I remember walking down Broadway and seeing these buildings one day. The next, they were gone. According to a Chicago fireman who worked at Engine 83, Uptown reportedly had the busiest fire station in America during the decade of the 1970s. Several factors contributed: an aging housing stock, overcrowded conditions, space heaters, arson-for-profit, and arson as a tool to evict tenants. I’m not sure what happened here … except that generations of memories were gone overnight. Notice how the boarded up buildings had already been broken into. Abandoned buildings, such as these, were often favorite places for drinking and drug dealing.
