Paul Myers found history-rich fulfillment and a touch of glee, when explaining to others why the residents in the seemingly “frozen in time” historic Marktown neighborhood of East Chicago would park their cars on the sidewalks rather than the cobblestone paver brick streets.
“Our community concept, paired with the design of Marktown when these homes and streets were built in 1917 by its namesake, the Chicago industrialist Clayton Mark Sr., was and is to provide an open and inviting street space for a social atmosphere of the neighbors and all, without the distraction or separation that happens with traffic flow,” said Myers, during a July 2020 interview with the Post-Tribune at his home on Prospect Street in the Marktown neighborhood.
“I’ve lived in Marktown my entire life.”
Myers, 73, died Sept. 9 in his sleep after battling progressive dementia the last two years of his life which required him to leave his beloved history-filled home to reside at a Northwest Indiana care facility.
He is survived by his beloved caregivers David Rodriguez and wife, Samantha, and their two sons, Koda and Liam. Myers considered David a “bonus son” and treated himself as a grandfather to his sons, always imparting lessons of history according to David.
“Paul’s incredible appreciation for history and an especially deep love for his hometown of East Chicago was known to all,” David Rodriguez said.
“Besides his historical pieces connected to the city, he was the proud owner of a beloved 1929 Model A he would drive through Marktown and in local parades. He dedicated countless years to researching the neighborhood’s history, corresponding with lawmakers and advocating for the preservation of the neighborhood so that Marktown would always be maintained.”
For Marktown’s 50th anniversary in 1967, the community received international attention when it was hailed as “The Brigadoon of Industrial Housing, rising out of the mists of industry every few years,” and featured in the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! syndicated newspaper panel feature.
Along with an illustration of the quaint rows of two-story houses and 16-foot-wide streets, the published illustration panel’s description read: “A community in Indiana with narrow streets patterned after a town in Switzerland parks its cars on the sidewalks and the people walk in the roadway!”
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“While the architect hired by Clayton Mark Sr. to design and build Marktown did tour Europe and sketch ideas for his later designs, the gabled homes of Marktown are really an English Tudor design rather than Swiss-inspired,” Myers said in 2020, clarifying the correct architectural reference for visitors to the destination.
Inspired by the planned community on Chicago’s South Side envisioned by train car manufacturer George M. Pullman, Mark hired Howard Van Doren Shaw, one of the country’s most prestigious architects, to design his own industrial housing community in Northwest Indiana. The architect had previously designed Mark’s home in Lake Forest, Illinois, in the English Tudor style.
The “Unofficial Mayor of Marktown” as signified by the plaque on the front porch of his house, mounted near a rack of free “self-guided walking tour brochures,” Myers headed the Marktown Preservation Society and was a font of community history, directing guests to all the highlights, street by street.
Paul was preceded in death by his parents, Robert and Alice Myers, both longtime residents of East Chicago, but it was Paul’s grandfather’s aunt who began the family-based homestead in Marktown when the community was launched. His grandfather, who worked as a mason foreman in the neighboring steel mill, constructed a home, and, later, provided the adjoining corner street lot for Paul’s parents to build their house where Paul was raised and which he still owned, in addition to his own house just one street away.
Mark purchased 190 acres of land in 1913 in East Chicago to develop his Mark Manufacturing, or Indiana Harbor Works, which most recently operated in today’s world as U.S. Steel Co.
The original plan for the community would have included housing for nearly 8,000 workers, but the effects of World War I on the steel industry and the sale of Mark’s plant stopped construction. As a result, only four housing sections of the 32 envisioned and planned sections were ever constructed. Plans for a large post office, theater building featuring a clock tower, and a recreation center never came to fruition.
Myers spent decades navigating what he described as “the uneasy neighbor adjacent to Marktown: the multibillion-dollar refinery operations of BP Oil Co.”
“We have a present threat to the Marktown Historic District, and that’s the complete demolition of the neighborhood by the BP Whiting Refinery,” Myers warned in a 2020 Post-Tribune interview.
He always included this facet during his neighborhood tours and in his printed history brochures, including pointing out printed warning signs about BP’s invasive measures displayed in the windows of many homes along the streets.
“In 2013, the BP Whiting Refinery had a major, more than one-billion dollar reinvestment, which required the creation of more ‘green space’,” Myers would explain.
“This is when they began buying and demolishing the neighborhood. There was never a public meeting held for the residents of Marktown to have input.”
In a 2020 statement, a BP spokesperson said, “BP has been purchasing property around our refinery for over 20 years. All the properties were purchased from willing sellers and many of them were vacant and/or in serious disrepair. BP’s acquisitions and regular maintenance of the BP-owned green space has eliminated neighborhood hazards and helped create a cleaner, more aesthetically pleasing and safer environment. BP always negotiates in good faith and will continue to work with willing sellers to purchase properties at fair market values around the perimeter of the plant in an effort to create additional green space.”
The 40 acres that makes up Marktown Historic District were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975, but Myers stressed that designation was not enough to protect the current homes and structures, which have now dwindled to less than three dozen as of 2026.
The Pullman neighborhood has been much more successful in preserving its homes, including a February 2015 visit by President Barack Obama, who designated the neighborhood as a national monument. In contrast, Myers always lamented that Marktown has far less attention and support from even the local government.
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“My dream is that more people read about the history of Marktown and come to visit and then fall in love with this community as much as my family has, and others, during the past century,” Myers said in a 2020 interview. “My annual taxes are only $300 (in July 2020), and the homes here for sale start at around $30,000 (in July 2020). This is a small price for living history.”
A visitation for Myers will be held from 2 to 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 16 at Fife Funeral Home, 4201 Indianapolis Blvd. in East Chicago. At 3 p.m., a Roman Catholic priest will lead a brief prayer service.
Phil Potempa is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.