The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot

by Chicago Commission on Race Relations

C. NEGROES AND PROPERTY DEPRECIATION

No single factor has complicated the relations of Negroes and whites in Chicago more than the widespread feeling of white people that the presence of Negroes in a neighborhood is a cause of serious depreciation of property values. To the extent that people feel that their financial interests are affected, antagonisms are accentuated.

When a Negro family moves into a block in which all other families are white, the neighbors object. This objection may express itself in studied aloofness, in taunts, warnings, slurs, threats, or even the bombing of their homes.[24] White neighbors who can do so are likely to move away at the first opportunity. Assessors and appraisers in determining the value of the property take account of this general dislike of the presence or proximity of Negroes. It matters little what type of citizens the Negro family may represent, what their wealth or standing in the community is, or that their motive in moving into a predominant white neighborhood is to secure better living conditions—their appearance is a signal of depreciation. So it happens that when a Negro family moves into a block, most of the white neighbors show resentment toward both the Negro family and the owner or agent who rents or sells the property. Whites owning homes in the neighborhood become much exercised by fear of loss both of money and of neighborhood exclusiveness and desirability. The Negro suffers under the realization that, for reasons which he cannot control, he is considered undesirable and a menace to property values. Wherever Negroes have moved in Chicago this odium has attached to their presence. The belief that they destroy property values wherever they go is now commonly taken as a valid explanation of any unfriendliness toward the entire group. This feeling takes on the strength of a protective instinct among the whites.

So wide and menacing, indeed, has this feeling grown that the Commission deemed it necessary to make a thorough inquiry into its basis and to determine, if possible, to what degree the presence of Negroes is a factor in the depreciation of property values. Therefore it is essential to distinguish clearly between: (1) general factors in depreciation; and (2) presence of Negroes as an influence in these factors, and also as a direct factor.

What is meant by "depreciation"? Real estate men know it as "a loss in market value." Market value is "the price which a buyer who wishes to buy but is not forced to buy will pay to an owner who wishes to sell but is not forced to sell." Depreciation is reflected, not only in market values, but also in appraised or assessed valuations. Before purchasing property it is customary to take into account the surrounding conditions that affect its value, as well as its inherent value. Assessed valuations, fixed for taxing purposes by authorized public officials, fluctuate to some extent in harmony with appraised valuations. This analysis of the factors that tend to determine the value of real estate for one purpose or another gives a fairly dependable rule for finding whether it has risen or fallen in a given period. If property is thus shown to have decreased in value, it is said to have depreciated.

The value of real estate is determined largely by the human factors involved. This fact accounts for the striking differences in value of property, for example, on Sixteenth Street, on State Street, in the "Loop," on Chicago Avenue, and on Sheridan Road. Convenience, desirability, and other factors involving individuals who make up the public enter into the determination of realty values.

It is necessary to distinguish between land values and improved-property values. Usually buildings are erected that harmonize in cost with the value of the land on which they stand. But this harmonious relationship may not continue; developments in the neighborhood may increase materially the value of the land, while the value of the improvements decreases as time goes on. The values of the land and of the improvements do not necessarily rise and fall together, though improvements generally tend to add to the value of the land. Much, however, depends on the use to which the land is put, and even more on the use of adjacent land. That use may be such as seriously to impair the value of all the land within a given area or some particular tract in that area. Such impairment is a chief reason advanced for zoning, so that property values in various given districts may not be impaired through inharmonious uses, and that property values throughout a city may thus be stabilized.

It is also necessary to distinguish between "deterioration" and "depreciation." They are not interchangeable. Deterioration of improvements on land affects the value of the improvement, not necessarily the value of the land. The property as a whole may be depreciated by deterioration of improvements, but an increase in the land value might more than offset this loss. This would be accounted for by a possible change in the use of the land. For example, the buildings on the North Side in which Negroes now live are uniformly old and bad, yet the Negroes cannot buy them. The properties are in process of change from residence to industrial use, and the values placed upon them for the latter use are far beyond the financial capacity of the Negro residents.

I. GENERAL FACTORS IN DEPRECIATION OF RESIDENCE PROPERTY

Apart from any racial influence there are many causes of depreciation in property values, the responsibility for all of which has often been thoughtlessly placed upon Negroes. Throughout the city may be observed blocks, streets, and neighborhoods running a declining course in desirability for residence purposes, losing value, changing in character and, in short, depreciating, but in or near which no Negroes live. The following are important factors of depreciation not due to race:

Physical deterioration.—The natural wear of time and the elements is a constant factor. Few houses are built to withstand these inroads over a long course of years, even though they have the utmost care. Neglect and lack of repairs and improvements hasten this deterioration sometimes greatly. Character of occupancy is often a factor. Some occupants are highly destructive, particularly in rented houses. Their careless or inept use of a house often adds vastly to the wear and tear and hastens deterioration. Overcrowding has a like effect.

Change in the character of a neighborhood.—Depreciation in property values in large cities is due in marked degree to factors not purely physical. There is always a continuing yet varying fluctuation in the character of neighborhoods; a restless shifting of population and conditions due to growth which rarely has been orderly or scientific. The psychological factor of residential property values is such that they may change very rapidly with the advent into a homogeneous neighborhood of a few families of a different nationality or social status. Between Twelfth and Thirty-first streets in the South Side Negro residence area, once the most fashionable white residence section, property values based on residential uses slumped utterly, and then later began to increase because of industrial uses. Such a change is often due to an encroachment upon a residential district of commercial or industrial enterprises. Neighbors will move away rather than endure such disturbance of their peace and comfort. Their places may be taken by people less sensitive to such influences who may be drawn to the neighborhood by reduced rents resulting from the exodus of former residents. Then rapid deterioration usually sets in as the tone of the neighborhood falls. A like result follows a change from an exclusive residential district into one of rooming-and boarding-houses and large residences remodeled into flats.

The shifting of fashionable neighborhoods soon leads persons of means to abandon a high-grade residential section for some suburb or newer neighborhood which they think better suited to their social positions.

Use of buildings for immoral purposes.—Such use, though clandestine, eventually becomes known; and although the property yields high rents, it lowers the standing and value of the block or neighborhood and of adjacent areas. It not only deteriorates the buildings thus used, but also drives decent people from the locality; and the deserted houses either remain vacant or are taken by less desirable occupants. Depreciation inevitably results.

Public garages, theaters, and kindred nuisances.—People of a high-grade residential district do not wish to live too near a public garage, theater, bathing-beach, saloon, cabaret, dance hall, bowling-alley, or billiard room. If they are unable to keep such enterprises out of their neighborhood they will sell their property and find homes elsewhere.

Changes in transportation facilities.—These may depreciate property in two ways: (a) they may themselves introduce obnoxious dirt or noise-making features or bring in industries with such features; (b) new transportation facilities often open up more desirable localities to which people are drawn from the older localities. In both cases depreciation ensues.

Overbuilding.—Overbuilding is another and frequent cause of depreciation. Building booms are often followed by years of depression due to an oversupply of buildings.

II. DEPRECIATION ON THE SOUTH SIDE

The area from Thirty-first to Thirty-ninth Streets and State Street to the lake is now the center of the largest Negro residential area in the city, having approximately 20 per cent more Negroes than whites.

In the eighties and nineties this area was part of the most fashionable residential district in Chicago and included some of the city's most prominent families and business leaders. They lived in houses which they had built for their homes, and which were the first fine residences erected after the Chicago fire of 1871. Michigan, Prairie, and South Park avenues and Grand Boulevard were the most fashionable streets with the best houses.

The Negro population then lived immediately west, between Wentworth Avenue and State Street and north of Thirty-fifth Street.

The North Side and the North Shore had not yet developed as fashionable neighborhoods. Indeed, the most prominent residence on Lake Shore Drive and one of the earliest stood almost alone for many years before fashionable people settled around it.

As the North Side grew in fashionable favor the South Side began to lose its original exclusiveness, and its residences began to depreciate. These properties, while their original owners occupied them, were worth, many of them, from $30,000 to $100,000, including large grounds, elaborate interior decorations, and sometimes works of art. The usual range of the original costs of these houses was from $10,000 to $30,000. The change steadily continued, and these houses were rented and sold by the first owners at reduced prices to persons less prominent socially, until nearly all the original families had gone. A few refused to sell their houses and left them in charge of caretakers; and a very few still remain.

The gradual lowering of the market value of the property is pictured by prominent real estate men well acquainted with the neighborhood for many years:

It is a positive fact, an economic fact, that any time a poor class of people moves into a neighborhood formerly occupied by people who had an earning capacity greater than that of the people moving in, there is depreciation. That is true whether Italians move in, or Poles, Negroes, Greeks, etc. If the people moving into the neighborhood earn less and have less than the people formerly living in that neighborhood, there is depreciation.

Between 1900 and 1910 a few Negroes moved into Wabash Avenue. The houses were very old and built close together, with few single residences. Negroes did not progress farther eastward in any large numbers because the next street was Michigan Avenue, probably the most select of all the streets in the area. With the pressure of increasing numbers and ascending economic ability urging them out of the congested, uncomfortable, and unclean dwellings west of State Street, Negroes could and would pay higher rents than the class of white persons to which the oldest houses would next descend. In 1912, in the area east of State Street, practically all of the original residents had gone, and few Negroes had come in. Real estate men estimate that generally natural depreciation proceeds at the rate of 2 to 2½ per cent a year. When Negroes first came into the area the buildings were at least twenty years old, and many were much older, representing at the lowest figure a very substantial depreciation.

There was another important factor in the depreciation of the area. In 1912 the old vice district west of State Street and immediately northwest of this area was broken up. The inmates numbered approximately 2,000 and were by no means confined strictly within the recognized limits. They moved into the nearest good houses available where they could continue to ply their trade clandestinely. They could afford to pay high rents, and numbers of real estate owners profited greatly by dealing with them. As many of these houses stood, they again yielded rents almost as high as when they were new. Cabarets, saloons, and amusement places packed the side streets, and buffet flats opened up in the residence blocks. Raids and prosecution, night visits from men who did not live in the district, called attention to the changed character of the neighborhood, and property values sank lower. Pressure from prosecuting agencies, as well as the attraction of better houses in less conspicuous neighborhoods, urged the vice element southward. This southward trend is indicated in the maps, facing pages [342] and [346], showing the environment of the South Side Negro.

While property in this area could be bought cheaply it was also possible to obtain proportionately high rents by placing Negroes or prostitutes in houses not rented to either class before. Negroes were always charged higher rents than were the whites who immediately preceded them.

The Juvenile Protective Association in 1913 made a study called The Colored People of Chicago and published it in a small pamphlet. Concerning the disposition of real estate men to profit in this way, the reports say:

... the dealer offers to the owner of an apartment house which is no longer renting advantageously to white tenants cash payment for a year's lease on the property, thus guaranteeing the owner against loss, and then he fills the building with colored tenants. It is said, however, that the agent does not put out the white tenants unless he can get 10 per cent more from the colored people.

The fact that for like quarters Negroes pay much higher rents than any other group in the city was discussed by the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy in a special study of housing for Negroes in 1911-12. The report says:

The explanation for this condition of affairs among the colored people is comparatively simple; the results are far-reaching. The strong prejudice among the white people against having colored people living on white residence streets, colored children attending schools with white children, or entering into other semi-social relation with them, confines the opportunities for residence open to colored people of all positions in life to relatively small and well-defined areas. Consequently the demand for houses and apartments within these areas is strong and comparatively steady, and since the landlord is reasonably certain that the house or apartment can be filled at any time, as long as it is in any way tenantable, he takes advantage of his opportunities to raise rents and to postpone repairs.

It was during this period that buildings could be easily purchased by Negroes. One white real estate dealer whose interests are almost exclusively in the area under discussion has purchased more than 1,000 such houses which he rents to Negroes. These buildings were not purchased from Negroes but from first, second, and third owners, and at a price much below the original value.

With an opportunity for renting or purchasing the houses in this area, Negroes began to move in, first in small numbers and soon in larger numbers. They naturally sought to abandon the generally and often extremely dilapidated houses west of State Street.

III. DEPRECIATION AFTER THE COMING OF NEGROES

Buildings twenty to thirty years old deteriorate rapidly unless expensive repairs are made. As Negroes were often unable to make such repairs while paying for the property, the depreciation continued.

Widespread buying of property in this district by Negroes began during the period of the migration. Many home-owning Negroes, having sold their property in the South and brought the money to Chicago, found it easier to buy a house here on a first payment of $200 to $500, and on monthly instalments thereafter, than to pay the rents demanded. Few, however, knew anything of city property values; they were often exploited by agents or assumed larger obligations than they could easily handle.

Many Negroes purchased fairly substantial dwellings on the long-time instalment plan without providing for repairs and maintenance. Usually the monthly payment to cover interest, taxes, and instalment on principal was about all the Negro and his family could carry, even though his wife's wages supplemented his. Thus nothing was left for upkeep.

Real estate agents before the Commission agreed that Negroes meet these obligations with reasonable regularity. One white real-estate broker said: "Those of us who have dealings with Negroes find that they make very fair clients on the whole, pay their way, and ask no favors that any other human being would not ask."

Another referred to Negroes as "wonderful instalment buyers" who have a "tendency to invest in a home earlier than whites," and said that in fifteen years' experience his firm had never foreclosed on a Negro home buyer; and in only two cases, due to exceptional circumstances, had contracts been forfeited. Two Negro real estate dealers said:

A colored man usually feels that he will go without food rather than not meet his obligations. That is one reason why sometimes his home is run down, because he has spent every dollar he can get to meet the payments on that property. He cannot spare the money sometimes to buy a lawn mower or sprinkling hose.

A colored man who buys a piece of property in a neighborhood has no financial connections. He meets his obligations promptly for three reasons: first, he wants a home; second, he knows they may squeeze him; third, that mortgage is coming due and he doesn't know where to go to get it renewed. We have no organization of our own to back him. If the fence is to be fixed or the house is to be painted, and a year from that date the mortgage is due, and he has $500 in the bank, he will not paint his house for the simple reason that, if he did, when the mortgage is due he will not be able to meet it. He saves, and when the mortgage comes due he has $500, $600, or $700 set aside to meet it.

Frequently Negroes overreach themselves in purchasing property. Charles Duke, a Negro, in a pamphlet on Negro housing in Chicago remarked:

A very harmful result of present tendencies is manifested in the acquisition of homes by colored people beyond their social or economic advancement. The economic waste in this particular has been especially great. They represent in many cases a considerable outlay of capital. The domestic facilities they afford are years beyond the needs of the people to whom they are allotted. In many instances it costs a small fortune annually to maintain one of these establishments, and when this is not done the depreciation is both rapid and spectacular.

There is such lack of hotels and lodging-houses for Negroes, especially for single men, that many Negroes have bought or rented houses with the intention of paying for them, in part at least, with income from lodgers or boarders. Such use leads to overcrowding, with consequent rapid deterioration and depreciation. This tendency is accentuated by the fact that the houses that Negroes can buy are usually old and deteriorated.

While new arrivals from the South soon learn that the poorest city tenement requires better care than plantation cabins, their carelessness meanwhile contributes to the property depreciation of their dwellings and neighborhood.

There are other factors of depreciation in this district which became active after the Negroes came, but for which they were not wholly responsible. One was the remodeling of residences for business purposes. While the remodeled property may bring larger returns, neighboring residence property declines in value. Many fine old dwellings on Michigan Avenue and Grand Boulevard have been transformed in recent years into lamp-shade factories, second-hand fur shops, and small business houses; and these changes have depreciated neighboring property for residence purposes.

Another factor of depreciation is the city's tolerance of gambling and immorality in and near areas of Negro residence. In most cities where Negroes are numerous a like tendency appears. Little consideration is given to the desire of Negroes to live in untainted districts, and they have not been able to make effective protest.

In 1916 the Chicago Daily News, in a series of articles on the Negroes, described some of the disorderly saloons and cabarets in the South State and Thirty-fifth streets region, with their vile associations of disreputable whites and blacks:

Other resorts in the district are worse; some are better. These are typical of the roistering saloons, a kind which would not be tolerated in any other part of the city since the old Twenty-second Street levee was broken up. White proprietors have brought them into the district, and many of them are patronized largely by crowds from other parts of the city. The resorts are forced on the colored people. Those colored families in good circumstances and desiring respectable surroundings move away, only to find disorderly saloons trailing after them.

At 301 East Thirty-seventh Street, on the southeast corner of Forest Avenue, is the saloon of C——. With this exception the district is a quiet, respectable residence quarter. When it was known that this property was to be used for saloon purposes a petition of protest was signed by 300 representative colored men and presented to Mayor Harrison.

At night this saloon is an animated place. Reputable colored families object to it chiefly on account of the numbers of disorderly white women who meet colored men in its diminutive back room. In the barroom an automatic piano thumps through the night until closing hours. On the mirrors are pasted chromos of "September Morn" and other poses of nude women.

Buffet flats and disorderly hotels are adjuncts of the bad saloons. They make a better harvest for the police than the saloons. The borderland of a colored residential district is the haven for disorderly resorts. Protests of colored residents against the painted women in their neighborhood, the midnight honking of automobiles, the loud profanity and vulgarity are usually ignored by the police.

In one block between South State and South Dearborn streets which was canvassed by the Daily News, five places were found openly admitted to be disorderly houses. Some were in flat buildings, the other tenants of which apparently were respectable, some raising families of children.

Many white owners of real estate who speak in horrified whispers of vice dangers view such dangers with complacency when these are thrust among colored families. Two years ago a woman of the underworld and her gambler husband decided to open a "high-class" resort on the South Side. She got a location as a neighbor of reputable colored people by purchasing the home of a former alderman and leader in a church, the one of which the Rev. John P. Brushingham, secretary of Mayor Thompson's Morals Commission, is the pastor. The woman was one of the most notorious of the demimonde. An oil painting of her, as she was before her husband in a fit of jealousy bit off a part of her nose, for years hung in a saloon of international reputation.

These are some of the influences which the colored population is forced to combat in its fight for decency and good citizenship. A few secure political preferment and others profit by catering to the city's vices, while the rank and file are hedged around by demoralizing influences and the race is discredited unjustly.

HOMES OCCUPIED BY NEGROES ON FOREST AVENUE
(Note pavement and smoke.)
Classified in text as "Type C."

REAR VIEW OF HOUSES OCCUPIED BY NEGROES ON FEDERAL STREET
Classified in text as "Type D."

Another chapter of this series dealt with gambling in the South Side district. Here are two excerpts:

Colored men are in active control of the gambling situation in the big part of their district in the second ward. Back of them are white police officials at one end of the line and white politicians who keep them in power at the other end of the line. When second ward, and even some adjacent ward, gambling is discussed by gamblers on the inside, certain colored men are always mentioned. They are called "the syndicate," and their approval is said to be necessary if the police are to let anybody run in the ward.

Whether gambling is a more dangerous cause of demoralization of a community than are disorderly saloons, buffet flats and dissolute women is an often discussed question. Gambling is a man's game, is more open, and the connection between it, the police, and politics easier to trace. In order to gamble the police must be evaded, which is difficult, or made blind by a peculiar remedy for itching palms or by orders from political powers that be. However, it usually is the same police and the same politicians who are protecting both classes of vice.

The contamination of these influences depreciates property and casts a blight upon all who live within their unrestricted range. The taint extends beyond the blocks in which they exist and serves to promote prejudice and ill feeling against the Negroes who are the unwilling sufferers from these vicious resorts.

There are many landlords who exact high rentals from Negroes for the use of run-down houses. All investigations of Negro housing on the South Side indicated that as a rule the rents are excessive, considering the inferior dwellings, their disrepair, and unsanitary conditions. This neglect by the landlords not only directly depreciates the property but encourages a careless use of it by tenants that leads to the same end. One can hardly expect tenants to respect property that is not respected by its owners.

Owners and agents of property occupied by Negroes differ in their opinions of Negroes as tenants and in their ways of handling them. Of course there are differences in character, standing, and responsibility among Negroes as among whites, and this fact partly explains the following differences of opinion expressed by experienced real estate men:

One real estate firm, on Indiana Avenue, that makes leases to both white and Negro clients, said that property occupied by Negroes was more likely to run down. Another firm on East Fifty-first Street reported that it rented to Negroes on regular leases and had no trouble about collections. A young Negro real estate agent on Indiana Avenue said that he had no difficulty with collections: about half of his tenants came to the office, and collectors called upon the other half. When a building supports a janitor, he said, there is no trouble about repairs, but if the responsibility is upon the tenants it is difficult to keep a building in repair. The office manager for a firm on Cottage Grove Avenue said that the majority of its Negro tenants are on leases; all pay the rent at the office; if they fall in arrears collectors are sent.

A firm which for many years has conducted a real estate business on the South Side reported that 75 per cent of its Negro tenants are on a month-to-month basis with thirty days' notice to terminate; and 95 per cent of them are north of Thirty ninth Street. A firm on Indiana Avenue requires its tenants to sign leases; and in districts where there is much shifting about, or where the property is for sale, a sixty days' notice clause is inserted. It usually sends a collector, so that proper supervision may be kept of the property. Its head expressed the opinion that Negroes are just as good tenants as whites whose wages are on about the same scale.

The office manager of an owner with about 1,400 Negro tenants said that on the whole they compared very favorably with the white tenants who preceded them; while some Negroes are careless and ignorant, they all paid their rent promptly; his office did not average one eviction a month, and when Negroes are evicted they rarely cause trouble. Quite the contrary was the report of the office manager of a real estate firm on East Thirty-first Street, which does an extensive business with Negroes. Much depreciation, he said, can be attributed to Negro tenants; they are much harder on houses than white tenants of the same station in life; they do not take proper care of the furnaces or plumbing, and the higher rents paid by them merely cover the cost of the additional repairs; the recent comers pay their rent promptly when they have brought money with them or when they receive good wages, but later on become difficult to manage because they find it hard to adjust themselves to city life.

A firm on East Forty-seventh Street reported that it has a large number of Negro tenants, makes leases to them, has no difficulty in collecting rents, and considers them more desirable than the whites who preceded them; a firm on Indiana Avenue expressed the opinion that depreciation is very great in houses rented to Negroes. That Negro tenants pay their rent promptly was the experience of a real estate agent on Cottage Grove Avenue. He has many Negro tenants on leases and is well satisfied with them, although he does not think they take as good care of the property as do the whites; Negroes are usually occupants of old buildings, which are more difficult to take care of.

Another real estate dealer on Cottage Grove Avenue who leases to Negroes finds that usually they adhere to the terms of the lease, although they sometimes move without notice. A dealer on Wabash Avenue, who rents flats to Negroes, said that he looked up the housing record of Negroes carefully before letting them in, yet he sometimes had trouble with them. Once he rented a flat to a mother and daughter, and the next day he found another family living in it; but on the whole he was well satisfied to have Negroes as tenants.

A prominent official of the Grand Boulevard district of the Kenwood and Hyde Park Property Owners' Association, which seeks to keep Negroes out of Hyde Park, stated that a fundamental fault in connection with the strained relations between whites and Negroes was the failure of white owners to keep their property in good condition so that it might be occupied "efficiently," that is, by white persons. Another official of that organization said that Negro tenants could not be expected to repair white men's property; that there are a great many dwellings in the South Side Negro district that ought to be condemned by the city health department, and that Negroes are compelled to live in them because they can get nothing better.

In analyzing responsibility for depreciation, in the area from Thirty-first to Thirty-ninth Street and from State Street to the lake, it is difficult to determine to just what extent the Negroes are there because of prior depreciation, and to what extent present depreciation is due to their presence. It is certain, however, that a large part of the depreciation is not justly chargeable to them, and that their contribution is attributable partly to their economic status and partly to the deep-seated prejudice against them. There are many instances in which property occupied by them has appreciated in value. This will always be true when the use by Negroes, or the demand for such use, is higher or greater than any other use or demand. A symptom of the general prejudice is the very prevalent belief that if Negroes have once occupied property its value is thereby "destroyed" for white persons. This is true only until it has a value for use by whites greater than its value for use by Negroes. So long and only so long as Negroes as a class are, or are generally deemed to be, at the bottom of the economic scale will their presence in a neighborhood depreciate values. At present the fact stands out that Negro occupancy is an unmistakable symptom of depreciation—an indication that the value of property has fallen to their economic level, as well as an aid to depreciation in its last stages.

IV. DEPRECIATION IN HYDE PARK

The area bounded by Thirty-ninth and Fifty-fifth streets and Michigan and Cottage Grove avenues has several property owners' protective associations for the purpose of preserving property values. Their dominant interest has been the exclusion of Negroes because these associated property owners believe that Negroes always depreciate the values of real estate. Negroes have moved into the neighborhood and there has been depreciation. Therefore Negroes are the cause.

A complete understanding of the situation requires that it be determined to what extent property values decreased because Negroes moved in, and to what extent Negroes moved in because property values had decreased. There is no doubt that the thousands of protests against the "invasion" of Negroes were sincere. It is also true that scarcely ten Negroes now living there could have purchased their properties at the original prices.

A leading real estate dealer said that "when a Negro moves into a block the value of the properties on both sides of the street is depreciated all the way from $100,000 to $500,000, depending upon the value of the property in the block"; that it was a fact and that there was no escaping it.

It's a condition that is inherent in the human race ... a man will not buy a piece of property or put his money in or invest in it where he knows that he is liable to be confronted the next day or the next year or even five years hence with the problem of having colored people living alongside of his investment. This depreciation runs all the way from 30 to 60 per cent. Some time ago a survey was made as a result of which it was estimated that the influx of Negroes into white neighborhoods during the last two years had depreciated property on the South Side about $100,000,000.

He cited as evidences of this the increased difficulty of negotiating loans on South Side realty on any terms, and the fact that some loan companies refused to write them at all, and loan values there had dropped enormously.

The Grand Boulevard district of the Kenwood and Hyde Park Property Owners' Association reported an even larger estimate of the depreciation caused by the coming of Negroes into property near that boulevard. A committee of the Association in a report made early in 1920 claimed that the coming of Negro owners and tenants into that territory had depreciated property values of $400,000,000 fully 50 per cent.

The advent of the first Negro families in a white district usually creates something like a panic. The white residents, in a great many instances, fearing contiguity with Negroes and property loss, hasten to offer their property for sale and move elsewhere. Even a threat that Negroes intend to occupy a certain block or neighborhood will cause an exodus of white people, and their property is customarily sold at a sacrifice. When many properties are thus thrown on the market low prices are the certain result.

When in recent years, Negroes moved into the Hyde Park district, animosity was aroused, and numerous bombings of property occupied by Negroes followed. One of the oldest South Side real estate dealers, quoted in the Daily News' series of articles in the summer of 1919, expressed the tense feeling of an association there that was seeking methods to drive out and keep out the Negroes:

We want to be fair. We want to do what is right, but these people will have to be more or less pacified. At a conference where their representatives were present I told them we might as well be frank about it, "You people are not admitted to our society," I said. Personally I have no prejudice against them. I have had experience of many years dealing with them, and I'll say this for them: I have never had to foreclose a mortgage on one of them. They have been clean in every way and always prompt in their payments. But, you know, improvements are coming along the lake shore, the Illinois Central, and all that; we can't have these people coming over here. Not one cent has been appropriated by our organization for bombing or anything like that.

They injure our investments. They hurt our values. I couldn't say how many have moved in, but there's at least a hundred blocks that are tainted. We are not making any threat, but we do say that something must be done. Of course, if they come in as tenants, we can handle the situation fairly easily, but when they get a deed, that's another matter.

This fear of Negro neighbors has been used by some real estate agents in promoting speculative schemes. By sending a Negro to inquire about property, they alarm the neighbors so that they will consider offers of purchase much below the normal prices. When the excitement has abated values rise again, and a profit is made.

In the actual depreciation of Hyde Park property there were several factors, usually overlooked, that were in no wise attributable to the presence of Negroes. Some of Chicago's finest residences were located on Michigan Avenue and Grand Boulevard south of Thirty-ninth Street. This was an extension of the early fashionable South Side district and had residences that cost $350,000. But as in the case of the earlier South Side the neighborhood long since had lost some of its first settlers and had begun to decline. The World's Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893, was near the Hyde Park neighborhood. To accommodate the millions of visitors at the Exposition hotels and apartment houses were built in that district far in excess of the normal need. The apartment houses, moreover, affected the exclusiveness of the residence streets. The buildings were speculations. Large sums were expended in the hope of immediate exceptional profits. Property on Sixty-third Street sold at the Exposition time for three times the price it could command today. This is typical of the speculative values that then prevailed there. After the Exposition the removal of the first residents to the North Side and to suburbs steadily increased.

The abnormal years just preceding the Exposition had brought in thousands of workmen, who were thrown out of work when the Exposition buildings were finished. This and the panic of 1893 made building costs very low and caused further construction of dwellings in that district. Mr. L. M. Smith, a prominent South Side real estate man, described this change at a meeting of the Kenwood and Hyde Park Property Owners' Association:

The condition that existed after the World's Fair, if you will remember, in the material yards and the labor market was this: Every yard was loaded up, and the carpenters and the mechanics that were stranded here after the World's Fair were glad to take jobs as janitors at $25 a month, in order that they could have good warm places for their families, and buildings that were put up three and four years after the Fair, along in 1894, 1895, and 1896, could be built at about 30 per cent cheaper than those that were put up during the World's Fair. The consequences were that you could rent a flat cheaper in a brand-new modern building than you could in a building that was put up during the World's Fair, and as the older buildings could not be rented, the owners finally had to come down in their rent more and more; they got in less and less desirable tenants until finally the whole territory became undesirable.

These first "undesirables" were not Negroes, for Negroes had not then moved across State Street. And there were other causes for the vacancies and removals that admitted Hyde Park's first undesirables beside the overbuilding. One was the proximity of the Stock Yards. Since the South Siders could not have the Stock Yards moved, many of them moved themselves. The railroads along the lake front, with their cinders, smoke, and noise, were also a factor. Another was the creeping in of industrial plants that located in and near the district, frequently in the face of protests. A striking instance of this is the large assembly plant of an automobile company at Thirty-ninth Street and Michigan Avenue. During recent years the automobile industry has practically taken control of Michigan Avenue, once the most beautiful street of the South Side.

The coming of apartment houses and boarding-houses was another signal of declining values. It was shown that for twenty-five years scarcely a new residence had been built on Grand Boulevard, once noted for its handsome residences—due principally to the extensive building of apartment houses there.

Racial prejudice other than that against Negroes has operated in many instances to depress property values. The presence of Jews, Germans, Irish, Italians, and Swedes has at times been objectionable to neighborhoods of Americans or of another race. A leader in the movement to remove Negroes from the Grand Boulevard area gave evidence of this, saying: "I know the Irish killed a certain boulevard. I know the Jews hurt another one, and I know the gambling element hurt another one."

On the South Side the Negroes were preceded by Irish. The original settlers in the area around Thirty-first and Dearborn streets were mainly Irish laborers who worked in the lumber yards and mills, the Stock Yards, and other South Side industries. When they moved westward among their own people, thirty-five years ago, the Negroes took their places.

Sometimes social or sentimental values are involved in the depreciation brought about when a new race or nationality breaks down the exclusiveness of a residence district. After the Exposition, for example, when wealthy residents of Michigan Avenue, and Grand and Drexel boulevards deserted their houses for more fashionable locations, many of them were bought by Jews. This operated to depreciate adjacent property in the opinion of those who disliked Jews as neighbors.

How the changes take place was well described by an experienced real estate man: The original families have divided up and moved away; sons and daughters have married; the servant problem has become acute, making it difficult to maintain large houses; thus apartment houses have become popular; houses are older and deteriorated, apartments are new and modern. In 1915 when the number of apartments for rent was in excess of the demand, a tenant would spend $25 or $30 in order to move into an apartment across the street merely because it happened to be fitted with glass door knobs; a high-class residence at Forrestville Avenue and Forty-fifth Street was sold twenty years ago for $12,000; yet he told the purchasers ten years ago that the property would not sell for more than $4,000 to $6,000; and that was before Negroes had moved into the neighborhood. Apartments in that vicinity still command a price approaching their original cost of building, because the demand for them is stronger than for houses.

This real estate man made the broad statement that the depreciation has taken effect, in the majority of cases, before a Negro family has moved into a neighborhood. There is depreciation, he thought, due to prejudice, when a Negro family moves into a good neighborhood that has been exclusively white, but that there are very few such instances for the reason that Negroes prefer to live where they are welcome, where there is no antagonism. With regard to the district between Thirty-ninth and Fifty-fifth streets, State Street and Cottage Grove Avenue, he stated that the entrance of the Negro had not appreciably affected values.

Another real estate dealer, experienced in South Side property and in selling to Negroes, expressed similar opinions. The greatest depreciation, he felt, was in the expensive residences, and he doubted whether property as a whole in the square mile centered at State and Thirty-fifth streets had been depreciated much if at all.

There was agreement among the authorities consulted that in an exclusive neighborhood of wealthy residents marked depreciation in large residences has taken place, followed by the introduction of apartment buildings. One of the men who had earnestly opposed Negro entrance into the Grand Boulevard district recalled when valuations on Grand and Drexel boulevards were from $400 to $600 a front foot; then they fell to $125 or $150 a foot; and then gradually climbed back to $175 or $200 a foot on account of the introduction of apartment buildings.

Such variations in value are the usual accompaniment of unguided growth in a large city. This unguided development brought depreciation, which was manifest before Negroes began to make their appearance in the area.

The spread of clandestine prostitution, discussed in connection with the area north of Thirty-ninth Street, did not stop at Thirty-ninth Street. As the environment maps indicate,[25] there was a noticeable increase from 1916 to 1918 in the number of houses or flats used by prostitutes in the area south of Thirty-ninth Street. These changes occurred before the spread of the Negro population reached the neighborhood. Two houses, for example, at 4404 and 4406 Grand Boulevard, bought by a Negro woman and bombed four times after she moved in, had been occupied by prostitutes just prior to her purchase.

The coming of Negroes.—In 1916 hundreds of buildings in the Hyde Park area stood vacant and had been so for some time. Owners and real estate men were offering large concessions in the effort to get tenants. Values had fallen greatly. A prominent real estate man closely in touch with the neighborhood estimated that 25 per cent of the buildings there were vacant, and that there was little prospect of renting or selling them. Coincident with this oversupply in Hyde Park was an acute demand among Negroes for houses, intensified by the sudden addition of about 50,000 migrants. Many of them had sold their property in the South and brought the money with them. Hyde Park landlords were willing to sell or rent to them rather than lose their property entirely. Many Negroes, however, instead of renting, purchased the properties because of the exceptional terms offered.

This continued for about two years, when a demand for houses again arose among the white population. There was inactivity in building throughout the war period. Chicago was sharing in the housing shortage which affected the whole country, which was estimated in the early part of 1921 at 50,000 houses. As the demand of whites for housing became acute, Hyde Park owners began to feel that their property was at a disadvantage due to the presence of Negroes.

Plans for beautifying the lake front and improving Hyde Park were emphasized as a reason for holding on to property there. Alderman Schwartz, in addressing a meeting of the Grand Boulevard district of the Kenwood and Hyde Park Property Owners' Association, said:

The South Side, and Hyde Park and Kenwood in particular, in past years has been the choice residential section of Chicago, the show place of Chicago. Grand Boulevard is the most magnificent street in the world, the finest boulevard of our wonderful boulevard system. I know that for many, many years, in this town, it was the ambition of people living in other parts of the city to arrange matters so that they could have their homes on the South Side in the place where you now live.

We have seen the rapid deterioration. In the council and in the committees we have decided that we must do something. The law has some very definite limitations written into our constitution and statutes. It cannot afford any relief. You yourselves must resurrect the South Side.

As one instance of what we attempted to do in the way of assuring to the people who reside here that the South Side can and will continue to be the great place we live in, we passed the Lake Front Ordinance. You people probably never realized what a wonderful thing that will be for the South Side. It will take in the lake front from Twelfth Street south to Fifty-first; it will affect the very choicest residential district in Chicago, the territory between Thirty-ninth Street and Forty-seventh Street—in this portion of the ward where we now are, something like $125,000,000 will be expended in reclaiming the lake front for you people, you men and women who must stand together to save your homes, see that your homes are kept as fine places to live in, that your neighbors are kept the most desirable neighbors in the city of Chicago, so that you may enjoy the benefit of that wonderful improvement that is to come. Think of that tremendous stretch, from Thirty-ninth to Forty-seventh, of bathing facilities, the finest in the world. More than a year and a half ago an estimate was made of the loss in property values in the Oakland district, north of Forty-third Street, and that was estimated to be $100,000,000. Now it is not only the loss of money that interests us. It means not only that somebody has lost a certain amount of wealth, but it means that somebody has lost comfort in living; someone has lost joy in his home; someone has lost the opportunity to give his children the environment that he wanted to give.

A survey made by the Hyde Park Property Owners' Association in 1920 showed that there were then 3,300 property owners in the area bounded by Thirty-ninth and Fifty-fifth streets, Michigan Avenue and Cottage Grove Avenue, and that of this number 1,000 were Negroes. Then began the attempts to move Negroes[26] back into "their own neighborhood."

Many of the Negroes who moved into this area had substantial resources enabling them either to buy property outright or so to arrange for payments through instalments and mortgages as to render themselves secure against efforts to remove them. But in so doing they further complicated the status of the neighborhood. Few white persons recognize the marked differences among Negroes, so that in purely commercial dealings they are not as careful in selecting Negro tenants as they would be among whites. As a result some Negroes who secured property there proved damaging to property values, just as would persons of a similar type from any other race.

Many of the houses for sale or rent were not suited to the incomes of ordinary wage-earners. White persons whose incomes were sufficient to pay the rental for such large houses preferred a different sort of house or neighborhood; and whites of smaller incomes could find more suitable houses elsewhere; while Negroes, hard pressed for houses, rented them, and took lodgers to fill them and help pay the rent.

The exclusive occupancy of a block by Negroes is usually followed by less care of streets and alleys. This neglect is general between Twenty-second and Thirty-ninth streets and is beginning to appear in the territory between Thirty-ninth and Forty-third streets where recently blocks have been "turned over" to Negroes. Community associations are being formed in some of these areas to protest against this laxity, and stimulate neighborhood interest in neat premises.

Appreciation of property.—When values fall extremely due to a selling panic among white owners, it is often followed by a decided recovery as the Negro demand grows. Such a new market among Negroes, however, seems never to have been strong enough to send prices for residence purposes back to original levels. But many instances have shown that prices rarely stay at the low "panic" level and frequently rebound to a level much above that at which panic sales were made. Mr. Gates, a prominent South Side real estate dealer, said: "If a Negro family locates in a street where the population is all white, values are cut in two, but this would not be likely to occur if a large number of Negroes were ready and willing to buy adjacent property at established prices. Supply and demand would rule in such a market." Other real estate dealers expressed the opinion that "if the white owners were not over-anxious to sell when the Negro 'invasion' begins, they might later on obtain as much or more for their property than they could have obtained before the advent of the Negroes."

In numerous cases Negroes created a market for property when there was none. A prominent white business man long resident on the South Side told of a row of houses on South Park Avenue and Grand Boulevard that were vacant for years until sold or rented to Negroes: they could not be sold at all until they took on a value because Negroes were ready to buy them.

A prominent Negro physician bought a piece of property in an exclusive white Hyde Park neighborhood. He lived there seven years and then sold the property at an advance, and, to his knowledge, there had been no depreciation in adjacent property.

A white real estate dealer bought a house in Grand Boulevard between Thirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth streets about five years ago. When Negro residents came some of the white people sold at a sacrifice. But he remained and four years later sold the property for $2,000 above its cost to him.

An interesting instance related to property on Langley Avenue into which a Negro family moved in 1919. The value of contiguous property remained the same as of property two and three blocks east where no Negroes lived. Six months later, across the street from this Negro family, a white man, aware of their occupancy, bought a house and paid $1,500 more than it had formerly been offered for.

Thus, notwithstanding the prejudice against Negro neighbors that usually obtains, a block or neighborhood into which Negroes move is not always and necessarily depreciated, so many and active are the other factors contributing to depreciation (or sometimes preventing); and so frequently has it occurred that these factors of depreciation have operated extensively prior to the arrival of Negroes.

The fluctuation of values in response to sentiment, both inherent and stimulated, manifested itself in a practice of certain real estate dealers on the South Side. Although it was stated and believed that values were irrevocably destroyed when a Negro family occupied a building, these agents boosted values by announcing that another building had been "saved" or "redeemed," thoroughly renovated, and restored to its "rightful occupants." The Kenwood and Hyde Park Property Owners' Association stated that this plan had succeeded in sixty-eight instances of buildings "reclaimed" by the Association.

A Prairie Avenue block.—To study the processes and factors of depreciation the Commission selected an obviously depreciated block on the once fashionable Prairie Avenue, between Twenty-ninth and Thirtieth streets, into which no Negroes had yet moved.

In 1885-90 Prairie Avenue was one of Chicago's most fashionable and exclusive residential streets. Imposing brown- and gray-stone residences, with balconies of stone and ornamental iron, broad bay-windows, and large well-kept lawns behind high iron fences, gave evidence of the wealth and social position of their owners.

The gradual decline of Prairie Avenue, as North Side and North Shore neighborhoods became more fashionable places of residence, and long before the approach of Negroes was even thought of, was exemplified in this block. Chicago Blue Book, a broadly inclusive social directory, published annually, shows that in 1890 the families living at forty-nine of the sixty-one addresses in the block were listed; in 1900 there were eighteen of the forty-nine left; in 1910 there were only ten, and in 1915 only two. Second and third occupants of the houses took the places of fifteen of the original forty-nine in 1900, of nine in 1910, and of four in 1915. The Blue Book listings at five-year intervals are shown in the table on the following page.

A CHANGING NEIGHBORHOOD

From 1895 on, those who moved away were to be found scattered all the way from Lake Shore Drive to Lake Forest. The newcomers who took their places appeared decreasingly in the Blue Book and more and more frequently they had Irish or Jewish names.

A closer examination of the changing occupancy of the sixty-one houses in the block shows strikingly the rapidity and extent of the decline and reveals some of its causes.

Year	Number of Houses Listed with no Change in Occupants	Number of Houses Not Listed	Number of Houses with Second and Third Occupants Listed
1890	49	12	.....
1895	26	25	10
1900	18	28	15
1905	12	36	13
1910	10	41	9
1915	2	54	4

The residents.—In a house with fifty feet frontage on Prairie Avenue lived a wealthy artist, son of a Chicago pioneer merchant and member of several exclusive clubs. He lived there until a large brick factory was erected at the rear of his residence which is now occupied by a medical fraternity. A prominent Chicago family lived in another house which they had built in 1885. In 1890, they moved to Cleveland and rented the property. For sentimental reasons they kept the property, although it was fast sinking in value. In 1919 a son living in Lake Forest proposed to remodel and improve the property, if by reasonable expenditures he could be assured by real estate men of "desirable" tenants. No real estate man felt able to do this, however, and the deterioration and depreciation were uninterrupted.

Another residence, formerly occupied by a capitalist and journalist since 1890, was a large two-story house with basement and attic and two-story brick barn. The family long since moved to the North Side, and the old mansion on Prairie Avenue is now a rooming-house of thirty-eight rooms, including the garage.

At another address lived the president of a large business corporation, in a two-story stone-front building. It is now cut up into flats; and in the window recently was a sign: "4th Flat for Rent, 6 Rooms, $20.00, White Only."

Only one or two of the fine old residences in this block are still occupied by Chicago's "first families" or owned by their estates.

There are now two relatively modern three- and four-story brick apartment buildings in the block, and five old residences are rooming-houses. One is a club for railroad men, and another is a fraternity house. About a third of the places are in fairly good repair.

The altered character of the block is revealed also in the number of persons now at each address. The polling lists for March, 1920, disclose that fourteen persons are registered from one address, ten from another, seven from another, six each from three others, and so on, indicating more adults than are usually found in a single family. These are probably roomers.

The problem, however, is a complex one, for, although no Negroes moved into this block, they occupied parts of neighboring blocks during that period, and their occupancy contributed to the final stage of depreciation.

The picture in neighboring Calumet Avenue is not essentially different; perhaps the early occupants represented fewer of the "first families," and the deterioration is more obvious.

The evidences of the oncoming of commerce and industry from the north are numerous and inescapable. In this and adjoining blocks are now garages, an auto-repairing shop, the South Side Dispensary of the Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium, a factory for grinding bearings, and a carpentry and glazing shop. An auto-laundry occupies the old church building.

This area is a comparatively short distance from the "Loop." In real estate parlance it is known as "close-in" property. A former president of the Chicago Real Estate Board stated that a large part of this "close-in" property depreciated because of its change from residential to commercial property. He mentioned Prairie and Calumet avenues, north of Thirty-first Street—which includes the block studied. The depreciation, he asserted, was also due to the "departure of many owners of costly homes to other districts."

With the city's growth, transportation became an increasingly influential factor. The automobile made it easy to reach the business center from outlying and suburban regions. It thus became less desirable to live near the "Loop," particularly as such districts are susceptible to changes that may quickly destroy an exclusive residence district.

The rapidly developing automobile industry gravitated very largely to this part of the South Side. Its salesrooms, shops for the sale of accessories, and kindred business places spread along Michigan Avenue from Twelfth to Thirty-fifth street. Michigan Avenue is only two blocks west of Prairie Avenue and one block west of Indiana Avenue. Garages, repair shops, welding factories, and the like accompanied this invasion, and spread into adjoining streets. For instance, on an Indiana Avenue corner a large eight-story factory was built immediately adjoining the rear of a handsome Prairie Avenue residence, and a one and one-half story garage and repair shop was built in the rear of 2900 Prairie Avenue. Just northeast of the block are factories and breweries with their noise, smoke, and heavy traffic; and from the west and south Negroes have recently been approaching—long after these other factors were operating.

A peculiar fact about the property in this block and northward on Prairie Avenue is that the lots are long and narrow, and the houses are built to the side lines. These lots, when threatened with encroachment by factories and the automobile industry, lost their residence value but did not easily take on a new industrial value because they were individually owned and it required several lots to make a suitable industrial site. The owners, though not desiring to live there, were yet loath to sell as cheaply as the individual strip sales would make necessary. And no investor would buy a single lot for industrial purposes unless certain of getting two or three others adjoining.

In 1910 land values on Prairie Avenue between Twenty-sixth and Twenty-eighth streets were $250 a front foot; and from Twenty-ninth to Thirtieth streets, $200; on Indiana Avenue between Twenty-sixth and Twenty-eighth streets, $200, and between Twenty-ninth and Thirtieth streets $175. In 1920, however, values had dropped on Prairie Avenue to $60 a front foot while on Indiana Avenue, a semi-business street, they were $150 and $180.[27] Negroes first moved into the block on Prairie Avenue between Thirtieth and Thirty-first streets about 1917, though very few lived there at the time of the inquiry in 1920. In 1919 they purchased an abandoned church in this block which at one time was valued at $125,000.

To summarize the results of this investigation of depreciation: Negro occupancy depreciates the value of residence property in Chicago because of the prejudice of white people against Negroes, and because white people will not buy and Negroes are not financially able to buy, at fair market prices property thrown upon the market when a neighborhood commences to change from white to Negro occupancy; nevertheless a large part of the depreciation of residence property often charged to Negro occupancy comes from entirely different causes.