Marktown welcoming tour group walking in from Chicago, looking to revive historic tours (2024)

EAST CHICAGO — A sign outside Paul Myers' home in a historic planned worker community declares him the "Unofficial Mayor of Marktown," a title a past East Chicago mayor gave him.

He's always ready to welcome visitors into his home and around the neighborhood streets to explain the history of the community industrialist Clayton Mark modeled after an idyllic English village to house the workers at his Mark Manufacturing Co. steel mill, which is now part of Cleveland-Cliffs Indiana Harbor Works, sometimes called the largest steelmaking complex in North America.

The East Chicago neighborhood is an oasis of white stucco houses with gabled roofs arranged in a Garden City-style layout that's surrounded by some of the heaviest industry on earth: hulking steel mills, an idled tin plant and one of the largest oil refineries in the country.

Similar to company towns like the Pullman neighborhood in Chicago and the Sunnyside neighborhood Inland Steel built in East Chicago, Marktown continues to draw visitors interested in early 20th century Utopian thinking during the time when newly built steel mills first caused the Calumet Region's population to boom.

Myers, the president of the Marktown Preservation Society, will lead a tour group walking in from Chicago Sunday. The tour group plans to walk 17 miles from Chicago's South Side to see the historic enclave of worker housing, which is on the National Register of Historic Places and was featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not for having streets so narrow residents park on the sidewalks and walk in the street.

"I got a blind call that they'll be walking in and may also stop at the Mascot Hall of Fame," he said.

Myers has regularly given such tours in the past to groups, including with the Art Institute and historical societies from across Chicagoland. But the guided tours of Marktown have fallen off since the pandemic. He's hoping tour groups will start to return with more frequency.

"Hopefully, this will be a boost," he said. "Every tour is different but I explain what Marktown is, why it was built and show them what the inside of one of the homes looks like."

Mark commissioned the renowned architect Howard Van Doren Shaw, whose other works include the Gothic Revival Second Presbyterian Church on S. Michigan Avenue and the R.R. Donnelley and Sons Co. Calumet Plant on Cermak Road in Chicago, to design the neighborhood in 1917. Shaw designed a number of prominent buildings, including along Lake Shore Drive, in Graceland Cemetery and on the University of Chicago campus in Chicago. He designed the Erskine Mansion for the Studebaker president in South Bend, the B.F. Goodrich Rubber Company building in Akron and the Homewood Country Club in Flossmoor.

Marktown originally included a hotel for new workers and business residents could walk to like the defunct George Michael's Bar and Grill. But only a fraction of the homes were ever built.

People originally moved there to walk to their job at the steel mill but now many of the families have been living in the somewhat isolated enclave under the shadow of flare stacks and blast furnaces for generations.

Myers explains to tour groups the history of the mill and how Mark Manufacturing ended up selling after World War I ended and the federal government cancelled a defense contract without paying. The mill was subsequently owned by a number of steel companies like Youngstown Sheet and Tube, LTV and ArcelorMittal, frequently changing hands over the years.

He explains architectural details about the English Country-style homes, including the masonry, coal shoots and mail boxes on the front porches.

Myers maintains an archive of architectural blueprints, plats and a bust of Howard Van Doren Shaw that was designed by his daughter Sylvia Shaw Judson, who crafted the famous "Bird Girl" sculpture that was on the cover of his best-selling novel "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil."

"I used to give the tours about once a month during the summer. People would just call and show up," he said. "But there's basically been none since the pandemic."

Adventure Cycling of Chicago, Friends of Historic Second Church and the Society of Architectural Historians Chicago Chapter are among the groups that have toured in the past. Some have come in by bicycle, other by the busload.

Sometimes the groups have a connection to Shaw like the historical society from Lake Forest, Illinois, where he built his Ragdale estate and the Market Square shopping center.

"I've never charged for the tours and I provide everyone a walking tour map," he said. "We want people to come here to see the neighborhood. It has a significant history."

Anyone who's interested in signing a group up for a tour should email mrmarktown@yahoo.com.