History

The earliest development of the area was in the 1850s when statesman Stephen A Douglas started residential development of the lakefront area around the foot of 35th Street. Formal development was sporadic, with early land uses ranging from small residential cluster developments to the construction of Camp Douglas, a Civil War prisoner encampment which was erected in 1861 and removed at the end of the war. By the 1870s the streets were fully laid out in a regular grid system conforming to the street patterns and numbering of the city at large.

Although there was limited development of the area with speculative row house projects in the 1870s, full development of the area did not occur until the mid-1880s through 1900, when larger upper-middle class single-family residences nearly filled the available vacant land. While a majority of the properties were two-and three-story masonry row houses, a number of large free-standing brick residential structures were erected throughout the area. Commercial development at that time was limited, being concentrated mainly on 31st, 35th, and State streets, and consisted of buildings incorporating stores on the ground floor and offices or apartments on the floors above.

Between 1900 and 1920, the Douglas community changed from a white upper-middle class community to a predominantly black community with income levels varying from the upper and upper-middle class to the limited finances of many of the people who settled in the area after leaving the South for greater opportunities in Chicago. While the black population largely occupied existing buildings dating from the late 1800s, the black business community developed a new business district, fronting on the east side of State Street between 35th and 39th streets. Built largely with black capital, several major business buildings were erected at this location between 1908 and 1931, and were reflective of the commercial styles of the time.

The Great Depression of the 1930s had long-term detrimental effects on the Black Metropolis development, virtually wiping out many of its principal businesses and institutions. Many of the business and residential buildings fell into disrepair, and were subsequently demolished in the 1950s and 1960s as the target of urban renewal land clearances. Institutional developments such as the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology, Michael Reese Hospital complex, and public housing projects replaced much of the original housing and business stock of the area during that period, but fortunately most of the significant properties associated with the Black Metropolis development still survive. - NRHP