Near west side of Chicago, 1981, 1541 West Chestnut Street – Edwin Szewczyk’s home.
The worker’s cottage was built in 1879 by a Polish immigrant whose son eventually took over the home. By the seventies the neighborhood was in a bad transitional state as crime and gangs proliferated.
Essentially turning the home inside out – the interior had been a haven for these crosses – the owner wanted to spread a positive message to his neighbors.
The home was visited by Pope Paul when he went to visit the old Polish neighborhood on the west side of Chicago.
Of course, after surviving the seventies into the nineties, the neighborhood gentrified and in 2007 the home was demolished for redevelopment.