The End of Little Cheyenne? Aldermen Push to Close Down Ewing Annex Hotel

Tucked away in a dreary little corner of Chicago’s financial district, directly in the shadow of the tallest building in the Western hemisphere, sits a tiny row of buildings on the 400 block of South Clark Street, that makeup all that remains of Chicago’s “Little Cheyenne.”

Little Cheyenne was a famous Chicago vice neighborhood that first developed during the late 1800s, and survived all the way through to the 1970s. During this time, thousands of transient men have found shelter at what is now called the Ewing Annex Hotel.

The original name was The Alaska House and was located above a saloon (now the Royal Pawn Shop) known as the Workman’s Exchange. Today the Hotel still provides affordable – albeit basic – shelter for some 200 men. For $15.00 a night, $90.00 a week, or $300.00 a month a man can buy a 5 X 7 cubicle and keep off the cold, hard streets of Chicago.

Now, a proposed ordinance banning cubicle style hotels threatens to leave hundreds of men without housing. As I first reported back on February 7, 2013, the Ewing Annex Hotel might be forced to shut down. I had originally suspected that the hotel was possibly being closed due to a bedbug infestation, as multiple residents had reported. I had also learned that the City had filed a housing complaint against WDR Corp (owners of the building) back in 2010, and that the case was up again on February 9th. The latest pressure to close the hotel now comes from two Chicago Aldermen, James Cappelman (46th) and Brendan Reilly (42nd), who introduced a proposed ordinance that would shut down this historic cubicle style hotel.

According to a recent Chicago Sun-Times article, written by City Hall Reporter Fran Spielman, Alderman Brendan Reilly stated that the hotel is not “fit for human beings,” and that “they need to be shut down.” Spielman herself concluded at the end of her rather scathing article that the “Wilson Club and the Ewing Annex are all that’s left of that bygone era.” I’m going to assume that neither Brendan Reilly, nor Fran Spielman have ever had to spend a night on Lower Wacker or in some alley. For many of the residents of the hotel, the street is their only other option. It just so happens that in the past month, while working on a photo journal project, I’ve spent the night in both an alley, and at the Ewing Annex Hotel. Given the choice between the two, I wouldn’t choose the alley.

On February 15th I paid my $15.00 and checked into the Ewing Annex Hotel, room 353, to have a look for myself. It’s not actually a room, but more of a stall divided by short walls that don’t quite reach the ceiling. Chicken wire is stretched across the tops of the cubicles in an attempt to keep people from crawling into each other’s spaces and stealing things. In the cubicle is a small bed with a sheet, and a milk crate that serves as a chair, or a table, depending on the situation. The communal bathroom was clean, as were the corridors between the cubicles. Anyone that has ever been in the military would feel quite at home in the barrack style facilities offered at the Ewing Annex Hotel.

Alderman Reilly and others act as if poverty were a fashion back in the 20s and 30s, and that somehow today, affordable shelter is no longer needed for Chicago’s poorest residents. Unfortunately, Fran Spielman, poverty is not part of that “bygone era.” Closing down this hotel in the name of some sort of humanitarianism is preposterous. The desire to close down this hotel stems from either an ignorance of these people’s life situation, or, an open effort of economic-cleansing.

While the Ewing Annex isn’t the Palmer House, it’s most certainly better than sleeping out in the street. Every person needs a place where they can carve out a little space to call their own. For some, that’s a condo on the North side; for others, it’s a 5 X 7 cubicle down on South Clark Street.