Our Town (The Times)

A community of many faces Did you know? The Marktown area is featured in Ripley’s “Believe It or Not” as the only neighborhood in North America where people park their cars on the sidewalk and walk in the street. Residents Median resident age: 30.8 East Chicago’s Marktown neighborhood with what is now BP Amoco in the distance. years A community of many faces trademark masonry neighborhood’s life blood, Median household income: construction, he’s seen offering a greenhouse, water $26,538 BY JIM MASTERS setbacks when others have not park, playground, picnic areas Median house value: $69,900 Times Correspondent shared his vision of returning and the Block Stadium baseball the community to its glory days. park. Just east of Chicago, Myers describes Thomas Frank, who Population along the Lake Michigan shore, Marktown as the “Brigadoon of recently founded the 2000 Census: 32,414 lies the city of East Chicago — industry housing rising out of Washington Park Historic July 2002 estimate: 31,731 a community of many faces. the mists of industry.” Society, said the park’s beauty (-2.1% change) It’s a steel town, a “This quaint little and summer festivals beckon beach community, a beacon of neighborhood designed just visits year after year. Males: 15,509 (47.8%) freedom and prosperity for prior to World War I, utilizing “The neighborhood’s Females: 16,905 (52.2%) Mexican immigrants and the the designs brought forward in relationship with the past has longtime fortress of Democratic the garden city concept of been preserved,” Frank said. Race party politics — some would Ebinezer Howard, truly does “The large period revival-styled Hispanic: 51.6% say the “shadow” county seat. live and die a little each day,” homes on tree-lined streets Black: 36.1% East Chicago, founded Myers said. “In what could and were originally the residences in 1893, is also a city of distinct should be a quaint of many management-level Other race: 24% neighborhoods — 14 to be neighborhood of 800- to 1,200- personnel in the early days of White: 12.1% exact. square-foot, well-built homes, Inland Steel.” Two or more races: 2.6% Ask an East Chicago we find deferred maintenance, Today, Washington Park resident where he’s from, and illegal fences and boarded up remains a stable residential American Indian: 0.8% he’ll tell you the neighborhood: buildings.” area, Frank said, calling it a Calumet, West Calumet, East A 1975 petition for testament to the strength of Ancestry Calumet, North Harbor, East Marktown to be placed on the good design with contemporary Polish: 4.8% Harbor, South Harbor, West National Register of Historic relevance. German: 1.5% Harbor/Carey-Drummond, Places reads, in part, “Its rich past and Irish: 1.2% Marktown Historic District, New “Marktown presents a living magnificent homes have Addition, Northside, Roxana, lesson in history and culture attracted many people from the Southside, Sunnyside or from the pioneer growth period surrounding working-class Note: This article first Washington Park Historic of the Calumet Region. This neighborhoods as a mark of appeared in a special section District. region, which is America’s achievement,” Frank said. Each neighborhood is industrial heartland, is quite “Pride in the neighborhood is of The Times in the fall of architecturally, historically and young compared to other great growing as the residents are 2005. The section included ethnically distinct from the regions of this nation.” forming an association with a stories about neighborhoods others, said Paul Myers, a Like Marktown, the mission to maintain and throughout the Calumet Marktown resident and historic Washington Park Historic preserve the quality of life that Region. preservationist. District, developed during the is already present.” For several years, Myers first 20 years of the 20th has fought for the preservation century, remains a well-kept and revitalization of this original secret. Snuggled in the “Its rich past and magnificent homes have “company town,” developed by southern portion of the city’s attracted many people from surrounding the former Mark Manufacturing Indiana Harbor section, the in the early 20th century. neighborhood is a small, richly working-class neighborhoods as a mark of While Myers can claim developed residential area achievement” many successes in preserving encircling Washington Park. and enhancing Marktown’s The park is the Thomas Frank, Washington Park resident.

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