Illinois

Trumbull Park Homes were the last of the three low-rent housing developments in Chicago built through the Public Works Administration under the New Deal’s U.S Housing Act of 1937. The initiative behind this act was an effort to alleviate slum living conditions in Chicago by replacing overcrowded and impoverished neighborhoods with housing that provided better living conditions for the poor. 

The Chicago Housing Authority’s (CHA) Henry Horner Homes opened in 1957. Designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and named for the Illinois governor who served from 1933 to 1940, the project covered a ten-block area in Chicago’s Near West Side. The original eleven buildings (four sixteen-story and seven seven-story) were arranged on oversized blocks or superblocks, which were created by closing off streets on the traditional city grid. The additional space between the buildings allowed for more light and air; breezeways on the tower facades were built for the same purpose.

Opened in 1947, Wentworth Gardens was erected in Armour Square, a neighborhood ‌on the south side of Chicago. With the country’s entry into World War II, the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) in tandem with the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) prioritized development for Black war industry workers. As a major industrial hub, Chicago was a destination in which many Black migrants sought labor opportunities. Due to residential segregation occurring throughout the country at this time, many of these migrants resided in the historically Black area of the South Side known as the Black Belt.

Opened in 1955, the Grace Abbott Homes were the last of the ABLA Homes built on Chicago’s Near West Side. Earlier ABLA sites like the Addams Homes, built in 1938, were low-rise structures and part of the city grid. Conversely, the Abbott Homes reflect the CHA’s paradigm shift in public housing construction around the 1960s toward a preference for high rises. The Abbott Homes consisted of forty buildings, seven of which were fifteen-story high rises arranged in a Y-shape, separated by large open areas.

Inaugurated by the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) in 1943, the Robert Brooks Homes were the second of four public housing developments opened as part of the ABLA Homes on Chicago’s Near West Side, which also included the Jane Addams Homes, Loomis Courts, and Grace Abbott Homes. The Brooks Homes originally consisted of 834 units in two-story row houses, but in 1961 the CHA extended the developmen

Completed in 1951, Loomis Courts was the third out of four public housing sites known as the ABLA Homes, located on Chicago’s Near West Side, one of the city’s most racially diverse neighborhoods in the 1950s. The two seven-story buildings housed a total of 126 families and were part of a group of eight public housing developments built for the explicit purpose of housing people displaced by the Chicago Housing Authority’s (CHA) urban renewal projects.

When it opened in 1962, the Robert Taylor Homes were the largest public housing site built in the United States, providing up to 44,000 housing units. Named for Robert Rochon Taylor, a housing activist and the first Black chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA), the Taylor Homes were erected in the historically Black neighborhood of Bronzeville on Chicago’s South Side. Inspired by modernist ideals such as Le Corbusier’s Radiant City, most of the public housing built at the time showed a preference for high rises and open spaces between them.

Altgeld Gardens was one of Chicago’s defense housing projects designated for Black occupancy. The nation’s involvement in World War II led to a rising need for war worker housing in cities like Chicago. Thus, the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) and the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) sought a temporary development located on the far south side of Chicago in the Lake Calumet area, an industrial zone that had previously been a waste dump. After some deliberation, the CHA persuaded the FHA to finance the project as a permanent development.

Erected in 1950, Dearborn Homes was the first high-rise project completed by the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA). The development, built after World War II but just before a major postwar housing boom, is located on Chicago’s South Side in the predominately African American neighborhood of Bronzeville. Eight hundred units (with up to three bedrooms) were divided amongst twelve six-story and four nine-story brick buildings.

Erected as part of the New Deal’s Public Works Administration (PWA) and named after the nineteenth-century reformer, the Jane Addams Homes are located on Chicago’s Near West Side. Following the 1937 Housing Act, the Jane Addams Homes were the city’s first site for public housing. The development aimed to stimulate the post-Depression economy and improve the dilapidated housing conditions for impoverished immigrants in the Near West Side neighborhood.