In this powerpoint we consider the rise and fall of public housing in major midwestern cities such as Detroit, St. Louis and Chicago.

1. ARCH 416
Spring '15
Public Housing II

2. agenda 3.22.15
Chicago: the ups and downs of Cabrini-Green
suburbanization

3. CHICAGO
Robert Taylor Homes
Henry Horner Homes
Cabrini-Green

4. 2501 West Lake,
Henry Horner
Homes, Chicago,
1995
Photographed by Camilo Vergara

5. View east along
West Lake from
Oakley, Chicago,
1998
Photograph by Camilo Vergara

8. 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.

13. 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"

14. 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.

16. 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.

17. Goose Island
today

18. 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

19. Goose Island today

20. map showing the location of Goose Island

21. 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.

22. Timeline: Early Years
1929 - 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.

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

27. 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

28. 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.”

30. 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.”

31. 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)

33. 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.

34. 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.

35. 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]

36. 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]

37. the new improved Near North side

38. now, "Parkside of Old Town"

39. The new Cabrini Target, opened in 2013.

40. 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.

41. 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

42. 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]

48. 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)

49. 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

50. early suburbs
Forest Hils Gardens, Queens, New York
Radburn, NJ
Chatham Village, Pittsburgh, PA

51. 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.

65. Radburn, NJ
Radburn was founded in 1929
Planners Clarence Stein and Henry Wright
Marjorie Sewell Cautley

66. Clarence Stein and Henry Wright, planners; Ingham & Boyd, architects
Chatham Village, Pittsburgh PA, 1932--36

69. Radburn, NJ 1929