The Ridge Historical Society
Historical Monterey Avenue
By Carol Flynn
The research requests the Ridge Historical Society receives include questions from the media looking for background information for stories they are covering.
Last week, our fellow fact seekers at the The Beverly Review, the local newspaper, asked us about the history of the vacant land on the south side of Monterey Avenue between Homewood Avenue and the Metra tracks to the west because a new Dunkin coffee and donut shop is planned to be built on the site.
The researchers at RHS (RHS Historian Linda Lamberty, RHS Board member Tim Blackburn, and RHS Facebook Administrator Carol Flynn) were happy to investigate the question. It proved an interesting challenge to find the answers.
The McCormack Building (attached image from the RHS collection, and note the streetcar tracks in front of the building, running east/west on Morgan Avenue, today's 111th/Monterey) was on that site from 1890 to 1938. This was a three-story building with commercial spaces on the first floor and apartments on the second and third floors. The building had no central heat; each apartment and business had a coal stove.
The McCormack Building was the home for many businesses during its years of operation. Some of the tenants included an early telephone exchange with switchboards and operators, the Morgan Park State Bank, and a Piggly Wiggly store in the 1920s.
Neighborhood shops like the Morgan Park Cash and Carry Grocery, Kordewick’s Meat Market, a bakery, and a shoe shop were also there.
The McCormack Building was replaced by a building that started as a Jewel food store, and later housed the M&R Coffee Depot coffee shop and an electrical appliance contractor. In the 1970s, a group of parents of students at Morgan Park High School (MPHS) opened the Southwest Youth Foundation, a youth center, there.
East of the Jewel building were also an ice cream shop and a dry cleaners.
For many years, the Morgan Park Lumber Co.’s lumber yard extended south behind the buildings on the main street, where apartment buildings now exist. The office for the lumber company was across the alley, right next to the Rock Island tracks to the west.
In the 1960s, this was the location of a coffee shop financed by the Y.M.C.A., run by and very popular with students from MPHS. In fact, RHS’s Linda Lamberty managed the coffee shop kitchen while she was a student at MPHS.
By the 1970s-80s, the commercial area along 111th Street/Monterey Avenue was suffering from “urban blight.” This was a period of transition throughout Chicago. Businesses had moved out and new businesses were not moving in. Buildings were deteriorating. During this time, many of the old buildings along this street, and older frame houses in the area, were demolished.
The land has been vacant for at least 40 years. It is a good location for a Dunkin, right by the 111th Street Metra train station.