidly segregated housing patterns, now seems on the verge of becoming the first U.S...
...The perceptible shift in racial balance, besides virtually stopping the nighttime flow of whites to the Loop, started to affect the attitudes of white shoppers...
...The new North Michigan Avenue is in many ways a model of what a contemporary downtown should be...
...Loop stores grossed $600 million in 1975...
...And like suburban malls, many of its stores have been staying open on Sunday...
...But its status as nobody's special turf appears to be changing, at least in Chicago...
...Water Tower Place in particular provides the ready parking and interior mall that only suburban shopping complexes usually offer...
...An exciting example of mixed-use construction, the Hancock tower was to top the Bonwit's on its lower floors with some 45 stories each of offices and apartments...
...Merchants in the Loop are trying to maintain its vitality...
...Here many of the most prominent names in American merchandising were arrayed along the stretch between Marshall Field & Co...
...Field and Lord & Taylor opened their new stores in October 1975 in the $170-million Water Tower Place, another innovative mixed-use structure...
...When prestigious shops like Gucci, Pucci and Lord & Taylor moved into Chicago, they settled there instead of in the Loop...
...When the thousands of blacks who migrated to Chicago before and after World War II settled in the South Side, their shopping and social life was concentrated in the area around 47th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue, derisively known as "the Spooks' Loop...
...In addition, an urban renewal project in neighboring Old Town had provided housing for thousands of upper-middle income whites...
...Harvey D. Shapiro is a free-lance journalist who frequently reports in these pages from the Chicago area...
...In the early '50s, however, Carson, Pirie, Scott & Co...
...Marshall Field insists it is not abandoning the area...
...and the flagship unit of Sears, Roebuck & Co.?once the home of WLS, an early clear channel radio station whose call letters proclaimed to the nation its location in the World's Largest Store...
...No matter how firmly surrounding residential areas have been divided among ethnic, racial and socio-economic groups, downtown has been for everybody...
Vol. 59 • June 1976 • No. 13
