Mecca Flat Blues: Architecture, Archaeology, and Urban Renewal

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Archaeology of Urban Dissonance: Violence, Friction, and Change" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Jimmy Blythe wrote “Mecca Flat Blues” in 1924, capturing the centrality of the building’s South Side neighborhood to Chicago’s Black community and jazz scene. Constructed in 1892 as an exemplar of courtyard-style urban living, the Mecca began as a failed hotel for the 1893 World’s Fair. Transformed into apartments, its tenancy changed from a largely white to majority Black tenants by 1919, when the violent encounters of the Chicago Riot played out mere blocks away. In 1952, the Mecca became a harbinger of urban renewal when the Illinois Institute of Technology demolished the site to expand its campus. Initiated by IIT architects, our archaeological salvage project of the Mecca engages with ongoing efforts to reveal the structures of racism that continue today, most notably, passive-voiced histories that claim sites like the Mecca have “fallen into disrepair,” removing the active policies of structural racism and intentional destruction.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeology of Urban Dissonance: Violence, Friction, and Change   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2021

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology