Chicago murals: Rodney Duran's new work in Uptown is a tribute to historic music venues

Uptown's thriving music scene was the inspiration for artist Rodney Duran’s latest mural on Broadway near the Wilson L station train tracks.

With piano keys, maracas, horns, guitars, music notes and more, the mural pays tribute to the live music venues throughout Uptown, where Duran used to live. He painted the mural on a boarded-up car tunnel that goes through the three-story, block-long McJunkin Building at Wilson Avenue and Broadway.

“I lived in Uptown for four years. To me the thing that kept me happy was the music,” Duran says. “It was pretty cool that I could buy tickets to the Aragon [Ballroom] and walk a block over and see the Foo Fighters or Nine Inch Nails.”

Duran also enjoyed shows at the Riviera Theatre and the Green Mill, among other musical venues, he says. He wishes he could see a show at the now-closed Uptown Theatre, which once hosted blockbuster acts like Bruce Springsteen, Elton John and The Grateful Dead and Chicago blues legends like Muddy Waters.

“Growing up in a small town, I never had venues around me like that,” says Duran, who is from Pennsylvania and now lives in Albany Park.

Duran painted the mural in June before Uptown Art Walk, a weekend event that showcased the neighborhood's thriving arts scene and featured 30 new murals.

This mural was done freehand with spray paint over three days, Duran says. It came about as tenants, customers and neighbors complained the McJunkin Building tunnel, which cars used to access a parking lot, had become a nuisance and attracted people seeking a semi-guarded spot for illegal activity.

The McJunkin Building stretches 465 feet along Broadway between Wilson and Sunnyside avenues. It was commissioned for the McJunkin Advertising Agency and built about 100 years ago, according to a City of Chicago Landmark Designation Report for Uptown Square District. The building was designed by Marshall & Fox, the architects behind the South Shore Country Club and the Drake Hotel. Now the building houses a restaurant and a number of retail shops, among other tenants.

Duran, who had been helping install a fence outside the building, offered to board up the tunnel and paint a mural.

The Uptown Chamber of Commerce funded the project.

“It was a tangible and obvious solution to an issue the building owner and neighborhood were dealing with,” says Justin Weidl, chamber director of neighborhood services. He calls Duran the “most versatile artist or muralist I’ve ever worked with."

Duran says he considered a mural featuring the variety of musical establishments in Uptown, but that type of mural already existed. So he went for a different vibe.

“It’s so universal,” Duran said. “That’s what the mural is about, just healing and bringing people together with music.”

The neighborhood's focus on music even created a minor, unexpected delay when the mural work started. The morning after the unpainted boards went up, Duran and his crew returned to find a concert promoter had covered them with festival fliers stuck on with wheat paste. Duran spent a day pressure-washing the boards so he could begin painting.

Now, people seeking the parking lot can do so through the connecting Aldi lot.

And pedestrians can stop and at new mural. “I wanted it to be something people can take photos in front of that says, ‘Uptown,’ ” Duran says.