During its heyday, the Maxwell Street Market in Chicago was the biggest and most populated open-street market in America, and a singular cultural melting-pot it has been called the Ellis Island of the Midwest.
Mike Shea's only film is a seldom-seen pioneering cinema-vérité masterpiece, an essential historical document of Chicago and the market as a quintessential public space. The market was dismantled in 1994 to make room for student housing.