On Saturday 7/17/10 I was walking by a vacant lot at the SW corner of Illinois and New Street. The lot is surrounded by about 6-ft high fence covered with opaque cloth of some kind. On the Illinois side there is a driveway cut in the sidewalk and a gate and opening in the fence.

As I walked by this opening, I saw about 5 or 6 newspaper boxes, and noticed that at least a few of them were from old, defunct newspapers: there was a green Chicago American box and one for The National Sports Daily, which I think went out of business in the early '90's. Both of these boxes still contained newspapers. There also appeared to be an old mailbox. The rest of the lot contained lots of other piles of junk, but nothing identifiable like the newspaper boxes.

Note that these were not replicas - they were worn and rusted and the newspapers in them were yellowed.

I stopped and started to go past the fence to try to examine the boxes more closely, but was stopped by a security guard who was outside on the street. I later thought about going back and trying to sneak in but saw the guard vigilantly stopping other people, so I declined.

I would be grateful if anyone could shed any light on these boxes or the happenings at this strange lot.