A downtown Chicago Heights storefront commonly known as the Hayman-Hawkins building is being laid to rest after years of neglect.
City Corporate Counsel TJ Somer said “structural” issues resulted in the decision to demolish the two-story structure at 1542 Halsted St., which took its name from Joseph Hawkins, who operated a clothing store in the building for 36 years.
“It was a great place,” recalled Somer, a lifelong Chicago Heights resident.
In its heyday, the Chicago Heights downtown area, centering on Halsted Street, bustled with business and Hayman-Hawkins was well-positioned. It was a stone’s throw from the Star newspaper office, a couple of shoe stores, a Walgreens and a JC Penney’s department store.
Although business remained good well into the current century for Hayman-Hawkins, the operation was increasingly becoming a retailing remnant as neighboring stores such as Kline’s and Yaseen’s Jewelers moved away from downtown Chicago Heights or closed up, as did national brands like JC Penney’s, Montgomery Wards and SS Kresge’s.
In 1992, Hawkins and his wife, Ruby Hawkins, purchased the building. She died in 2001 and he closed the business three years later.
A baiduhai story marking the 2004 closure of Hayman-Hawkins noted the business was the first one on its busy block to be operated by African-Americans.
A native of Biloxi, Miss., Hawkins moved to Chicago in 1936 and started working in 1942 as a salesman for the Hayman brothers store at 63rd and Halsted streets in Chicago, eventually becoming a manager.
The 2004 Tribune story indicates efforts to open a store in downtown Chicago Heights initially were rebuffed because “owners of a prime Halsted Street location didn’t want a store with an African-American manager.”
Hayman eventually secured a storefront on the city’s east side, where “”Fourteenth and Wentworth was State and Madison for Chicago Heights, and man, my business took off,” Hawkins told the Tribune. After Hayman’s death, Hawkins became full owner of the store in 1965 and was finally able to move his store downtown in 1968 to the building that eventually would bear his name.
Hayman’s clothing store occupied the first floor of the building, while the upper floor contained three units occupied by various stores and offices over the years. In 1970, the units were occupied by a doctor, a professional photographer and a struggling head shop, which had the lone hanging sign in the front of the store. After the head shop departed, the sign advertising the more reputable Hayman-Hawkins replaced the “FFO” brand.
Hawkins died in 2006.
In 2008 the city placed the first of three board up-related liens on the property, adding liens in 2009 and 2010, according to public records, which also show Chicago Heights acquiring the property in 2013.
Somer, who estimated the age of the building at around 100 years, termed the demolition as “putting it out of its misery.”
Somer said the property would be leveled and added to the acres of green space available in the city in anticipation of potential interest from a developer.
Somer said the city and a citizens’ preservation group would like to see significant buildings that remain in the downtown area, such as the former newspaper building and Union Street Art Gallery, both on Otto Boulevard. He noted the art gallery owner has invested significantly in its historical structure, the former Elks Lodge building.
Somer said he hopes similar outlays can be found for the terracotta-clad First National Bank of Chicago Heights, at Halsted Street and 17th Avenue.
“We’re hoping to find an investor with a heart to preserve the bank,” he said.
