Chicago murals: Damen Silos were a landmark for graffiti artists to hone their craft

Milt Coronado remembers ditching evening church and walking a half mile to the Damen Silos in McKinley Park, where, as a college student, he painted his first graffiti tags.

“I wasn’t part of a graffiti crew,” Coronado says. “I didn’t consider myself part of the culture, but I wanted to be.”

In the late 1990s, “It was a way to connect with other artists that I didn’t know and didn’t know me,” he says. “It was a museum.”

Coronado says he saw names of artists he admired on the walls and met others who, like he was, were just entering the scene. The old grain elevators were a relatively safe spot where they could practice writing without interruption, he says. They took their time perfecting style, lettering and spray-can technique.

“I really owe a lot to that part of my life,” he says. “It made me who I am today as an artist.”

Coronado is among the many artists now feeling a little wistful at seeing the demolition of the Damen Silos. The Southwest Side landmark at Damen Avenue and 29th Street — visible from the Stevenson Expressway — long served as an industrial canvas for Chicago street artists over the nearly five decades the structures sat empty.

The grain elevators, a symbol of Chicago’s former agricultural might, sit alongside the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal’s south bank. Known for their graffiti, the silos also inspired painters, photographers and filmmakers.

Demolition began in July on the two sets of 80-foot concrete silos, a 110-foot tall tower and smaller buildings surrounding them. Michael Tadin Jr. bought the land, more than 20 acres, from the state in 2022 for $6.5 million. He has not announced what he plans to do with the property.

Luis Molina — who goes by the name Peas — is a graffiti artist and member of the CMK Crew, the group that tagged its name about 15 years ago in massive letters on the top of the silos. Coronado is also a member of that crew, though neither he nor Molina was involved in that top-floor tagging effort.

But Molina recalls venturing on top of the silos often, climbing in through a window, then up the elevator shaft and onto the roof and tagging it.

CMK members felt their giant rooftop tag couldn’t be topped, Molina says, until artists like Zwon and Serk in recent years used ropes to rappel down and write their names in giant letters, descending the outside of the silos.

Zwon didn’t plan to paint the silo at first. “What’s the point if they’re going to take it down?” he says he thought. But then, he says, he realized the significance the silos held for generations of Chicago graffiti artists, learned to rappel and added his tag. “A lot of people went there at some point in their lives and became part of the spot, so I wanted to be part of it in some way as well.”

“We’ve had this crown over the city on the South Side,” Molina says of the silos, which he says have been landmarks for him since he was growing up in Marquette Park.

Tearing them down means the loss of “that historic and nostalgic feeling of what we were and who we were.”

The graffiti artist Greg Gunter, who, as an artist, goes by the name Werm, started tagging with Molina in the 1990s. They were two of the first to paint there, he says, but it quickly became a popular spot for street artists. He remembers graffiti battles among crews, each one stashing buckets and paint around the silos, then sneaking back to cover others’ work with their own night after night.

Gunter says he kept going to the silos to paint for decades. He created two images there of his wife and added his most recent piece about a year ago, he says.

The silos “became a spot,” Gunter says. “It was kind of a gray area. The cops wouldn’t really mess with you.”

After Coronado’s start at the Damen Silos, he went on to get a bachelor’s degree in illustration and design from the American Academy of Art. Now, he works as a commissioned artist whose murals can be found in Chicago and elsewhere.

“Seeing them come down is sad,” Coronado says of the silos. “It’s part of my childhood and part of my history. It’s part of who I am and part of Chicago.”