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.