ARCH 416

Spring '15

Public Housing II

agenda 3.22.15

Chicago: the ups and downs of Cabrini-Green

suburbanization

CHICAGORobert Taylor Homes

Henry Horner Homes

Cabrini-Green

2501 West Lake,

Henry Horner

Homes, Chicago,

1995Photographed by Camilo Vergara

View east along

West Lake from

Oakley, Chicago,

1998Photograph by Camilo Vergara

The name “Little Hell” was derived from the large gasworks at Crosby and Hobbie

streets whose flames lit the skies at night. Furnaces could be heard for blocks as coal

was poured into the ovens and moistened with water from the Chicago River to create

gas that was used for heating, cooking and lighting.

From The Standard Guide To Chicago For The Year 1893:

At the time of the great fire the region west of Larrabee St.

was almost unoccupied as far down as the river, and

when the relief work began this tract was suggested as a

good place for the building of houses for the people

whose property had been destroyed. So a lot of small

cottages and one long, low building with a room for each

family in it were erected.

"The Barracks"

Goose Island

In 1853, William B. Ogden, a Chicago real estate developer,

built a channel to provide a more straightforward alternative

to Chicago River’s winding North Branch. The result was an

island, the only island in Chicago. It quickly became a haven

for Irish immigrants who were so poor they couldn’t afford

proper housing. This island became part of the “Little Hell”

neighborhood.

They dubbed the island Kilgubbin, after the area in County

Cork, Ireland, where most of them were originally from.

These inhabitants were squatters.

Goose Island 1900

Italian immigrants, many of them Italian, but also Irish and

Swedish, settled in the area around Goose Island.

They came to work in dirty, difficult, and often low-paying

jobs in the steel mills and gas works on Goose Island,

where tall stacks belched flames and smoke that could be

seen miles away.

Goose Island

today

Goose Island today

Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute

awarded 2014

$70 million in federal funds

$16 million from the state

another $250 million from private industry, like General

Electric, Rolls-Royce, Procter & Gamble, Siemens, Lockheed

Martin and Dow Chemical Co.

managed by UI Labs (Universities and Industries)—a

Goose Island today

map showing the location of Goose Island

Near North

During World War II, the Chicago Housing Authority razed

Little Hell and built a low-rise apartment project for war

workers.

They called it the Frances Cabrini Homes after the first

American canonized by the Catholic Church.

Timeline: Early Years1929 - Harvey Zorbaugh writes "The Gold Coast and the Slum: A Sociological Study of Chicago's Near North Side," contrasting wealthy Gold Coast, with poor Little Sicily (“Little Hell”)

Marshall Field Garden Apartments, first large-scale (although funded through private charity) low-income housing development in area, completed.

1942 - Frances Cabrini Homes (two-story rowhouses), with 586 units in 54 buildings, completed. Initial regulations stipulate 75% white and 25% black residents. Holsman, Burmeister, et al, architects.

1958 - Cabrini Homes Extension (red brick mid- and high-rises), with 1,925 units in 15 buildings, is completed. A. Epstein & Sons, architects.

1962 - Green Homes (1,096 units, north of Division Street) is completed. Pace Associates, architects.

“Chicago Can Build,” 1950 report by Chicago Housing Authority

Alamer Lee Vassar“I came to Chicago in 1942. I moved into a building at 1230 North

Larrabee on October 2nd of that year. There wasn’t no projects

here then and my husband was in the service. That’s what brought

us up here from Mississippi. I got a job and went to work. Back

then they would beg you when you walked out the door, sayin,’Do

you wanna work for me, do you wanna work for me?’

“It was beautiful down here. They used to have

this festival and parade in the summer, and they

had these lights that run from Chicago [Avenue]

all the way up to North, and we used to sit out

in front of 1230 and look at the people drivin’ by

and parkin’ their cars—whites and colored

people at that time—and everything was lovely,

I mean, beautiful. And the kids they’d go around

the corner...

Paulette Simpson

“My mother was the second person to move into 502. The

elevator excited me and everything was perfect. If you had a

problem with anything in your house, CHA was out there

within 24 hours or less. They were on top of everything then.

I went to Jenner school. I played out in the playground. I

went to Lower North Center to take dancing classes, and I

used to go to Stanton Park for swimming.”

Wanda Hopkins

“We moved here September 1, 1960. We were the second ones in the building at 534 W. Division.

When I moved in it was just so beautiful, the buildings wasn’t grayish the way it is now but really the white color, and the apartments were so new, and the floors were shining…I was about four or five…

It was so new and so pretty and the grass was green….My mother says you’re really crazy to remember all that, but I look at it now after all these years and I can just remind myself of how it was and I can tell people that this was not the original plan. But I remember other families moving in, and these were all white families, and someone organized the Cub Scouts and the Brownie Scot because I remember I became a Brownie…I remember the Brownie uniform and all that, my brothers were in the Cub Scouts.”

Wanda Hopkins (continued)

“Yeah, and we used to live right next door to a white family,

I’ll never forget, we’d spend the night at each other’s house,

stuff that you’d never think of would happen back then. I

remember Alice and Sally. I lived in 402, they lived in 403. My

mother never felt that anything would happen to me when we

spent the night at each other’s house, and her mother never

felt that….It’s almost unheard of now. But I keep tellin’ people

the way it is now was the original plan, and I just wanted

them to know that. I guess that’s why I kept it all in my

memory.”

(p. 53)

Cabrini Extension (1958)

William Green Homes (1962)

Original population of Cabrini-Green reflected the area's

prior ethnic mix; poor Italians, Irish, Puerto Ricans, and

African Americans lived among the war workers and

veterans. Racial segregation overtook Cabrini-Green by

the early 1960s.

Gautreaux et al vs. CHA

1966 - Gautreaux et al vs. Chicago Housing Authority, a lawsuit alleging that Chicago's public housing program was conceived and executed in a racially discriminatory manner that perpetuated racial segregation within neighborhoods, is filed. CHA was found guilty in 1969, and a consent decree was issued in 1981.

July 17, 1970 - Sergeant James Severin and Officer Tony Rizzato of the Chicago Police Department are fatally shot.

1981 - Mayor Jane Byrne moves into Cabrini-Green as part of a publicity stunt.

October 13, 1992 - Seven-year-old Dantrell Davis is fatally shot while walking to school with his mother. Some of the shots came from 500-502 W. Oak Street.

Old Town Village West townhomes, a new mixed-income development, in the

background is the William Green Homes high-rise, part of Cabrini-Green, later

demolished. [Photo: Lawrence J. Vale]

North Town Village mixed-income housing, on the left, with the last of the

Cabrini-Green high-rises on the right; the high-rise was demolished in 2011.

[Photo: Lawrence J. Vale]

the new improved Near North side

now, "Parkside of Old Town"

The new Cabrini Target, opened in 2013.

Cabrini-Green, 1990s

1994 Chicago receives one of the first HOPE VI (Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere) grants to redevelop Cabrini-Green as a mixed-income neighborhood.

1995 Demolition begins.

1997 Chicago unveils Near North Redevelopment Initiative, a master plan for development in the area. It recommends demolishing Green Homes and most of Cabrini Extension.

1999 Chicago Housing Authority announces Plan for Transformation, which will spend $1.5 billion over ten years to demolish 18,000 apartments and build or rehabilitate 25,000 apartments. Earlier redevelopment plans for Cabrini-Green are included in the Plan for Transformation. New library, rehabilitated Seward Park, and new shopping center open.

outcome re: low-income units

"And yet, nearly 20 years into the redevelopment, there exist

fewer than 400 replacement public housing units, counting

both the Cabrini site itself and the mixed-income

communities in the broader neighborhood. With nearly 3,000

deeply subsidized apartments already torn down, the 586

Cabrini row houses — the low-rise housing that has so far

survived the clearance — seem likely to fall next."

—"Up," p. 14

outcome, continued

"The CHA assures ex-Cabrini residents forced from vacated

and demolished buildings that they can enter the lottery for

replacement units on site and in the neighborhood; but all the

existing apartments reserved for public housing residents are

already occupied, and the prospect of achieving the 700

units mandated in the consent decree depends upon the

completion of the glacially implemented new construction on

the Cabrini Extension North site — still unfinished from the

HOPE VI grant of 1993. And even if new units do materialize,

the screening processes — even under the more liberal

terms negotiated though the consent decree — ensure that

most ex-Cabrini households will not be welcomed." [Up," p.

14]

Servicemen's Readjustment Act

(1944)

A.KA. The G.I. Bill

• provided: low-interest loans for the purchase of single

family homes; allowed veterans to escape the housing

shortages in the city and move to new suburbs

• subsidies for tuition, fees, and books for veterans wanting

to attend college. (also, living expenses incurred during

the pursuit of a degree)

US Population Distribution

year cities suburbs small

town/rural

1940 31.6 19.5 48.9

1950 32.3 23.8 43.9

1970 31.4 37.6 31.0

2000 30.3 50 19.7

early suburbs

Forest Hils Gardens, Queens, New York

Radburn, NJ

Chatham Village, Pittsburgh, PA

Forest Hills Gardens,

Queens, NYC

175-acre community

• 800 houses

• 11 apartment buildings

• churches, parks and storefronts

1909 Russell Sage Foundation commissioned the architect

Grosvenor Atterbury and the landscape architect Frederick

Law Olmsted Jr. to plan a new town on a plot in Queens.

Radburn, NJ

Radburn was founded in 1929

Planners Clarence Stein and Henry Wright

Marjorie Sewell Cautley

Clarence Stein and Henry Wright, planners; Ingham & Boyd, architects

Chatham Village, Pittsburgh PA, 1932--36

Radburn, NJ 1929