City - Chicago IL - Miracle Ham and Hamburgers 1941 - Side by Side
by Mike Savad
Title
City - Chicago IL - Miracle Ham and Hamburgers 1941 - Side by Side
Artist
Mike Savad
Medium
Photograph - Colorized Photo
Description
Colorized photo from 1941
Original title: 47th Street
Photographer: Russel Lee
Location: About 118 E 47th St, looking at Indiana, Bronzeville
You know what first attracted me to this? It was that hamburger sign! It was so simple, a bun and a burger, no frills, nice and simple. There was however a thing next to it on the window that I couldn't ID. To me it looked either like a bent hotdog on a plate. Or it looked like a turtle shell head on. Asking another person they said that it looked more like a burger with a bite taken out, so I went with that.
Miracle ham was just a bonus, and try as I might I could not find any mention of that stuff online. I can only assume it was a local meat.
When I first did research on the location, I was saddened, but not surprised that the buildings were largely gone. And as I was getting up to colorizing them, I was looking around on google maps, trying to figure out some things, and I played with the timing, and low and behold those buildings did exist in about 2015. Everything on the right side was demolished in that year. But the rest was mostly intact. Looked nothing like it does in here though. It actually looks pretty bad in here, but it held up. That corner building did not however.
The quick history on this, it was said that black people back in 1920 or so, were trying to escape lynching, so they moved to South Chicago. But people there shunned them, they couldn't even try on clothes or even shoes. They had to drink using a special glass in a soda fountain with a red bottom, so white people wouldn't accidentally drink from the same glass.
The moved here, and made a nice life for themselves, all their stores had basically the same goods as the stores the white people used. They had schools and made a successful career living here. But then in the 1950's, equal rights took hold, and they all moved out, leaving this area more or less in shambles as the years moved on.
Uploaded
August 21st, 2019
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Viewed 2,912 Times - Last Visitor from New York, NY on 03/28/2024 at 2:24 PM
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