Chicago’s nostalgic sentimentalists mustered one last, energetic protest on Saturday, but they failed to halt the inevitable. The city’s famed commercial center, State Street, changed for good that afternoon, as the legendary Marshall Field’s department store — founded in 1852, a survivor of the great Chicago fire of 1872, and a considerable source of native pride — became just one more Macy’s.
And this is only the beginning. An even bigger change is on its way for another old-time department store on the same strip, Carson Pirie Scott. Its 12-story building, a historical landmark designed by the famed Louis Sullivan, will soon be turned into offices and condominiums, with shops occupying the lobby level.
These are important events for Chicagoans. Their city is evolving. And the story has rightly gotten a lot of play in the local press, which closely followed the build-up to the official name change on Saturday. But the coverage has been strangely uncritical, bordering even on the boosterish.
The voices opposed to the change have all been old — very old — and the perspective largely emotional, not critical. Take 102-year-old Josephine Stern, who lamented to the Los Angeles Times that, “My friends are gone and, as of Saturday, so is our store … I have a lifetime spent here, and all I will have left are the memories.” Then there’s Dorothea Phipes, 93, who told the Associated Press (in a story published by the Chicago Tribune) that she thinks it’s “dreadful. It’s the only thing left down here. I’ve been coming here for 30 years, it’s terrible. The world is changing.”
Once the nostalgia is dispensed with, out comes the picture of a bright future.
The Tribune‘s big story about the changes on State Street reads almost like a brochure written by the developers:
Hard as it might be for many Chicagoans to accept these kinds of disappearances, the end of Carsons is more a reflection of rebirth than decline.
State Street is at the beginning of a renaissance, with many people moving into new condominiums and tourists flocking to the revived theater district and nearby Millennium Park, one of the nation’s top urban attractions.
Experts say the Carsons building is better suited for a new generation of establishments than an old-line department store.
The Chicago Sun-Times is just as upbeat, writing that the change is “another reflection that shoppers, despite their fondest memories, are putting their money into Wal-Mart, Target, Kohl’s, Best Buy and, on the other extreme, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom and Gucci.”
We’re not saying that we were eager to run out and join the hundreds of protesters (all centenarians?) who picketed the name change to Macy’s on Saturday. Overall, the changes seem to accommodate the shopping patterns of a new generation. But there are questions to keep in mind. Questions that aren’t being asked.
The change that needs the most scrutiny is the redevelopment of the Carsons building, whose owner, Joseph Freed & Associates, is planning to divide it into 250,000 square feet of retail shops and 350,000 square feet of office space. There is also talk of condos.
As the AP noted, the owners aren’t being very specific about what they are going to do with the space, saying only that they are “excited about the potential to bring additional world-class retailers to both State Street and Wabash Avenue.” A Sun-Times article points out that the building’s owner plans to “tear down interior walls to better market the open space.”
The only indication the building’s owners have given that they are going to preserve the massive structure is a promised renovation of the building’s terra cotta facades and historic cornice, which was removed in the 1940s. But we can’t help but wonder whether this is merely red meat for the preservationists, while the chain retailers prepare their cookie-cutter interiors.
Change can be embraced. And the majority of Chicagoans, taking the owners at their word, seem to think these particular shifts are good ones. The city’s major dailies reflect this. But it is the media’s job to keep a critical eye on projects like this, ensuring that progress does not end in destruction. The job is all the more important in neighborhoods, like State Street, that are central to a city’s traditions and identity.
The future in this case might be bright — but only if the Tribune and Sun-Times keep it that way.
Gal Beckerman is a former staff writer at CJR and a writer and editor for the New York Times Book Review.