“Madison Street on the city’s West Side has been rocked by some serious body blows over the last 60 or so years and it shows: the unhealed scars left by the civil unrest that followed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 assassination, nearly three generations of disinvestment and scores of vacant commercial buildings.

“Yet the street goes on. Down, perhaps. But never quite out.

“And now, the thoroughfare is the focus of a city study aimed at helping bring new retail, housing and other activity to three miles of Madison Street, stretching from the shadow of the United Center to the heart of K-Town.

“Madison [is] probably the most visible and historically significant commercial corridor on the West Side,’ Chicago Department of Planning Supervising Planner Brian Hacker said of the Madison Street Corridor Study. ‘We’re looking at the levers that we can pull as a city planning department — zoning, regulatory, environmental … to facilitate development.’

“The street’s existing bones are battered, but they’re still good.

“Madison Street runs through the south portion of the remarkable 173-acre William Le Baron Jenney and Jens Jensen-designed Garfield Park. And there is an enviable collection of surviving retail buildings still hanging on at Madison Street and Pulaski Road.

“Not to mention Out of the Past Records, a vinyl records haven at 4407 W. Madison St. that’s been an institution in the community since 1968.

“Sharif Walker, CEO of the West Side nonprofit Bethel New Life, is among the 18 community members working with the city on the corridor plan.

“‘You have everything you need,’ Walker said of Madison Street. ‘You have a major park. You have schools. You have shopping … all the ingredients are there.’

“Work on the corridor study began last fall with a community meeting at the Garfield Park Fieldhouse.

“Hacker said residents want to see commercial development return to Madison. In the street’s heyday, between 1920 and 1960, it was jam packed with retail stores, movie theaters and the like, and it could give a downtown street a run for its money in terms of earnings.” (Bey, Chicago Sun-Times, 3/21/26)

Preservation Chicago strongly supports the attention and investment in Garfield Park and the Madison Pulaski Commercial District. The Madison Pulaski Commercial District was a Preservation Chicago 2017 Chicago 7 Most Endangered and the most prominent building in the district, the Hotel Guyon, has been a Chicago 7 Most Endangered in 2013, 2014 & 2018. We have long advocated for reinvestment in this once thriving corridor. It has great buildings that have suffered from decades of disinvestment and neglect. If restored and reactivated, these buildings could be the key to unlocking the potential of the Madison Pulaski Commercial District.

Read the full story at Chicago Sun-Times

• Chicago seeks to make the West Side’s Madison Street shine again; With the nearby $7 billion United Center redevelopment project kicking off just to the east, a study aims to help bring new retail, housing and other activity to a long-neglected portion of the thoroughfare, Lee Bey, Chicago Sun-Times, 3/21/26
• Madison-Pulaski District – a Preservation Chicago 2017 Chicago 7 Most Endangered