Connections to the Past

I recently traveled with my american studies class to Lincoln Park to see the play "Clybourne Park." Walking around Lincoln Park I was struck by the apartments that seemed to have their front doors below street level. It appeared that the new Lincoln Park had covered up the Lincoln Park of the past.

After doing some research on the Lincoln Park neighborhood, I came across this article. It seems that residents of the area originally ranged from very affluent people focused on the park and the loop, to German farmers and shopkeepers in the North, and to industrial workers living close to the factories along the North section of the Chicago River.

The area ran into hard times during the Great Depression. Owners who had fallen on hard times neglected their properties. After World War II, residents of the southeastern section of Lincoln Park worried that their neighborhood would soon become a slum. This led to the Lincoln Park Conservation Association being created in 1954. This led to an urban-renewal program that encouraged private restoration of properties.

This led to a stark resistance from the poorer residents of Lincoln Park who resided in the southwestern area   of Lincoln Park. They complained that they were being priced out of their homes. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, the land values have increased dramatically and pretty much all of the poor have left. Lincoln Park is now one of the highest-status neighborhoods in the city.

Taking all of this into account, I still wonder about the raised street. The reason for not completely filling in everything could be completely monetary. By not filling in an apartment there is another place for someone to live and pay rent. After considering what I saw in the play "Clybourne Park," I think the reason for not filling in everything goes deeper than that.

In the play "Clybourne Park," the father of a Korean War veteran wants to bury the belongings of his son who committed suicide. The wife of the father however, keeps telling her husband to wait until tomorrow to bury her sons possessions. Why have her husband wait? Why not get those bad memories out of her life?

No one wants to completely erase events in their lives. They like to hold on to memories that remind them of the past. No one ever completely forgets and are always affected by their past. We see this in the second act of "Clybourne Park." The family moving in to the house where the son committed suicide rethinks buying the house as soon as they learn of the suicide. Why should it matter if a person committed suicide in your house 50 years ago? It had no bearing on their life and they weren't connected to the son at all. But the fact that it happened affects their view on the house.

The same ideas expressed in the play show up in the decision to not fill in the entire street. Lincoln Park strives to be a cultural mecca and showing some signs that the past still is present in the community help them achieve that. Successful neighborhoods usually have ties to the past and in turn the residents feel more connected to the community and each other. This want for a connection to the past is why I believe Lincoln Park chose not to fill in the entire street.