A STUDY OF SOCIAL PRESSURES IMPACTING

PUBLIC HOUSING PRESERVATION IN

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN AND CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

A THESIS

SUBMITTED ON THE TWENTY-SEVENTH DAY OF APRIL 2015

TO THE DEPARTMENT OF PERSERVATION STUDIES

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

OF THE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

OF TULANE UNIVERSITY

FOR THE DEGREE OF

MASTER OF PRESERVATION STUDIES

______

Madeline L. Norton

APPROVED:______

John H. Stubbs, Director MPS Program

© Copyright Madeline Norton, 2015

All Rights Reserved i

Table of Contents

Table of Contents i

Abstract ii

List of Illustrations and Figures iii

List of Abbreviations iv

Introduction 1

I. History of Public Housing in the United States 3

II. Memory, Place, and the Landscape of Public Housing 55

III. The Built Environment: Case Studies in Public Housing in the Midwest 73

Chicago 78

Milwaukee 104

IV. Where We Go From Here 128

Bibliography 131

ii

Abstract

Public housing has never been considered historic, much less preservable. Starting with legislation in 1934, the relatively young program is at a crossroads: should we continue to build or should we look to the private market for our housing answers? If we look towards the private market, reevaluating the necessity and use of currently standing public housing comes up for debate. By examining the history of public housing nationally, patterns emerge showing how funding structures and policy maneuvers controlled the innovation or lack thereof in housing. Focusing on demolition, an exploration into place memory is discussed, relating to the preservation of spaces in our minds and how the physical environment affects them. Finally, looking at different developments in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Chicago, Illinois, the cases show different perspectives on public housing preservation, from the completely intact project to those that are creatively readapted to one with a single structure remaining. Public housing has a strong story to tell, and a strong place within our cultural memory, the task for preservationists to learn how to explain and celebrate.

iii

List of Illustrations and Figures

Figure 3-1: Jane Addams Homes, Chicago, Illinois Figure 3-2: Children playing in the Animal Court at Jane Addams Figure 3-3: Proposed street elevation for the National Public Housing Museum Figure 3-4: Julia C. Lathrop Homes, Chicago, Illinois Figure 3-5: Rendering of new development construction at Lathrop Homes Figure 3-6: Milwaukee County Census Tracts, 1960 Figure 3-7: Parklawn, Milwaukee, Wisconsin Figure 3-8: "Music" by Karl Kahlich, in Monument Park (HACM, 2005) Figure 3-9: Hillside Terrace and Addition, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

iv

List of Abbreviations

ABLA Collective name for Jane Addams Homes, Robert Brooks Homes and Extension, Loomis Court, and Grace Abbott Homes ADC Aid to Dependent Children AFDC Aid to Families with Dependent Children CBDG Community Block Development Grants CHA Chicago Housing Authority CHI Chicago Housing Initiative CNI Choice Neighborhoods Initiative DB PWA Direct Build Program FHA Federal Housing Administration FPHA Federal Public Housing Authority HACM Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee HD PWA Housing Division HHFA Housing and Home Finance Agency HOPE-VI Homeownership Opportunities for People Everywhere Grant Program HUD Department of Housing and Urban Development LD PWA Limited Dividend Program NCSDPH National Commission on Severely Distressed Public Housing NIRA National Industrial Recovery Act NPHM National Public Housing Museum NPS National Park Service PWA Federal Administration of Public Works PRWORA Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act QHWRA Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act TANF Temporary Assistance to Needy Families USHA United States Housing Administration 1

Introduction

Public housing has always been a housing of marginalization. Initially, it catered to the new Southern migrants arriving in big cities during World Wars I and II. Those migrations along with European immigration created an influx of people living in substandard housing. The creation of state-sponsored housing provided a decent, safe, and sanitary place for people to live. Initially seen as a stepping-stone to middle class homeownership, public housing quickly became a place to warehouse the poor. Insufficient social support services and rent policies initially priced out, and then outright evicted, more economically stable families. In their place, policies allowed only the incredibly poor to move in. Without appropriate foresight, public housing became the new ghetto.

Now, to remedy mistakes of the housing projects, cities are using HOPE-

VI grants and tenets of Defensible Space and New Urbanism to transform housing projects. Often times, demolition and replacement with mixed-use developments shut out the former residents. While physically unsafe, the sense of community gained from the projects was more important to residents than the physical environment, and why many former residents became wary of scatter-site housing. Creating environments that appear cosmetically better does not change the underlying interconnected social relationships and 2 disregards the economic, racial, and social struggle of the residents. An important part of American social history is contained in those projects, relating to Depression Era builders, war relief efforts, the Great Migration, and the narrative of race and class in the struggle to join the middle class in our big metropolitan areas. Instead of demolishing projects, funding exists to reuse and keep the aging structures, keeping the physical memory space of marginalized

Americans alive.

Looking at examples of eligible and listed projects reveals a new story about the American experience, exposing a section of the culture not always interpreted, documented, or appreciated. Seeing these places of conscience, struggle, and change makes those narratives real and remembered.

3

I. History of Public Housing in the United States

Public housing in the US has rarely been glamorous. Since its inception, it was intended to avoid competition with private developers and real estate interests. Initially, projects were a melting pot of progressive ideals and new experiments in community and urban planning. As funding structures changed and politics became more involved in the process, public housing adopted a darker position in society. Once the social and economic problems within the projects reached a tipping point, federal interventions looked to New Urbanism and demolition as a way to rectify the islands of poverty located in the center of our urban areas.

Private housing for the Poor

Housing the poor has always been a concern for Americans. Beginning with the public neighbors of the Puritans, social obligations dictated that the community takes care of everyone. Puritan relief was always face-to-face, and only the deserving poor, those known within the community, were included.

However, as more newcomers immigrated to the colonies, the distinction between “strangers” and “neighbors” became stronger, and harsher 4 ordinances were instituted to limit the individual responsibility towards the

“strangers.”1

As more immigrants came to the East Coast, almshouses were created to house the indigent. At the beginning of the 19th Century, views on the poor evolved to stratify those who were deserving of charity and those who were not. The deserving poor were those who had no power over their situation, such as orphans or widows. The indigent, who were in need of reform, were generally alcoholics. The architecture of the almshouses attempted to cure the residents through hard labor. Many were located outside of town to house agricultural communities. The fresh air and hard work were one method of reform, and the poor could be segregated from upstanding citizens. This reform movement has helped shape how we culturally understand the poor, by segregating them from the rest of the citizenry.2

With the waves of immigration in the late 19th Century, tenements and unsanitary housing became the norm in large cities. New York City was known for its unhealthy housing, and their Tenement Act of 1901 attempted to establish health standards regarding light, air circulation, plumbing, and sanitation. This was, sadly, limited to new construction only. Chicago’s slums

1 Vale, Lawrence J. From the Puritans to the Projects: Public Housing and Public Neighbors, 19- 24. 2 Ibid., 29, 33-35. 2 3 Milnarik,Ibid., 29, Elizabeth33-35. Ann. “Julia C. Lathrop Homes” National Register of Historic Places Inventory -- Nomination Form, 21. 5 were the horizontal embodiment of New York’s vertical tenements. On the heels of the Tenement Act of 1901, Chicago created a New Tenement ordinance, attempting to regulate new construction. While both sets of ordinances were good ideas, enforcement was difficult due to lack of funding, fear of government interference, and the slow rate of attrition.3

Philanthropic housing, whether religious minded or operated by progressives, was the only relief from the slums. “Philanthropy and Five

Percent” was a rallying cry behind constructing apartments with only a five percent annual return on investment. These structures were experimental spaces for progressives and community planners, looking to create spaces with light and circulation.4 In Chicago, Edwin Waller hired Frank Lloyd Wright to design Francisco Terrace in 1895, an apartment development. The two-story brick building was adorned in terra-cotta trim, wrapping around an interior courtyard. Most apartments opened directly into the courtyard, creating a feeling similar to a small village. Waller took a three percent return on rents, compared with the six percent return in the nearby Pullman model community.5

The Garden Homes project in Chicago created single-family homes for the working class. Businessman turned philanthropist real estate developer

3 Milnarik, Elizabeth Ann. “Julia C. Lathrop Homes” National Register of Historic Places Inventory -- Nomination Form, 21. 4 Ibid., 21. 5 Ibid., 22, Bowly, Devereux. The Poorhouse Subsidized Housing in Chicago, 3-4. 6

Benjamin J. Rosenthal was captivated by English garden cities after visiting them, and wanted to extend the experiment to Chicago. He purchased forty acres on the far south side and built mostly detached single-family homes, with deep lots to encourage gardening. Charles Frost, the project architect, designed the same floorplan for the three bedroom homes, with varied architectural details on the exteriors. The development opened in 1919.

Houses were mostly brick with full basements; some were covered in stucco.

The sloping roofs and the uniform scale were reminiscent of English cottages.

While the homes were a stark difference from the other urban offerings and mortgages were easily sold, the development was far from the central city and major transit options. The Great Depression did not help the development, and homes entered foreclosure. While Rosenthal wanted to create a self-sufficient, moderate-income housing development, the community mostly survived on his contributions.6

Early Days of Government Housing

Wartime housing was uniquely tied to manufacturing, as the influx of workers during World War I overwhelmed the local housing stock. The federal government gave funding to, and authorized construction by, the US Shipping

6 Ibid., 5-7. 7

Board Emergency Fleet Corporation and the US Housing Corporation.7 This is the first time the federal government became officially involved in housing. By the time authorization passed and construction started, the War was dying down. The buildings that were constructed were small and sturdy, designed with Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City principles in mind: completely self- sufficient communities, support for approximately 32,000 families, radial parks, gardens, and walkways linked to neighboring towns via public transit. In response to the soot and overcrowding in industrial city life, Howard championed these ideas in England, and they gradually made their way to the

United States.

After the War, factory closures caused demand to decline, and market pressures forced the Government to exit housing. The 16,000 housing units built under the emergency corporations were quickly sold to the private market, since the wartime crisis was over.8 While the projects were sold at a loss, this was another move by the US to establish decent, safe, and sanitary housing meeting minimum living standards.

In the early 20th Century Milwaukee had socialist mayors, coming from the strong German tradition of socialist workers. The first such mayor, Emil

Zeidler, took office from 1910 to 1912. He felt strongly about building houses

7 Housing, etc., for Shipyard Employees, Public Law 102, US Statutes at Large 40 (1918). 8 Meyerson, Martin, and Edward C. Banfield. Politics, Planning, and the Public Interest; the Case of Public Housing in Chicago, 17. 8 for the growing population, believing better neighborhoods would lead to better decisions. During his short tenure, Zeidler established building codes and a planning commission. When Daniel Hoan, a socialist, took office in 1916 he created a housing commission and created a clear planning agenda. In 1921,

Garden Homes, a development of ninety-three houses, was built on the north side of the city. Designed as a housing collective for workers, it leveraged the

Garden City principles into a strong community. Tenants bought stock in the corporation in lieu of ownership. Garden Homes became a model of government cooperation, but private homeownership was a stronger driving force with Milwaukee’s first generation Americans. Through various lawsuits, the residents bought out their shares, dissolving the collective, by 1925.9

The Great Depression and Public Housing

The Great Depression brought economic disparity to the country.

Unemployment rates were difficult to manage, especially in large Northern metropolitan areas where European immigrants and Southern African-

Americans migrated for better job opportunities. Milwaukee saw unemployment rates dive later than other rust belt cities, but was not immune to

9 Santacroce, Phyllis. “Rediscovering the role of the state: Housing policy and practice in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1900-1970.” 52-54. 9 the crisis.10 President Franklin Roosevelt used his executive powers to jump start the US economy with his 100 Days Plan, focusing on economic recovery, unemployment relief, and banking reform. Under economic relief, the Public

Works Administration was created.

In 1933, President Roosevelt and Congress worked to pass the National

Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), an economic recovery program focused on raising prices and wages to combat inflation and create jobs. Title I was devoted to industry, reassuring employers and unions that work standards and prices would be enforced under fair competition. Title II created the Federal

Emergency Administration of Public Works (PWA), to work on certain infrastructure projects for the government. Section 202 encouraged programs to develop "construction, reconstruction, alteration, or repair under public regulation or control of low-cost housing and slum-clearance projects..." This was the first link between housing and slum clearance, a vestige that would remain attached to the future of housing policy. Section 203 gave the federal government the right to eminent domain, and Section 204 funded massive transportation and infrastructure upgrades nationwide.11

Under the PWA, the Housing Division and the Subsistence Housing

Division were created. Each department was responsible for aiding in the

10 Ibid., 18. 11 National Industrial Recovery Act, Public Law 67, U.S. Statutes at Large 48, Title II, § 202 (1933). 10

“redistribution of the overbalance of the population in industrial areas” and giving loans to rural homesteaders, with the goals of slum clearance, job creation, and improved housing.12 The PWA was not initially involved in constructing houses. Under the Limited Dividend Program, the PWA provided funding and guidance to local limited dividend corporations, typically non- profit groups, allowing private and public developers the opportunity to gain low-interest loans with long amortization periods. The program stipulated high quality construction and modern amenities in low-density developments, but individual construction styles were specified by local interest groups. Once completed, the property would fall onto a single entity to manage the sites, while the federal government retained ownership; housing authorities were quickly formed nationwide. Both Illinois and Wisconsin had enabling legislation for housing authorities in 1935.

For site selection and resident population, the Housing Division used discriminatory practices, which were legal at the time. Worrying about local support behind a stronger federal presence, Harold Ickes, head of the Housing

Division, instituted the neighborhood composition rule. Proponents to the PWA wanted local control over housing and site selection, and feared that the federal government would not necessarily act in their best local interests. New

12 Milnarik, Elizabeth Ann. “The Federally Funded American Dream: Public Housing as an Engine for Social Improvement, 1933-1937.” 201. 11 developments were to maintain the established racial makeup of an area. In practice, the rule rarely worked. Some projects were developed with homogeneity in mind, ignoring the small pockets of ethnic and racial variety in neighborhoods at large. Perception of a “black project” or a “white project” affected how residents responded to their placement, and ultimately lead to uniformity in most projects. In Chicago, the Lathrop and Trumbull Park Homes were in African American ghettos, and accepted those families upon opening.

The Jane Addams Homes were in a surprisingly racially varied location, and admitted a mixed population.

The Housing Act of 1934 started the federal government’s relationship with housing construction. In creating the Federal Housing Administration

(FHA), the government entered the mortgage market. Titles II and III created

Mutual Mortgage Insurance, providing protections to neighborhood and low- income developers, and National Mortgage Associations, what later became

Fannie Mae. While not directly related to construction, the Act of 1934 moved toward realizing the single-family home fantasy for more American families.13

In 1935, the federal government’s right to eminent domain, Section 203 under NIRA, was ruled illegal. Judge Dawson ruled in United States v. Certain

13 National Housing Act, Public Law 479, U.S. Statutes at Large 48 (1934). 12

Lands in Louisville, Kentucky14 that using eminent domain to take land for public housing was unconstitutional. Eminent domain could only be used by the federal government for a “public benefit” and “public use,” as housing fell into the view of the “public good” in promoting public health. In Dawson’s view,

“public benefit” and “public use” were not the same. As public housing limits who can use each space by honoring tenants’ rights, it no longer falls under

“public use.” This decision prevented federal authorities from taking land, and required municipal authorities to use local resources. Local land accumulators, acting as government agents, would assess land values and offer to buy out owners slightly below market rate, with the implied threat of using eminent domain through condemnation. Before the government released information regarding the planned development, landowners would hopefully not inflate the price of their own parcels, sidestepping potential budgetary headaches.

Once enough parcels were bought for a project, usually more than half, the public would learn of the housing plans and hopefully not disrupt the piecemeal purchasing. Securing enough continuous land was a long, arduous process.15 The Louisville decision brought about roadblocks for the Housing

Division and ultimately put an end to the Limited Dividend program. As a

14 United States v. Certain Lands in the City of Louisville, Jefferson County, Kentucky, et al. 9 F.Supp. 137 (W.D. Kentucky, 1935). 15 Milnarik, Elizabeth Ann. “The Federally Funded American Dream: Public Housing as an Engine for Social Improvement, 1933-1937.” 141-145. 13 federal entity, the Housing Division could no longer legally select and condemn sites without layers of negotiation.

The PWA Housing Division began to build houses under the Direct Build program, as Limited Dividend projects were rarely approved and the Louisville decision limited federal powers. Of the 533 Limited Dividend projects submitted before the end of 1933, only twenty were selected for construction approval. Local authorities neglected the minimum standards set out by the

Housing Division: sites were too dense, land valuations acted as inflated collateral, and inexperienced applicants grossly under or over estimated their total costs. Some were honest mistakes; some appeared to show corruption. Of the twenty selected projects, six lacked proper local funding and only seven could secure sufficient loans. The projects ultimately constructed showed the flexibility of the program and the Housing Division’s understanding of local needs, building projects differing in size, architectural style, and density.16

The PWA saw the problematic slow pace of Limited Dividend developments and changed their construction tactics. If the department controlled the design and construction process, there were fewer poor design denials and potentially fewer development planning errors. Under the Direct

Build program, the PWA constructed fifty-two projects in thirty-eight cities, adding nearly 22,000 housing units between 1933 and 1938. The last

16 Ibid., 94-96. 14 projects, Brewster and Parkside in Detroit, were started before the United

States Housing Authority took over development projects after the Housing Act of 1937, but not completed until 1938. Initially, the program managed four

Limited Dividend projects that lacked proper funding; projects in six other cities were quickly approved with minimal federal intervention.17

The Direct Build Program, headed by Horatio Hackett, was a flurry of construction and planning. Hackett, an architect and designer from Chicago, was a Washington outsider with initiative to get projects started. In July 1934 alone, the Direct Build Program sent forty-nine projects to President Roosevelt for approval. City selection considerations included vacancy rates justifying government intervention, local political and popular support, and varied industry to avoid funding projects where a single business failure could ruin the economy.18 Once a city was approved, site selection and boundaries were created. Central planners believed that a small development amidst a slum would be swallowed up by the community, so vacant land was also considered. Infrastructure installation and local transit options were negotiated, and deliberations were made towards employment opportunities and local

17 Ibid., 119. 18 Ibid., 134. 15 commercial, shopping, and cultural resources. Planners coordinated with public safety institutions and school attendance as well.19

As New Deal projects were drawing to a close, Housing Division contracts needed approval before allocations were eliminated. All contracts needed submittal by December 1935. Instead of a rolling system of approvals, the department was overrun with projects on the same developmental step, creating bottlenecks and temporary organized chaos. In 1935, twenty-two projects broke ground, and another seven were in the demolition phase.

Throughout 1937, twenty more projects opened to tenants. In 1938, two projects opened in Detroit, the last sites funded by the Direct Build program.20

Under the PWA outlined design guidelines, the clean lines of modern architecture would endure as the look and feel of public housing to come in the

United States.

National Housing Acts

The United States Housing Act of 1937, also known as the Wagner-

Steagall Act of 1937, codified the relationship between the federal government and public housing. The government never intended to be a home construction company, and the Act was linked to job creation and temporary

19 Ibid., 135-137. 20 Ibid., 154-155. 16 dwellings. The Act intended to “...to alleviate present and recurring unemployment and to remedy the unsafe and insanitary housing conditions and the acute shortage of decent, safe and sanitary dwellings for families of low income…” Low-income families could not “afford to pay enough to cause private enterprise… to build an adequate supply of decent, safe, and sanitary dwellings…”, forcing the government to step in with their own housing programs while not competing with private real estate interest. It limited rent per unit to no higher than five times the family income. Policy highlights from the Act include:

● Section 3 created the United States Housing Authority (USHA), in lieu of

the PWA Housing Division and later oversaw the Federal Public Housing

Authority (FPHA), within the Department of the Interior.

● Section 9 created the partnership between federal funding and local

management, allowing municipal authorities to use federal loans for

ninety percent of their projects and setting an amortization period of

those federal loans to sixty years.

● Section 10 subsidized local housing authorities to maintain the “low-rent

character” of the projects. 17

● Section 11 linked housing to slum clearance through the one-for-one

provision: one new unit of housing for every unit cleared in slum areas,

however the replacement housing did not need to be on the cleared site.

During this era, public housing was viewed as a stepping point between the desolation of the Great Depression and making it to the middle class, where single family homes in the suburbs and a stable, FHA backed mortgage were the ultimate goal.21

The USHA under Nathan Straus was a stark change from the PWA. One of the biggest changes felt by municipalities was the shift from strong federal power to state management. Under Straus, the agency moved from building high quality units with a multitude of amenities to increasing production.

Building the most number of units in the least amount of time using the least amount of funds, Straus felt the impending crush of demand. With efficiency came the loss of the landscaping and other humanizing elements from the

PWA, and no longer accepted were the experiments in innovative site plan and building type. Many of the projects during this era took on a barracks appearance, seen in the Cabrini and Brooks Homes on the South Side of

Chicago.22

21 United States Housing Act of 1937, Public Law 412, U.S. Statutes at Large 51 (1937) 22 Heathcott, Joseph. "The Strange Career of Public Housing: Policy, Planning, and the American Metropolis in the Twentieth Century." Journal of the American Planning Association. 364. 18

The Greenbelt program was designed with the Garden Cities movement in mind. Under the Suburban Division, a consolidation of the different subsistence and urban housing sections under the New Deal, the PWA attempted to create well planned regional suburbs for middle-income families.

The Suburban Division’s focus was on creating jobs, demonstrating the garden city ideals, and creating quality housing. The initial projects were selected in areas near Washington DC, Cincinnati, and Milwaukee, with Greenbelt,

Maryland started first. Greendale, Wisconsin was chosen based on

Milwaukee’s history of a successful housing cooperative, the Garden Homes

Project in the 1920s, and socialist politics. Sited just outside of town on the southwest side, planners hoped the development would decentralize the urban core. Greendale opened to residents in May of 1938. It had 572 housing units in 366 buildings, a village hall, a business center, and schools. Many of the public buildings were adorned with triumphant murals. The residents were generally white, middle class families who worked in the city and commuted home to the suburbs. Sadly, this foreshadowed what happened to many urban areas after World War II. Milwaukee city planner Charles Whitnall lamented how the innovative garden community of Greendale was far out of reach for low-income families, a trend in single family housing that would continue on for many years.23

23 Santacroce, Phyllis. “Rediscovering the role of the state: Housing policy and practice in 19

Mayor Hoan, Milwaukee’s socialist mayor from 1916 through 1940, would have preferred a low-income project to combat the growing divide between who could and could not afford single-family housing. The city’s

German and Polish immigrant families preferred single-family homes, seeing apartments and row houses as undesirable. For many years, this was the standard for housing and immigrant families were owner-occupiers on their property. Until the second migration from the Southern United States began after World War II, tenement houses were rare in Milwaukee.

In the wake of World War II, the federal government became stricter with evictions. Housing demand for veterans, their widows, and the war workforce meant that the high earners were forced to leave at faster rates than before. Neighborhood composition rules were more acceptably ignored, and emergency housing in Quonset huts or trailer parks were common. The difficulty in relocating outside of government housing rests in the gap between market rate and low-income subsidized housing. Not all evicted families could find decent, safe, and sanitary housing once exiting from the federal housing projects, and returned to slum housing, contrary to the Housing Act’s goals.

The Taft-Ender-Wagner Bill, which created funding for 1.5 million housing units, was brought to the floor in 1946, but never left committee.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1900-1970.” 65-67. 20

The Housing Act of 1949 expanded government building programs after

World War II. The mixture of returning veterans and their families along with displaced war industry workers created a vast housing shortage. Only two percent of war relief housing was added to the permanent affordable housing stock, and the USHA only produced close to 200,000 new permanent units during the War, many of them slum replacement units which did not add to the housing stock as a whole. The private housing market had completely stagnated as well during the War. It was estimated that, nationally, cities would immediately need three million new housing units.24

The main provisions on the Housing Act of 1949 created economic incentives to encourage housing construction. Title I was directly tied to slum clearance and urban redevelopment, later called urban renewal. It provided the funding framework for federal contributions to clear and ready land for development, but did not tie demolition to moderate- or low-income housing.

The only housing provision stated that half of the cleared area would become housing. Title II authorized additional funding to the FHA, to help more families invest in their own homes, enabling the expansion of suburban tract housing subdivisions. Title III provided funding for over 800,000 new housing projects to alleviate the massive shortage over the next seven years, however, this was nowhere close to the previous estimates in the millions. The Act gave

24 Ibid., 365. 21 preference to veterans and had provisions on each unit’s cost of construction.

Under the same section, rent limits were placed on units, creating a rent ceiling at twenty percent below the market rate, reinforcing the power of private real estate interests’ control over higher quality housing. Income limits established residency applicability, and made evictions easier, yet created a section of the market no longer served by low-income or market rate housing. This started to shape the contemporary view of housing projects, and began clustering

“islands of poverty.” Title IV allowed the government to research new housing techniques, focusing on economical construction, market data, and efficient use by the tenants. These were euphemisms for determining how the government could construct apartments with the smallest amount of space in the fastest, cheapest manner possible to match the market demand.25

Well-established perceived public history implies that public housing was the work of philanthropic organizations and idealists, hoping to modernize the landscape through innovative urban design. Later, when the government entered the arena, it was to continue those philanthropic efforts, mostly to the detriment of public financing. However, scholars disagree, stating that public housing was planned by private business partnerships to further their own goals through policy. Construction unions hoped to gain from job creation and downtown areas hoped to gain higher-class, mostly white customers from

25 Housing Act of 1949, Public Law 171, U.S. Statutes at Large 63 (1949) 22 incoming urban renewal projects. In the end, these interests would work against what may have been best for the residents in order to further their own profits.26

Slum clearance was not just for the wealthy to profit. Some residents were against clearance and worried about changes in livelihoods. In the strong

Catholic communities, priests worried about fracturing their congregations.

Those who operated just outside of the law, including gamblers and prostitutes, would not be welcome in new housing, nor would landlords who would lose their unreasonably high rental rates. Residents who made just above the income limit for public housing also worried about their future in their current neighborhood. African-American legislators worried that their districts would fragment and white interests would occupy the formerly minority strongholds.

Since African-Americans were not accepted by the white populace, they wanted to keep what political identity they could.27

Residents were relieved to move into the new developments. Seen as a stepping-stone to private homeownership, the projects were a welcome change from the slum offerings. Prior to public housing, the housing of last possible resort was what was available. Cold water apartments and mice and

26 Gebhardt, Matthew F. “Politics, Planning and Power: Reorganizing and Redeveloping Public Housing in Chicago.” 44-45; Meyerson, Martin, and Edward C. Banfield. Politics, Planning, and the Public Interest; the Case of Public Housing in Chicago. 96. 27 Meyerson, Martin, and Edward C. Banfield. Politics, Planning, and the Public Interest; the Case of Public Housing in Chicago. 98-100. 23 cockroach infestations were common. To earn more from tenant rents, landlords split apartments into divided flats, often leaving just two or three rooms per family. Upon moving into projects, new tenants were thrilled by the modern appliances and the thought that they would be the first to use their kitchen and bathroom fixtures. The clean white refrigerator, and that it was not an icebox, represented residents’ hope of a safe, healthy home.

In order to maintain standards in housing, case managers conducted strict interviews. While asking questions about income and family structure, they also judged how families kept their houses and if the children were well behaved. Within the housing projects themselves, residents maintained high standards through community policing. Renters took pride in their landscaping.

Some observed neighbors using scissors to cut their grass as a form of friendly competition. Projects offered prizes to the best flower show in a city, as

Andrew Greenlee recalls at Altgeld Gardens.28 Property managers only had to mention in passing if someone’s lawn seemed unkempt, and it was promptly remedied; children were scolded for playing on the grass. Residents took pride in the first bit of property that truly felt like their own, and rigid fines helped define strong community norms. However, as buildings began to age out of their intended lifespan, maintenance became an ever-growing issue.

28 Fuerst, J. S. and D. Bradford Hunt. When Public Housing Was Paradise: Building Community in Chicago. 59. 24

Chicago after the War

Arnold Hirsch, author of Creating the Second Ghetto, explores how public housing in Chicago was created to further segregate the African-

American population. He describes the first ghetto as the housing enclaves of the Great Migration during the early 20th century, when African-American families moved north to find manufacturing jobs after World War I. Public housing policy then created the second ghetto through dismantling and reorganizing the historically African-American areas into public housing projects. Chicago’s vacancy rates during and after World War II reached menacingly low levels. Five percent was considered to be a precarious point, yet the rate hit less than one percent in April 1942 and remained there for months.29 The city’s protective covenants were active until Shelley v. Kraemer in 1948.30 The decision stated that if the state enforced those agreements, it violated the Fourteenth Amendment; the covenants themselves were not illegal, and it was the right of the seller to convey to property to whoever they choose.

Once African-Americans began to buy into neighborhoods, rioting and physical intimidation practices became the norm. Ethnic Europeans and whites

29 Hirsch, Arnold R. Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960. 22. 30 Shelley et ux. v. Kraemer et ux. 334 U.S. 1 (1948) 25 seemed to have little at stake when viewing African-Americans as transient workers in tenement housing, compared to settled property owners.31

Throughout the 1950s, Hirsch asserts, Chicago unofficially institutionalized the second ghetto with housing policy. After the continued violence, the city was rightly afraid of how integration would or could continue. Agreements to maintain federal neighborhood composition policies created barriers to the suburbs. By 1960, close to 700,000 new single-family homes were built, with an overwhelming majority, seventy-seven percent, in the suburbs. For those middle class African-Americans who could afford a down payment on a house, they were culturally barred from moving away from the central city. Within the city itself, public housing, institutional housing, and government buildings were the only new construction. Slum clearance and the federal highway program were used as the justification build on the South Side of Chicago, where African-American families cultivated rich neighborhoods for the last half century. Once razed, public housing could not match the pace of displaced residents. By 1954, more than half of the new public housing units were allocated just to federal clearance projects, changing the purpose behind their existence in the urban fabric.

31 Hirsch, Arnold R. Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960. 92. 26

Scaling Up

The 1940s saw the beginning of a fascination with high-rise towers.

While maximizing returns on land acquisition costs, the construction costs were rarely cheaper. Planners were in favor of creating examples distinct from their surrounding slums, creating “towers in the park” as a beacon to social reform.

Reformers hoped to continue the row house experiment, and small projects seemed less disruptive to neighborhoods as a whole from a political standpoint. Smaller projects could have been constructed on small vacant lots, but those avenues were abandoned. Instead, central city land acquisition and clearance costs dominated the discussion and discouraged smaller scale designs. Politics made suburban land untouchable. High-rise developments were beneficial to couples and the elderly, but what worked for some was not appropriate for larger families, as four and five bedroom apartments were constructed in the towers. As more units were built on each site, the unanticipated costs associated with elevators and maintenance eventually made the new projects more expensive.

Officials saw large projects as the means to completely overhaul a community, transforming it from dangerous and dirty into a place of hope.

Stakeholders thought more open greenspace would be advantageous for large families, providing a park-like atmosphere for children, but the grassy areas 27 lacked benches to discourage loitering and the high-rise construction made parental supervision difficult or impossible. Another innovation for large families was the “children’s play spaces” on each floor, which were just enlarged hallways between the apartment units.

Funding limits created strains on architectural planning and tenant facilities. The problems facing housing loomed so large that any extra expense for small luxuries was thought inappropriate. At the same time, encouraging residents to strive for better environs outside of the projects meant to housing authorities providing poor amenities and incomplete construction, encouraging turnover. Closet and cabinet doors were nonexistent and apartments were described as claustrophobic, housing too many people to even all sit down and eat a meal together at the same time. Storage for bicycles, luggage, or other bulky items was outside of the budget. Bedrooms were often too narrow to accommodate much more than a full sized bed. In order to avoid criticism from the private construction industry, public housing could not have any amenities that the private market was not offering in the lowest priced new construction; according to a FPHA manual, these were “extravagances.”32 The architectural monotony of the projects and the lack of vehicular thoroughfares further added to feelings of isolation.

32 Meyerson, Martin, and Edward C. Banfield. Politics, Planning, and the Public Interest; the Case of Public Housing in Chicago. 94. 28

In 1954, the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka33 decision was handed down. The decision declared school segregation unconstitutional, stating separate and equal was not truly equal. The long process to education integration began. In public housing, the federal government could not ignore how its policies had created inequalities. B.T. McGraw, the Deputy Assistant to the Administrator in the Housing and Home Finance Agency, was very hands- on during the trial and issued reports after Shelley v. Kraemer and Brown v.

Board investigating racial relations in housing policy while working in the

Racial Relations Office. While talking to mayors, one told McGraw that desegregation in schools is one more step towards upholding the principles established in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, and that adequate shelter would be the next major area. How the government aided private development with public funding for the good of housing created a moral grey area of involvement: were public dollars going directly against securing the rights of an individual guaranteed in the Constitution?34

The Housing Act of 1954 amendments addressed some of the civil rights issues and social unrest felt towards public housing. Using finance reform for the mortgage market, the FHA attempted to diversify its loans and lower the down payments, making single family housing market entry easier for all

33 Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al. 347 U.S. 483 (1954) 34 McGraw, B. T. "The Housing Act of 1954 and Implications for Minorities." Phylon. 179-180. 29 ethnicities. Title III, Slum Clearance and Urban Renewal, linked federal funding in a new way. Instead of creating the funds for just slum clearance through demolition, the Act encouraged deliberate urban planning. Redevelopment funds became tied to holistic planning, instead of the piecemeal attempts to encourage private development, and outlined new urban renewal goals: not only were municipalities eliminating slums and blight, they were also encouraged to maintain, repair, rehabilitate, and conserve the cores of the central city. As part of urban renewal, housing stock was rarely added to cities and mainly replaced the substandard housing in place. Municipal funding would only be given to plans deemed suitable, incorporating land use and building code reform with voluntary old building retention and rehabilitation.

Language in the Act of 1954 was very deliberate about using “urban renewal,” moving in a different direction of development. No longer called

“projects” and “redevelopment plans,” proposals were designated “urban renewal areas” and “urban renewal plans.”35

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 legally ended discrimination when receiving federal funding. The Act eliminated the unofficial local protective covenants that kept housing projects in line with neighborhood racial composition.36 After

President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, President Johnson learned that

35 Housing Act of 1954, Public Law 560, U.S. Statutes at Large 68 (1954) 36 Civil Rights Act of 1964, Public Law 88-352, Title IV, US Statutes at Large 79 (1964) 30

Kennedy and his advisors were planning to attack poverty. Early in his tenure,

Johnson passed the Economic Opportunity Act, intending to expand education opportunities and eliminate poverty while building up the safety net for the unemployed. The Civil Rights Act followed those same sentiments, eliminating segregation for federal social services. Under Title VIII of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, continuing legislation under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, ethnicity became a protected class and thus could not be a condition to restrict access to housing. It also prevented housing discrimination against disabilities and familial status, protecting pregnant women and single mothers. Housing authorities were no longer allowed to keep separate, race-based waiting lists, and African-American families quickly jumped to the top, as their neighborhoods were most often destroyed during urban renewal projects entitling them to priority access to federal housing.37 While the cultural implications were monumental, the consequences in public housing were destabilizing. African-American families often had fewer economic opportunities, and opening public housing to them was a welcome change.

White families feared integration, and moved out of the projects as soon as economically possible. The remaining very low-income renters meant the housing projects had less overhead to cover maintenance and often needed to provide more supportive social services, further straining a stretched budget.

37 Fair Housing Act of 1968, Public Law 90-284, Title 90-284 (1968) 31

The shifting demographics furthered the debate of who public housing was for and how society should tackle the needs of very low-income families, questions that are still unanswered today.

The Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965 created structural changes to public housing policy in the United States. Enacting legislation created the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the new cabinet department tasked with overseeing all housing, mortgage, and urban renewal projects managed by the federal government. Housing was the final piece of President Johnson’s Great Society, building on the stopgap Housing

Act in 1964. The Act of 1965 built on long-standing programs, authorizing

240,000 new units over the next four years and funding almost $3 billion for urban renewal. A portion of the urban renewal funds were set aside to update building codes and encourage urban rehabilitation. The rent subsidy program, the most controversial and innovative piece, allowed housing authorities to buy pre-existing buildings to use as public housing.38

Robert Weaver, head of the Housing and Home Finance Agency

(HHFA), the precursor to HUD, worked in the years preceding the Act of 1965 to create a system for moderate-income families who did not fit into the public

38 Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965, Public Law 89-117, U.S. Statutes at Large 79 (1965); Department of Housing and Urban Development Act, Public Law 89-174, U.S. Statutes at Large 79 (1965); von Hoffman, Alexander. “Let us Continue: Housing Policy in the Great Society, Part One.” 13. 32 housing income constraints but were not served but the private market.39 In

1961, he created the Section 221 (d) (3)40 program, a below-market interest rate loan demonstration program. Weaver would have preferred to expand public housing to moderate-income families, but the image of public housing, seen only as housing of last resort for very low-income families, was too unsavory to be feasible. Unlike the voucher system of today, Section 221 (d)

(3) funding was limited to a small subset of potential tenants: elderly individuals, disabled individuals, those displaced by federal projects, or those living in inadequate housing. It created a soft private partnership with the government, but was slow to build up housing stock. The rent supplement program in the Act of 1965 hoped to broaden the read of Section 221 (d) (3).

However, controversy in the House and Senate over “economic integration,” thinly veiled fears about racial desegregation, threatened the rent supplements program and Johnson’s momentum on other landmark legislation. Budgetary concerns drove considerations as well, as legislators feared they would eventually supplement middle- and upper-class rents. As a compromise, an amendment set the income limits on rent supplements below the public housing income limits. Debate continued over who would get the vouchers and how they would be funded. Misinformation regarding who qualified, families or

39 Often called “the 20 percent gap”, as public housing income limits were set at 20 percent below market rate. 40 Housing Act of 1961, Public Law 87-70 § 221, US Statutes at Large 75 (1961) 33 individuals or both, and what their allowances would cost meant rent supplements went without proper funding for the rest of the 1960s.

In 1966, Gautreaux v. the Chicago Housing Authority41 eliminated the last notions of racial exclusions in Chicago. The decision affirmed discriminatory practices in public housing based on site selection for the projects. In a deposition four years after the initial decision, then Chicago

Housing Authority (CHA) executive director C.E. Humphrey admitted to dealings between the previous executive director and local aldermen. The

Kean-Murphy deal, as it was known, stated that aldermen could veto a proposed CHA project in their community before the site was formally announced. While these dealings were tacitly assumed, Humphrey was the first to openly admit to this form of discriminatory practice.42

Projects were predominantly built in minority, economically disadvantaged areas, as residents there had little political power, creating an undesirable environment around any new housing. At the time, ninety-nine percent of CHA residents were African-American and more than ninety-nine percent of the projects’ units were located in minority and economically disadvantaged communities. Gautreaux created a new framework for scatter- site housing. Cook County, the majority of which Chicago occupies, was

41 Dorothy Gautreaux et al. v. the Chicago Housing Authority et al. 22 F.Supp. 582 (N.D. Illinois 1967) 42 Bowly, Devereux. The Poorhouse Subsidized Housing in Chicago. 167. 34 divided based on census tract. Areas of high African-American concentrations, more than thirty percent, were classified as “limited public housing areas,” while the rest of the city was divided into “general public housing areas;” after an initial build up of seven-hundred units in the “general area,” every new housing unit created in the “limited areas” would mean three were created in the “general areas”. The case also limited how many units could be erected in one group, and dictated that family housing was limited to no more than 3- stories, the caveat being 1,458 already federally funded housing units would still be built as planned.43

Gautreaux has had many implications on public housing in Chicago and nationwide. Its legacy unofficially prevented high-rise project construction after the 1960s, since family developments were limited to smaller projects less than

3-stories tall, and the CHA encouraged the use of vouchers for scattered site housing into the suburbs. The after effects of Gautreaux have had mixed results, especially related to voucher housing: residents who were able to find housing in the suburbs were generally better off, but residents who remained in the slummed urban areas generally had higher recidivism rates, returning to

43 Ibid., 168. 35 the city welfare structures.44 Gautreaux is still actively involved in the planning and execution of public housing through today.45

In the decade ending in 1968, Chicago constructed over 15,000 new units and all but 696 were high-rise developments. The era of booming development also solidified the stereotyping of rows of tall, sterile buildings.

Initially, the CHA made attempts to submit low-rise and walk up schemes to the

FPHA, but the per unit land acquisition costs were too high on slum clearance sites. After two years, they gave up and reverted to all high-rise proposals.

Their largest project, the Robert Taylor Homes, finished ahead of schedule, and the CHA had not screened enough tenants to fill the towers, admitting virtually unscreened residents into the southern portion of the site. Building managers treated adult residents like children, as if they lacked common sense; tenants could not even adjust the heat in their apartments, furthering resentment towards the administration.46

The decision to build the Taylor Homes high-rises embodies everything that went wrong with the CHA and public housing on a large scale. Ignorance

44 “There was a related fear [with housing vouchers] that the community that had been built by the residents would be destroyed by forced relocation. Relatedly, the effectiveness of providing tenants with vouchers to replace demolished units is questionable. Information on the success of voucher recipients in the private market in Chicago is fairly poor… [S]tudies that do attempt to address the question of voucher effectiveness have found that voucher holders tend to cluster in poor south side and south suburban neighborhoods. Recidivism was quite high with, 61% returned to high poverty neighborhoods. Stability was also greatly decreased, as 74% had moved multiple times since being vouchered out.” “Politics, Planning and Power: Reorganizing and Redeveloping Public Housing in Chicago.” Gebhardt, Matthew F., PhD diss., 65. 45 "The Gautreaux Lawsuit | BPI." BPI Chicago. 46 Bowly, Devereux. The Poorhouse Subsidized Housing in Chicago. 110-113. 36 towards the growing trends of walk-up apartments and row houses built by private developers in urban Chicago furthered the apparent disconnect in government policies. The Chicago chapter of the American Institute of

Architects (AIA) criticized the construction and maintenance costs, offering low- rise solutions that should have been considered prior to construction. The continued arguments towards greater and greater scale were unfounded by the time of the Taylor Homes’ construction. Suburban flight had begun, and

Chicago’s population was in decline.

At the same time, the population in housing became more and more

African-American as building took place virtually only in the inner city and the

South Side. CHA policies of economic and social segregation shifted to ensure that public housing would become only African-American housing. Before the building boom began, the CHA African-American population was already approaching eighty-five percent.47

The End of Public Housing?

HUD demolished Pruitt-Igoe, a massive and infamous housing project in

St. Louis, before completing the original construction plans on fifty-seven acres of cleared slum land. The project was notorious for crime and violence as deferred maintenance became standard and poorly planned public spaces

47 Ibid., 99. 37 became the stomping grounds for gangs. Standing for less than twenty years, the St. Louis Department of Housing began discouraging tenants in 1968, and in 1972, the thirty-three high-rise apartment towers were demolished in two phases. Pruitt-Igoe entered the collective popular discourse around public housing: an example of failed government programs, wasted money, and the monotony of high-rise, modern architecture.48 While the social issues were more apparent in the media, financial struggles plagued planning and construction from the start, never quite realizing the grander urban planning visions.

The 1970s were a startling change to many Americans. Urban decay set in on American downtowns. Cheap suburban land and GI Bill backed mortgages allowed the middle class to easily move away from the mouldering central cities, taking their property tax base with them. In the suburbs, life was idyllic. The ills of poverty were no longer an everyday image. Placed far enough away, suburban residents could almost forget about the grit and struggle of minority city residents. On the economic high of the 1960s, strong blue collar manufacturing jobs, and a strong dollar, complacency set in.

Americans did not feel the need to save or invest. Conservative, suburban residents saw the hippies and racial and ethnic minorities as taking a free ride

48 Actually, this notion of public housing is skewed. Before 1970, housing stock consisted of: 27% high-rises, 32% garden apartments, 16% low-rise walk-ups, and 25% single-family homes or townhouses. (Stoloff, Jennifer. “A Brief History of Public Housing.” 17.) 38 from government money under the Great Society social reforms. Under Nixon and more conservative feelings around the country, social programs were slashed, dropping the safety net from many struggling families.

Housing managers in Chicago felt the shift in their populations. More single mothers and families receiving welfare payments moved into public housing, as need-based waiting lists usurped former admission policies. Daisy

Brumfield, a manager at Stateway Gardens in Chicago, recalls teaching a young mother about day care, free breakfast programs, and how to care for her youngest children. Other former residents and property managers remember the shift took place in the 1960s, but could not necessarily determine the cause. Some blame the Gautreaux decision for disrupting communities; others looked to the portrayal of residents in the media and how public perception evolved; still others saw various lawsuits chip away at the eviction and admission selection policies that formerly helped housing projects maintain a certain status quo.49

President Nixon was a strong supporter of limiting federal government intervention into daily life. His ideals, called New Federalism, sought to create revenue sharing between the federal government, states, and local municipalities. The public felt general unease towards President Nixon’s erratic

49 J.S. Fuerst interviewed a wide spectrum of former residents and building managers in his 2005 book When Public Housing was Paradise. The first chapter, The Vision and its Implementers, focuses on conversations with former CHA employees and their relationships with residents. 39 fiscal policies, and encouraged federal contraction, including cutting social programs. Instead of direct involvement, the federal government would fund block grant projects. In housing, this turned into Community Development Block

Grants (CDBG), under the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1974. The federal government would fund local investment for housing and employment opportunities, but stayed away from hands-on building and hiring. On social welfare issues, the government would provide a small salary to families, instead of providing more direct assistance, and hope that the small income would be enough to encourage adults to look for jobs to supplement.50

Under President Nixon, public housing construction ceased in 1973.

Resident incomes significantly dropped, forcing the administration to decrease services and maintenance while also raising rents. In the Housing Act of 1969, the Brooke Amendment created rental ceilings, capping rents at twenty-five percent of resident incomes, bridging the remaining maintenance budget gaps with subsidies. Initially, HUD operating subsidies were intended for modernization and construction upgrades, but the funding quickly went to overcome operating expenses not covered by rental fees. Hyperinflation and crumbling infrastructure meant that the housing authorities were only treading water, not creating spaces to empower residents. As the federal government

50 Housing and Community Development Act of 1974, Public Law 93-383, U.S. Statutes at Large 88 (1974) 40 continued owing the interest payments on the initial construction mortgages, it hedged against other public housing spending, maintenance and new construction.

The Housing and Urban Development Act of 1974 strengthened and expanded Section 8, formerly Section 23, voucher programs. Housing choice vouchers, as they are known today, help low-income residents in the private housing market. Residents pay thirty percent of their rent, and subsidies cover the remaining portion. By taking the burden off of the government to produce housing and placing supply in the private market, HUD could slowly decrease operating and maintenance costs. Voucher systems create fluctuations within the low-income housing market. Government created low-income housing will always exist as low-income housing, while voucher based units have more leeway about who they serve; voucher based housing managers have the potential to opt out. The Act also created Community Development Block

Grants (CDBG) to allow communities to more easily address their varied development needs. Grants required a three-year plan, highlighting how cities were going to provide housing assistance and manage slums, identifying unmet community resources to better the health and welfare of everyone. Funding was based on ratios between overcrowding, poverty, and sheer population levels. It was intended for infrastructure expansion, building code enforcement, 41 and the standard reimbursements and relocations involved with slum clearance and redevelopment. Section 109 reinforced the Fair Housing Act, adding national origin, sex, and religion to the protected classes eligible for public housing.

After President Nixon, the remaining years of the 1970s were almost unrelated to American public housing. With the creation of the Environmental

Protection Agency (EPA) and new environmental concerns, lead abatement and concern over materials in existing public housing were taken into consideration, but new building did not occur. The private housing market was not producing many alternatives, either. High inflation and interest rates meant construction costs were exorbitant and mortgages unreasonable for the average family. Instead, families were encouraged to save, and tax cuts helped with that goal somewhat.

The 1980s saw the American ideal change. No longer were we a society that might think collectively. Instead, we became a society of individuals. Fatigue over political upheavals and various wars meant young

Americans were tired and felt it was their time to act for themselves. Initially,

President Reagan attempted to reduce government spending and shift markets towards supply-side economics. To do this, he cut taxes and continued the deregulations of many industries in hopes that the markets would correct the 42 inefficiencies of the past. With tax cuts, social services were hit the hardest.

Reagan attempted to cut government spending as a whole, but continued global wars and the fight to stifle communism lead to higher military spending.

Housing, job training, and school lunches were all casualties of the Reagan tax cuts, and the country took on debt, contrary to Reagan’s intentions. The economy took a lucky upturn as oil markets stabilized, but lower-income families were still left out of the American dream. In the culture of individuality, consumerism became a top priority. White-collar jobs, with high earning potential, put the last nail in the coffin for strong blue collar manufacturing jobs. Unlike their parents, the younger generation was less interested in a steady earning and more focused on high salaried employment.

As the 1980s wore on, blue collar, middle-class families lost jobs to overseas imports. Waiting lists for medical schools and law schools grew as financial analyst and Wall Street jobs were highly sought after. Without the safety nets from the Great Society, homelessness and unemployment rose in the blue collar ranks. To cope with the economic losses of the last decade, many

Americans turned to drug use for escapism. Crack cocaine, a highly addictive and cheap to manufacture street drug, ran rampant in inner cities, decimating communities and turning formerly reasonable adults into addicts. Vice President

George H.W. Bush, who would later succeed President Reagan, took harder 43 stances on drug offenders instead of looking for social welfare and rehabilitative solutions. Sentencing minimums under the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse

Act drove deeper fissures into the low-income communities. An overwhelming majority of low-income communities were also minority communities, meaning the Bush policies went to further break up families and destabilize urban populations; the new policy seemed to target the already less fortunate.51

Community Block Grants and a New Perspective on Public Housing

Congress established the National Commission on Severely Distressed

Public Housing (NCSDPH) in 1989 to study the urban decay surrounding and within public housing. The report, delivered to Congress in 1992, proposed removal and demolition measures leading up to 2000. HOPE-VI grants, originally titled Urban Redevelopment Demonstration programs, came directly from this report, with the first pilot program in Atlanta begun in 1992.

Congress maintained the program through appropriations until the Quality

Housing and Work Responsibility Act (QHWRA) of 1998 codified its continuity through 2002. Under the QHWRA, Section 24 of the Housing Act of 1937 was rewritten to provide funding to replace, rehabilitate, or demolish obsolete public housing in order to revitalize and improve neighborhoods while

51 Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, Public Law 99-570, US Statutes at Large 100 (1986) 44 decreasing the concentration of low-income households.52 The QHWRA made significant changes to the Housing Act provisions: it eliminated the one-for-one slum removal clause, allowing housing authorities to replace one-hundred percent of demolished units with vouchers; it eliminated the requirements to only accept very low-income tenants; and it created public-private partnerships through providing loans to mixed income developers. The Act allowed housing authorities to create rent ceilings, part of the market rate housing structure, and required a five year plan to address capital and management costs.53

HOPE-VI grants intended to revitalized public housing projects by using the principles behind New Urbanism and Defensible Space, expecting to diminish some of the isolation between public housing and surrounding communities using conventional architectural patterns. New Urbanism, a design movement that gained momentum in the 1980s, looked to recreate the classic neighborhood character of a walkable city. Streets and landscaping indicate the type of traffic, creating outdoor rooms for pedestrians away from traffic.

Parking and garages take a secondary role. Public gathering places and parks enhance the civic environment between a mix of single family, multi-family, and mid-rise apartment buildings. Defensible Space, Oscar Newman’s theory of urban planning, was published in 1972. There, he outlined how natural

52 National Housing Act, Public Law 479 § 24, U.S. Statutes at Large 48 (1934) 53 Gebhardt, Matthew F. “Politics, Planning and Power: Reorganizing and Redeveloping Public Housing in Chicago.” 118. 45 surveillance, safely adjoining areas, and a sense of personal territoriality and ownership created a self-policing neighborhood. High-rise developments were antithetical to both urban planning theories.

Re-creating through streets that were lost in superblock developments were the most apparent use of Defensible Space within housing projects.

Renovating building exteriors away from the clean lines of modernism and into more vernacular local styles embodied New Urbanism. These changes also meant lowering density within projects, especially as high-rise towers were targeted for demolition. The towers had become the defining symbol of failed public housing, and their social stigma and deferred maintenance costs made them best candidates for demonstration. In their place, mixed-income communities would be built, displacing many of the low-income residents.

Mixed-income communities intended give low-income residents “role models” of higher income families, showing how steady income, education, and stability were important to family cohesion.54 The displaced residents would receive vouchers under the Section 8 program, another practice used to disperse the low-income population.

By allowing local housing authorities to work within the needs of their own communities, the program dissolved some of the federal government’s powers and created relationships with private developers. Community planning

54 Ibid., 48. 46 input became a requirement for funding, allowing residents to weigh in on appearance and community services. As a result, the government wanted to create more self-sustaining communities.

To encourage more urban renewal, the federal government removed barriers turning public housing into mixed use housing developments. The government reconsidered the viability test for distressed units. In the past, housing projects with at least three hundred units and a ten percent vacancy rate were evaluated. Non-viable properties were rated based on the costs of rehabilitation compared against vouchering out residents into private housing; they were to be vacated and demolished within five years. Under the QHWRA, viability tests were extended to developments with 250 units.

Welfare Reform, under the Personal Responsibility and Work

Opportunity Act (PRWORA), was created under President Clinton in 1996.

Welfare payments to families began under the New Deal’s Aid to Dependent

Children (ADC), part of the Social Security Act in 1935.55 A minor program during the Great Depression, it designated funds to help mothers, generally widows or abandoned wives or women married to disabled men, who never intended to work, allowing them to stay at home and care for family members.

The caseload doubled during the 1950s, as the migration from the South continued alongside the decline in manufacturing jobs after World War II. In

55 Social Security Act, Public Law 271, Title IV, § 402, US Statutes at Large 49 (1935). 47

1962, the name was changed to Aid to Families with Dependent Children

(AFDC), in an attempt to discourage mothers with children born out of wedlock to claim benefits. States attempted to establish paternity and offered benefits to single fathers, a shift towards government intervention encouraging more parental responsibility; a shift towards the premise that parents needed to work outside of the home to show they were the “deserving poor” through mandated welfare-to-work programs. However, under AFDC rules, a single parent gained a higher allowance than a two-parent household. The government was torn between wanting to provide basic income for single parent families that really needed the additional help, and if their policy was incentivizing single parent families. In the 1981 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation

Act (OBRA) created new rules regarding payments. Instead of allowing social welfare agencies to gauge what they felt was job training and suitable employment, payments were tied to number of hours recipients contributed to the agency, furthering the notion of a “deserving poor.” Under PRWORA,

AFDC was eliminated and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) replaced the program. TANF sets lifetime limits on how long a family is eligible to receive benefits while emphasizing employment as a condition to continue collecting benefits. The new program also transfers responsibility from the federal level to states, providing block grants for state level programs and 48 offering incentives for reducing budgetary costs, generally through shortening their welfare rolls. Along with other legislation, the intent was to create more self-sufficient households, a theme which continues in the HOPE-VI grants program.56

Criticisms of PRWORA have risen over the years since enactment. While the goal to minimize the welfare rolls has worked, the cost to the families is less encouraging. Many women are unsure about how the new benefits structure works, between TANF, food stamps, and housing allowances. An increase in food insecurity has followed the legislation, as mothers attempt to reconcile between avoiding eviction and buying groceries. The working requirements bring more money to each family but ignore the social costs. The amount of time mothers, often single parents, spend traveling to and from work, typically at a low paying or minimum wage job, means they have less time with their families and requires more childcare support from daycare or family members.

The system lacks support for new mothers who need time to raise their infant children and leave the workforce temporarily, but are foisted back into employment before their family is ready. Additionally, the overall decline in

56 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), Public Law 104-193, US Statutes at Large 110 (1996); Blank, Susan W., and Barbara B. Blum. "A Brief History of Work Expectations for Welfare Mothers." The Future of Children. 28-38. 49 non-voucher based public housing availability mean decent, safe, and sanitary housing is no longer a highly valued policy objective.57

Under welfare reform, Milwaukee experienced problems with tenant approval. Once new background check policies were created, the rejection rate rose to nearly ninety percent. The verification process allowed the city to create better standards within the newly revitalized projects, separating out potential residents with a history of drug or other criminal activity, or tenant problems. Families that did not qualify continued to move further towards the margins, doubling up with friends and extended family or becoming homeless.

The policy changes altered the government’s relationship with public housing clients. The social welfare aspects disappear, favoring landlords while encouraging the continued shift of low-income housing to the private sector through housing choice vouchers. Milwaukee saw vacancy rates shift upward, allowing the Housing Authority of Milwaukee (HACM) to open their waiting lists for enrollment, and often rare occurrence.58

57 Burnham, L. "Welfare Reform, Family Hardship, And Women Of Color."The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 39-46. 58 Umhoefer, Dave. "Rejection Rate High for City Housing Units - Screening Said to Improve Conditions for Existing Tenants." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. 50

Chicago under HOPE-VI

Chicago had some of the earliest grants approved under the HOPE-VI program in 1993, focusing on the Cabrini-Green high rise apartments on the near northwest side. The Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) specifically targeted their high-rise tower developments, constructed after World War II and into the 1960s. By failing the viability test approximately 18,000 of

Chicago’s units were slated for demolition, including all high-rise developments.

Many of these units were removed in areas deemed desirable for redevelopment, calling into question the real motives behind the new housing.

Community members saw this as another “Negro removal” by the city, destroying the spaces residents worked so hard to establish and maintain. By displacing so many low-income residents, there was also the concern regarding gentrification: how will these new developments and new tenants affect the surrounding area, and will more residents be priced out and forced to move?59

The CHA was a product of the political machine. After the Gautreaux decision in 1969, very little was accomplished. The department was mostly ignored unless political backlash emerged, and was filled by political appointees disinterested in reforming Chicago housing. The political machine in

Chicago was more interested in appointing cronies, forging distrust and

59 Gebhardt, Matthew F. “Politics, Planning and Power: Reorganizing and Redeveloping Public Housing in Chicago.” 51-52. 51 hostility between the CHA and residents. Continuity was next to impossible with constant turnover in leadership from the 1970s and continuing into the late

1980s, as the CHA became a dumping ground for corrupt political appointments. Vincent Lane, a prominent African-American affordable housing developer, held the post from 1988 until the HUD take over in 1995, attempting to rectify the past deferred maintenance issues and salvage some of the high-rise developments. His initiatives in crime reduction and physical improvements, and his involvement in spearheading the NCSDPH, would later affect the HOPE-VI legislation.60

The Gautreaux decision influenced redevelopment considerations in

Chicago. In 1990, seemingly at odds with what would become HOPE-VI planning, the plaintiffs argued that rehabilitated public housing was the same as building new housing. By prolonging the units’ lifespans, the City would continue the segregation trend, and would be required to build dispersal units around the city. This was rejected in court, stating that rehabilitation was outside of the scope of the Gautreaux court. The second challenge took place in 1995, where the judge used the Revitalizing Areas Order for a large scale development. In the past, the Revitalizing Areas Order was used to create scattered site housing in census tracts with a declining African-American

60 Ibid., 84-85. 52 population. The judgment used income integration as a proxy for potential racial integration, influencing the mixed-income HOPE-VI projects.61

The HUD takeover of the CHA, starting in May 1995, helped move reforms and absolve Mayor Daley from outward involvement. Growing consensus felt that Lane could no longer move reforms at the necessary rate, and the takeover absolved Daley of any political culpability. The CHA was still very much under Daley’s influence; he retained final board member and management staff approval. In the first six months of federal control, the CHA under HUD moved rapidly. Politically motivated by the upcoming 1996 presidential election, swift redevelopment took place; Section 8 vouchers were privatized and demolition began at three different sites, proving that the federal government could act swiftly against stalled redevelopment.

The CHA returned to local control in 1998. To continue the image of reform and revitalization, strategies focused on beautification and increasing the local tax base. Under the Moving to Work agreement with HUD, high performing housing authorities were given more freedoms with local design and planning to increase departmental efficiency. Under heavy lobbying by

Mayor Daley, Chicago was awarded a Moving to Work agreement. This allowed the CHA to pool all funding streams from block grants into one fund, encompassing operating costs, voucher funds, and capital costs. Implementing

61 Ibid., 110-111. 53 the agreement created the Plan for Transformation, approved by HUD in

2000.62

The Plan called for demolition of thousands of low-rise units and fifty-one gallery style high-rise buildings, decreasing the number of public housing units from 38,000 to 25,000 over the next ten years. Another 6,000 former residents would receive vouchers as a way to disperse the need for public housing.63 The success of the housing choice voucher program is debatable.

Residents loved their old projects, even if they were unsafe, because they had their community; their neighbors knew them and they knew their neighborhood.

Housing choice voucher recipients end up in one of three situations: they successfully find a new place to live and blend in with the community; they find a place to live, but the community is less safe and more segregated than their former housing project; they find a place to live, but in slum-like conditions, contrary to the national public housing programs’ goals.

After HOPE-VI

HOPE-VI funding faced many threats of sunsetting. The original legislation gave funding through fiscal year 1998, and then given one to three year continuing re-authorizations through fiscal year 2010. In 2010, the

62 Ibid., 119-120. 63 Ibid., 115. 54

Choice Neighborhoods Initiative (CNI) replaced HOPE-VI grants. CNI expands from just public housing to funding private sector projects and holistic neighborhood approaches. The main goals are to create energy efficient and high functioning properties from distressed HUD owned properties, while preparing those properties for eventual transition to the mixed-income market; support healthy, safe, and positive outcomes for residents; and transition isolated, impoverished areas into viable, mixed-income communities with access to high quality schools and employment. The program expands upon the former HOPE-VI ideals of dispersing poverty through housing choice vouchers and replacement housing, but adds surrounding community and private development involvement to initiate broad reforms with neighborhood planning participation along the way. Only officially funded for two years,

CNI grants have been given appropriations funding, at the discretion of HUD, to continue with revitalization projects. In 2013, HUD awarded nine implementation grants. Milwaukee submitted two applications for the 2014 award year.64

64 "Choice Neighborhoods - HUD." Choice Neighborhoods - HUD. 55

II. Memory, Place, and the Landscape of Public Housing

"Space is permeated by social relations; it is not only supported by social relations but it is also producing and produced by social relations." -Henry Lefebvre65

Buildings are not the Enemy: how public housing was set-up to fail

The contemporary narrative around public housing comes from the lowest point in housing’s history: deferred maintenance, the crack epidemic, policies intended to separate families, all under the general umbrella of suburban flight and urban decay. However, that narrative is only shared by the outside looking in. For those who lived in public housing, the signs of hope, safety, and community outweighed the negativity. In the history of housing,

African-Americans have repeatedly been offered the bare minimum, and most of the time what was offered was overpriced and unsanitary. On the opening day of housing projects, new residents were overwhelmed with the beauty of their new houses, and still carry fond memories of their experiences many years later.

J.S. Fuerst, a former Loyola University-Chicago social welfare policy professor, took on the daunting task of changing public conceptions around

65 Hayden, Dolores. The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History. 41. 56 public housing. In his 2005 publication, When Public Housing was Paradise,

Fuerst and others turned to oral histories to capture the feeling and meaning behind public housing for residents and former CHA employees. While many of the interviews focus on the rosier era of housing before the 1960s, the narratives cover most of the feelings in post-World War II era of Chicago’s projects and only touch lightly upon the later, post-1973 policies. Former childhood residents, many from the Ida B. Wells project on the South Side, describe how they never felt truly poor or lower class. They were close to

Madden Park, which had ball fields and a swimming pool. The Wells project had a community center, health clinics, its own newspaper, and community groups, fostering a lively environment of neighbors communing with neighbors.

The strong sense of community comes clearly through in the oral history interviews. Informants discussed how neighbors were concerned about the education of all children in the project, constantly asking about higher academic attainment (college) and their coursework. Saturday morning chores involved cleaning the public stair hall, where former residents recall owning pride in their work and admonishing neighbors who dirtied it. Others asked for flower seeds for their front lawns and vegetable garden plots on nearby vacant land to create a more attractive neighborhood. The response was impressive, leading to a citywide flower show at different developments, 57 encouraging residents to visit other projects. Rosita Henry described the boulevards at Lawndale Gardens as velvet, cultivating friendly competition for the best lawn.66

Former African-American residents portray the sense of safety they felt within the low-rise communities and how it almost did not prepare them for the stark contrast to life outside of the projects, where society was less apt to give them a chance based on skin color. Since public housing integrated residents from different ethnic and racial backgrounds more so than the surrounding city, leaving the projects even for the school day showed a strong disparity. Leon

Hamilton, who grew up in the Wells project, attended high school at Dunbar

Vocational, where Ivy League educated teachers67 encouraged him to pursue higher education. Until he enrolled at the University of Illinois-Chicago, he does not recall instances of overt discrimination.68

The anticipated housing shortage never happened as originally imagined. Manufacturing jobs pushed migration from the South, creating a bubble of new residents. At the same time, veterans’ benefits and FHA backed mortgages made it easier for white Americans to move to the suburbs, a place

66 Fuerst, J. S., and D. Bradford Hunt. When Public Housing Was Paradise: Building Community in Chicago. 187. 67 Due to segregationist sentiments, African-Americans were often barred from teaching at the university level outside of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. 68 Fuerst, J. S., and D. Bradford Hunt. When Public Housing Was Paradise: Building Community in Chicago. 54-55. 58 still closed to most African-Americans at that time.69 While the benefits were available to all who served and their widows, whether a neighborhood would accept an African-American family was another circumstance all together.

Instead of needing new, dense urban housing, the African-American residents could now live in their own single-family homes, vacated by white families who left the central city. Through suburban sprawl, the city population diffused and the anticipated emergency was mitigated. However, a new crisis emerged: the lowered tax base. The stable middle-class income earners were now in the suburbs, and the manufacturing boom continued winding down, especially after war production ceased.70

The generally accepted housing narrative diverges based on who is telling the story. The first chronicles good intentions that became skewed.

Planners preoccupied with high modernist ideals, lead by the Corbusian Ville

Radieuses (“Radiant City”), colloquially known as the “towers in the park” design scheme. Central to the plan were a collection of skyscrapers containing apartments and offices surrounding a transportation hub. The design created a hierarchy between the pedestrian and the automobile, making the pedestrian subservient. Large open green spaces connected the towers, in contrast to the established crowded urban precedents. Criticism towards the scheme found

69 Hirsch, Arnold R. Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960. 10. 70 Heathcott, Joseph. "Planning Note: Pruitt-Igoe and the Critique of Public Housing." Journal of the American Planning Association. 450-51. 59 fault relating to a human scale; the park areas are desolate and the buildings float out of context in a superblock.71

In the United States, the post-war living-working communities with lush landscaping and access to employment and stores were never fully realized, in a Corbusian or other context. What planners created on paper was rarely what translated to the built environment, constantly paring down the refined elements on each site. Admittedly, the high rise developments were failures in most markets. The context of low-rise, row houses were similar enough to single family homes, and they took much longer to reach a state of total disrepair compared with other public housing alternatives.

Legislators were short sighted and vacillated between public and private development, while budget shortfalls pushed housing into a compromised position. The funding streams backed by good intentions failed the housing narrative. Building allocations are based on the annual federal budget, a contentious bargaining process that mostly avoided public housing construction after Nixon’s moratorium in 1973. Funding turned to neighborhood developments, which were less beholden to creating public housing and involved less politicking.

71 “Dwelling.’ Congress Internationaux d'Architecture moderne (CIAM), La Charte d'Athenes or The Athens Charter. 60

The second narrative states that housing was never supposed to succeed, and the concessions existed from the beginning. The housing acts were never about housing, and never about creating a functioning, national system of public housing. Instead, they focused on slum clearance and the cosmetic effect that clearings would have on older city cores. Government intervention was only supposed to help boost the economy under the New

Deal initiatives during the Great Depression, but legislators were always wary of how the public-private partnerships would function. Provisions in the housing acts were very conscious regarding private business profits, taking special care to avoid real estate market conflicts while favoring the private market.

Budgetary constraints on construction and land acquisition further marginalized the type and quality of housing to ensure a hierarchy leaning towards private developers.

When public housing became the housing for very low-income earners, the narrative shifted away from the complexity of the new construction. Policy shifted towards homeownership under more favorable mortgage conditions and federal highway projects continued to displace very low-income residents.

The type of communities and their need for differing forms of assistance grew as funding shrunk. President Nixon’s economic policies unpegged the dollar from the gold standard, creating a hyperinflation shock nationally. To tame the 61 federal budget, housing project maintenance costs came solely from tenant rents; however, very low-income residents were using government assistance to pay their rents. The math no longer worked, and housing authorities were left with doing the best they could. The transition away from funding building programs overseen by the PWA and USHA towards demolitions under urban renewal further encouraged gentrification without a strongly enforced housing component.

Americans are generally a more conservative society, especially compared to our European counterparts. Publicly subsidized housing in

Europe, more commonly referred to as social housing, varies from approximately twenty percent of all housing stock, as in Sweden and England, to as much as sixty percent in the Netherlands. Yet in the United States, at its peak in the 1960s, public housing only provided two percent of all housing options.72 In many American metropolitan areas, not owning a single family home is a step down in social standing and mortgage incentives under the FHA have strongly encouraged private homeownership. But economically, that is not always possible. The American ideal of the “self-made man,” who never needed government intervention and pulled himself up by his bootstraps, is charming yet antiquated. Not everyone will have the opportunity to ever

72 Heathcott, Joseph. "The Strange Career of Public Housing: Policy, Planning, and the American Metropolis in the Twentieth Century." Journal of the American Planning Association. 371-373. 62 purchase a house, yet there is no safe place for them to live otherwise.

Government housing, vilified as “socialism,” flies in the face of the great myth surrounding self-determination.

The concept of the “public” and “public good” creates tension in our generally conservative society. Harkening back to the colonial era and navigating how to support the public neighbor, we are wary of outsiders. The

“deserving poor” and using the “public good” to help them means we are detracting with the own self-determination and diverting from personal profits in the private market. This places the government in a tenuous situation. On one hand, they are the arbiters of the public good and should strive to help the less fortunate. Under those personal interests, their federal programs are defunded as a way to encourage the private market to flourish. Defunding leads to a deterioration of the commons, and reflects poorly on the government,

“proving” that private industry could better handle the responsibility. The government is then defended further, repeating the cycle of deteriorating commons. This is very apparent in the cycle of public housing management, as it slipped from a well-maintained operation in the 1950s to the “warehouses of the poor” of the 1980s.73

73 Ibid., 371-373. 63

Behavioral Sink and Pop Psychology

John B. Calhoun, a behavioral psychologist working with the National

Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH), examined how mice reacted to extreme living conditions. Calhoun created different nesting and feeding scenarios to see how the mice’s socialization patterns evolved over multiple generations. He created nesting boxes with differing heights from the bottom of the enclosure and centrally located the feeding hoppers to encourage specific socialization patterns. He discovered that the conditions created a pathological sense of

“togetherness.” Under normal conditions, the mice roamed around their enclosures and ate or drank throughout the day as needed. In the experiment, the mice started to condition themselves to only participate in eating when other mice were present. The over socialization created stress on the mice.

Females neglected their young, and males resorted to extremely dominant or submissive sexual patterns. Calhoun called this social affectation the

“behavioral sink.”74

Calhoun’s experiment was quickly sensationalized in literature and the media. His flair for using anthropomorphic language was influenced by H.G.

Wells and George Orwell and generated pop-comparisons in the media. The submissive and withdrawn males were called “somnambulists” and “social

74 Calhoun, John B. "Population Density and Social Pathology | When a Population of Laboratory Rats is Allowed to Increase In a Confined Space, the Rats Develop Acutely Abnormal Patterns of Behavior That Can Even Lead to the Extinction of the Population." Scientific American. 139-48. 64 dropouts;” the hypersexualized males were “juvenile delinquents.” The taller habitats with narrow ramps became an easy correlate to the high-rise tower developments. It was convenient to connect the social ills of public housing to

Calhoun’s findings by looking at sheer numbers and square footage within public housing developments. Calhoun’s experiments questioned the viability of social welfare, since they seemed to prove that pure population density was the problem; carrying capacity no longer applied to a local environment and mental instability would set in before starvation.75

The cultural zeitgeist around “behavioral sink” lasted more than twenty years after Calhoun’s experiment. The Naked Ape, written by anthropologist and screenwriter Robert Ardrey and Desmond Morris, respectively, went on to inspire Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, while Soylent Green, inspired by the novel Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison, showed a bleak dystopian future.76 Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH is a fictionalized account of farm rats rescuing their friends, laboratory rats, from the National

Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH), the organization that funded and published

Calhoun’s research. While Mrs. Frisby’s author, Robert C. O’Brien, admits to influence from Calhoun’s experiments, the supernatural elements are obviously added to the novel for narrative effect. Later becoming an animated film and

75 Ramsden, Edmund, and Jon Adams. "Escaping the Laboratory: The Rodent Experiments of John B. Calhoun & Their Cultural Influence." Journal of Social History. 768, 774-776. 76 Ibid., 767, 777. 65 still fairly common in elementary school cirriculum, Calhoun’s experiment reaches a young audience to this day.77 Lastly, in 1995 Alan Grant authored the comic Batman: The Secret of the Universe, Part 2 about a species of rats that leave the sewer and attempt to take over the city. The Ratcatcher, their leader, invokes Calhoun’s ideals when addressing his noble subjects.78 When not always explicitly citing the original experiment, the effects of behavioral sink are still present in our cultural interrelationships.

Dunbar’s Number creates another hypothesis about how communities degrade over time based on population expansion. The 1992 theory states that social groups reach certain a carrying capacity for meaningful interactions; after that point, relationships degrade significantly. Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist, posited this theory based on observed primate interactions and the size of the prefrontal cortex in mammals; the larger the brain matter, the more complex relationships that mammal could maintain. While it exists on a spectrum, the generally accepted number for stable relationships is 150.

Looking at the historical military record, Dunbar feels that we have determined these limits on our own for centuries.79

In housing, Dunbar’s number works at a much better scale for low-rise row house and mid-rise apartment developments compared to the high-rises of

77 Ibid., 781. 78 Ibid., 769. 79 Konnikova, Maria. "The Limits of Friendship." New Yorker. 66 the later years. In buildings with upwards of 500 residents, just remembering the names of your neighbors is challenging, much less how they divide into familial units or any details about their employment or personal history. Under the overwhelming amount of people in public housing, the oversocialization creates a fragmented environment where no one quite knows each other anymore.

Housing as Landscape

The cultural landscape within public housing presents an important narrative about our national housing history and how the lower income population has thrived throughout the twentieth century. In a debate between

Herbert J. Gans and Ada Louise Huxtable over what makes landmarks, there is a clear division between urban preservation and architectural preservation, what story we should intend tell, and how boundaries surrounding preservation areas are defined. In the classical preservation sense, public housing was not important. It does not embody the ideals of high Architecture and does not always tell a positive story about the built environment, but those connotations have begun to shift. Dolores Hayden, in her essay The Power of Place, describes urban landscapes as “storehouses for these social memories, because natural features such as hills or harbors, as well as streets, buildings, 67 and patterns of settlement, frame the lives of many people and often outlast many lifetimes."80 The act of remembering is so tied to our physical environment and the surge of sensory inputs within that space. The widespread demolition of public housing prevents the continuity of memory narratives.

Place memory is a specific kind of memory tied to sensory, cultural cues.

Edward S. Casey, in his essay Public Memory in Place and Time, explores how closely linked place and memory are. He describes memory in different layers: individual, social, collective, and public. Individual and social memories are tied to the specific user, kept personal and activated through reminiscence with others. Collective memory relates to an event that the culture has all shared, but not necessarily initially experienced in the same way. We create fast friendships from strangers when we reminisce but the individual identity is not necessarily important to that act of remembering. Hearing about national tragedies is an act of collective memory. Public memory is one of constant revision, and many times lacks complete authenticity. Public places act as the arena to reminisce, triggering the memory when entering that environment. The presence of the place itself creates a public common, fostering discussion and facilitating a physical closeness to that memory. Casey calls it the “... container of experiences that contributes so powerfully to its intrinsic memorability.”81

80 Hayden, Dolores. The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History. 9. 81 "Public Memory in Place and Time." In Public Memory, edited by Kendall Phillips. 68

Another way to describe public memory is a place of reflexivity. In looking at culture and environment, we are learning from our past and embodying those lessons for use in the future.82

Tom Mayes’s essay series for the National Trust for Historic Preservation asked why old places matter at all, and explored the ideas behind identity and memory at historic sites. He looks at the built environment on a continuum, first discussing how we inhabit space and time, and how old structures ground us in that space. Quoting Maria Lewicka in her discussion of environmental psychology, Mayes writes how “research in environmental aesthetics shows that people generally prefer historical places to modern architecture. Historical sites create a sense of continuity with the past, embody the group traditions, and facilitate place attachment…” In his essay on identity, he calls places the

“landmarks of our identity,” the “reference points for measuring, refreshing, and recalibrating” ourselves over time and that age of the site is not necessarily a factor around those associations. When the physical environment is disrupted or destroyed, the memory still exists and withdrawing from that relationship involves losing the self. The drastic change in behaviors and the

82 “Those who cannot remember their past are condemned to relive it.” attributed to George Santayana, in "Collective Memory and Cultural Identity." by Assmann, Jan, and Jon Czaplicka, trans. "Collective Memory and Cultural Identity." New German Critique. 69 level of mourning over their former community manifests itself constantly in the former public housing residents interviewed throughout Chicago.83

Public housing sites hold a special place of remembering for former residents. Yet “place” in and of itself is difficult to define. The connotations to aesthetics, familial hierarchy, urban design, and attachment shape those spheres of interaction. We create attachments to places that no longer exist, as if mourning a lost loved one. Will, a man interviewed at the Cabrini-Green project shortly before its demolition and removal, described the condemned towers in affectionate terms. Not necessarily apologizing for the towers and what occurred on that site, he mourned the “... place you been your whole life.

It’s like the memories and the families just scrubbed clean.” Mike McClarin, another former resident at Cabrini-Green, said “it’s not just buildings. It’s not a place, it’s a feeling.” Residents who moved away from public housing under housing choice voucher programs say their neighborhoods are safer, but their sense of community is sorely missed.84

Residents’ voices are continually absent from the public housing narrative. Too often the sensational headlines surrounding the welfare queen or the physical decay overshadows the actual people who live there. Until the

HOPE-VI process forced a form of community involvement, resident voices were

83 Mayes, Tom. Why Do Old Places Matter - Individual Identity, Continuity, and Memory. National Trust for Historic Preservation - Preservation Leadership Forum. 84 Austen, Ben. "The Last Tower: The Decline and Fall of Public Housing." 44, 50. 70 not heard. However, how that participation translates into effecting development choices is still unclear. Residents and artists have created different forms of expression from within the housing projects, one of the most culturally pervasive being hip-hop.

Hip-hop is defined by more than just music, and is one of the only musical genres to describe an entire generation. Jerry Butler, a former Cabrini-

Green resident in Chicago, talks about black culture in America as incredibly diverse, saying “the reason it’s diverse is because we’ve been caught up in everyone else’s culture.”85 And yet, hip-hop is one of the outlets with a strong

African-American origin story. Growing up in housing projects, many hip-hop artists of today share their childhood years of struggle in their music and how they have moved outside of that world. Lyrics are littered with references to the projects. Grandmaster Flash describes the horrible conditions within the projects in “The Message"86; Nas references the Queensborough Project, and his semi-biographical album, Illmatic87, references his difficult childhood. In the

“diss song” “The Bridge is Over”88, KRS-One name checks the Bronx as the true birthplace of hip-hop during a “beef” with Queens. Jay-Z narrates his difficult childhood and involvement in the drug trade in the Marcy Houses in

85 Fuerst, J. S. and D. Bradford Hunt. When Public Housing Was Paradise: Building Community in Chicago. 62. 86 Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. “The Message.” The Message. Sugar Hill: 1982. 87 Nas (Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones). Illmatic. Columbia: 1994. 88 Boogie Down Productions. “The Bridge is Over.” Criminal Minded. B-Boy Records: 1987. 71

Brooklyn on “No Hook”.89 In 2007, the New York State Office of Parks,

Recreation and Historic Preservation designated the basement in one of the

Morris Heights buildings, 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, as the Birthplace of Hip-

Hop, linking architecture and the housing projects to the industry.90

Preservationists have shied away from looking at public housing. With its divisive history, knowing what to save, how to save it, and how to talk about the sites are contentious and unresolved issues. Theodore Karamanski discusses how preservation often serves official narratives constructed by activists and governments when creating historic districts. He observed this when Chicago decided to nominate a particular narrative categorizing various commercial districts on the North Side and how a specific lens formed around those neighborhoods.91 In 2004, the National Park Service (NPS) created a Multiple

Property Submission regarding public housing prior to the Housing Act of

1949, the year that marked the change towards rapid development and less planning innovation. The report intended to outline the significance of public housing for preservationists, and feasibly add more public housing districts to

89 Pareles, Jon. "Hip-Hop Assurance, R&B Suffering." The New York Times, March 29, 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/arts/music/29blig.html; Jay-Z (Shawn Carter). “No Hook.” American Gangster. Roc-A-Fella, Def Jam: 2007. 90 Gonzalez, David. "Will Gentrification Spoil the Birthplace of Hip-Hop?" The New York Times. 91 Karamanski, Theodore J. "History, Memory, and Historic Districts in Chicago." The Public Historian. 33-41. 72 the National Register of Historic Places before too much more integrity is altered and lost.92

As many projects have seen HOPE-VI funding and approved redevelopment, the remaining historic integrity in housing projects is limited.

Adding streets and altering the landscaping diminishes the design integrity associated with the superblock setting but is of incredible importance to residents. Without the added defensible space, the problems associated with crime and the lack of emergency service access endures. In the remaining intact projects, like the Lathrop Homes in Chicago, determining how to navigate between safety and utility with the NPS definition of feeling and association is the next challenge for preservation professionals.

92 Lusignan, Paul R., Judith Robinson, Laura Bobeczko, and Jeffrey Simpleton. “Public Housing in the United States, MPS” National Register of Historic Places Inventory -- Multiple Property Documentation Form. 73

III. The Built Environment: Case Studies in Public Housing in the Midwest

Public Works Administration

The Public Works Administration (PWA) was created to employ out of work Americans during the Great Depression. Under the PWA, there were the

Limited Dividend (LD) and Housing Division (HD). The LD provided funding for non-profit developers to create housing while the HD was tasked with building planned communities from start to finish. While the goals of the PWA were related to employment, the HD was focused on creating housing projects specifically for low-income families. These were not the indigent poor, but working class families that were aspiring to the middle class but had not quite made it yet.

HD Projects were places for reformers and progressives to experiment in layout and design. Taking note from the German regionalists, reformers used their kitchen and site designs with a heavy hand. The regionalists used zeilenbau concepts, where development plans maximized light penetration into parallel row houses by siting buildings on an angle away unrelated to the street. Reformers found this plan to be too severe for New Deal projects, but considered the theories around daylighting in their plans. The HD architects’ kitchen designs continued Catherine Beecher’s work, considering the 74 professional modern homemaker’s needs in layout and appliances to encourage efficiency. Modern appliances were unheard of in slum housing, and many of the PWA project kitchens were nicer than private, upper-class housing.93

In contrast to tenement housing, the HD projects were a shining beacon of cleanliness and safety. In the slum housing, flats were constantly cheaply subdivided with chicken wire and plaster, creating ever smaller “kitchenette” apartments. Real estate speculators and landlords maintained the tenements just enough, waiting until they could sell the land at an unreasonable mark-up.

The apartments lacked plumbing, and bathrooms were shared by families on the same floor. Kerosene lamps were common, and ovens in closets provided the heat for the cramped spaces. Fires in the shoddy wooden structures were frequent enough that landlords often escaped blame for arson. Minority families had no other choice but to live there instead of facing the brutal

Midwestern winters. After a fire, former residents would often return to the charred walls and partial roofs. The 1934 census showed that only one-fourth of families averaged less than one person per room in their cramped tenements, and rates of tuberculosis were twice as high in the slums as the rest

93 Milnarik, Elizabeth Ann. “The Federally Funded American Dream: Public Housing as an Engine for Social Improvement, 1933-1937.” 256. 75 of the city. The HD provided one of the only means to escape the destitution of those shantytowns.94

PWA HD Projects had many constraints. Due to the high demand for quality housing and employment opportunities, design and planning were often rushed. Unit Plans: Typical Room Arrangements, Site Plans and Details for Low

Rent Housing was written by Horatio Hackett, director of the PWA Housing

Division. First distributed in March 1935 to provide suggestions to local planners, the volume intended to guide designers towards the types of projects the PWA wanted to build. The publication was based on ideals created by

Clarence Stein and Henry Wright, Garden City progressives who extolled the virtues of planned country communities.95

Hackett intended Unit Plans to serve as an inspiration to designers and planners, but time constraints and inexperience with large-scale developments turned Unit Plans into the unofficial guidebook for PWA Housing Division projects. The publication included nine simple unit plans and forty-two standard plans, designed around efficiency and minimum size standards. The unit plans were expanded into thirty-two different layouts for apartment buildings, but only suggested four row houses. Apartments were generally more cost

94 Hirsch, Arnold R. Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960. 18. 95 Stein headed the Regional Planning Association of America, and Wright was an early member. The two worked together developing Radburn, NJ and Sunnyside Gardens, successful Garden City projects that later influenced the PWA. 76 effective and encouraged by legislators, while tenants preferred how row houses felt closer to a single-family dwelling. Unit Plans implied specific rules for design: kitchens and living rooms near the rear entrance; bathrooms and bedrooms are distanced from public spaces; “zones” divided “noisy” and

“quiet” areas; short hallways minimized noise and wasted space; and rooms with irregular windows were on the rear elevation. In keeping with the Garden

City ideals, buildings should be no taller than six floors and occupy no more than thirty-five percent of the parcel. Since the PWA were federal projects, they were beholden to their own building codes. Unit Plans contained ten pages of construction detailing and sixteen pages devoted to structural engineering, acting as construction codes for the inexperienced planners.96

HD neighborhoods were designed under tacit rules. Unit Plans said very little about site design, and planners were allowed more innovation and creativity there compared to the floorplans. HD projects attempted to minimize outdoor spaces that ventured too far into completely public use. They wanted to create semi-private spaces for residents to claim ownership, closing off city grids into superblocks for added safety and green space. Traffic was limited, but pedestrian access maintained the neighborhood residential plan. Public and private spaces were designed with site hierarchy between building heights

96 Milnarik, Elizabeth Ann. “The Federally Funded American Dream: Public Housing as an Engine for Social Improvement, 1933-1937.” 257-264. 77 and arrangement. Units and number of bedrooms within units were proportional to family sizes.97

The HD used different planning tactics to organize neighborhoods and give them a sense of place: creating outdoor rooms, strong central axes, or using object organization to create a focal space. Parklawn and Jane Addams

Homes both used object organization to create a central park, complete with whimsical sculptures. Julie Lathrop Houses had strong axes: Diversey Parkway intersected the project, and apartment buildings addressed that avenue, as well the roads created through the development.

97 Ibid., 269-270. 78

Chicago

Chicago was one of the early cities to adopt a housing authority, and their bloated advisory committee contained fifty-five members: civic reformers, religious representatives, welfare workers, and academics. Initially the board planned for limited dividend projects, submitting a site with close to 5,000 housing units, with a hotel, a parking garage, and one-hundred stores. The scale of the project was well outside of the Limited Dividend Division’s planning abilities, and the Chicago advisory committee worked to scale back their future project ideas.

Chicago faced mounting housing shortages between the World Wars as demographics shifted and construction stagnated. The greatest percentage increase in the African-American population occurred between 1910 and

1920, with the highest absolute numbers following later in the century, following seductive employment opportunities in the manufacturing industry.

Companies advertised in Southern newspapers, hoping to quickly add to their workforce. When the Great Depression hit, Chicago building dropped to only five percent of the former 1920s production boom. In 1933, only 137 new urban housing units were built, apartments accounting for only twenty-one of the units. Combined with the slum clearance programs targeting the kitchenette 79 tenements, there was nowhere for African-Americans or lower income earners to live.98

After the Louisville decision in 1935, preventing the federal government’s use of eminent domain for housing, Chicago reevaluated its slum clearance sites to submit plans for the Direct Build program. Prior to the decision, the advisory committee chose three development sites to explore. The first site was on the West Side near Hull House, Jane Addams’ settlement house.99 The second site was in the Black Belt on the South Side of Chicago.

The third site was known as Blackhawk, named for the street running through it, on the North Side of the Loop. The South Side site was initially approved by

Washington, D.C., but there were reservations about land costs at the other two. Throughout 1934, design teams, headed by Chicago architect Robert

DeGoyler, formed and federal funding was provided to purchase the land at the three sites. But in 1935, the process was halted as the advisory committee faced opposition from local landowners and the committee was forced to reevaluate their strategy. The West Side Hull House site was abandoned and the Deering Tractor Works, just west of the Chicago River, entered into consideration. This would become the Jane Addams Homes site. The

98 Hirsch, Arnold R. Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960. 17. 99 Jane Addams’ Hull House followed the example of Toynbee Hall, creating a society for university women to provide classes and other educational opportunities to the working poor. Addams was a progressive reformer who believed that educated women could break free from their traditional roles. 80

Blackhawk site was abandoned, after land acquisition expenses and neighborhood opposition continued to rise. A new site, about a mile to the north, was selected; the Housing Division bought a former John Deere agricultural machinery factory and showroom, placing the Julia C. Lathrop

Homes there.100

Chicago’s PWA housing projects were immensely successful. Rent collections were almost consistently one-hundred percent and maintenance costs were incredibly low, creating financial tension between the CHA and the

USHA. The USHA provided subsidies to local authorities and asked for the difference in return. The CHA charged rents based on size of the apartment, and was able to lowered rents by up to sixteen percent in 1940 to keep their full federal subsidies from disappearing.

100 Milnarik, Elizabeth Ann. “The Federally Funded American Dream: Public Housing as an Engine for Social Improvement, 1933-1937.” 145-147. 81

Jane Addams Homes

The Jane Addams Homes were one of the first completed PWA projects, completed in 1937. Construction went quickly. Demolition started in November

1935, and almost exactly two years later, the first tenants moved in. The project had a mixed population by following the neighborhood composition rule which was a rarity in PWA housing projects; initially twenty-six families who lived on the site before the development were readmitted, but the number rose to sixty after threat of a lawsuit. The African-American families were still housed in their own section of the site, maintaining de facto segregation.101

Land acquisition was difficult at the Addams Homes, and because of that, the project never had a completely cohesive feel. The site is C-shaped around a remaining slum block, leaving unsightly conditions in the center of the development and creating a north-south division around Taylor Street. The

Jacob Riis School and Westside Auditorium, important buildings to the community on a whole, remained on the site but further divided the sections, preventing a unified project.

101 Hirsch, Arnold R. Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960. 14. 82

JPI Block SOUTH ADA STREET SOUTH LYTE STREET

Animal Court

NPHM

WEST TAYLOR STREET SOUTH THROOP STREET SOUTH LYTE STREET

Slum Housing Jacob Riis School

WEST GRENSHAW STREET

Project Buildings Demolished Buildings Other Buildings

Figure 3-1: Jane Addams Homes, Chicago, Illinois (author’s interpretation, based on Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, vol 7, 1917- June 1950)

The first block acquired, from the Jewish People’s Institute (JPI), had a very compact and cohesive plan. The thirteen buildings on the site created a series of outdoor rooms, with the Animal Court at the center. The Animal Court was a prominent example of the triumph of New Deal art: splash fountains interspersed between massive limestone animal sculptures by Chicago artists

Edgar Miller and Emmanuel Viviano. The centerpiece was a nine foot tall 83 bison, with a lioness and her cubs frolicking around it in tall grass. Aligned with the street grid, the Animal Court acted as the grand civic gesture that housing was meant to signify. When construction was completed, the Jane Addams project had 1,027 units, making it the third largest PWA housing project, nationally, until its demolition.102

Figure 3-2: Children playing in the Animal Court at Jane Addams (Chicago Herald-Examiner, published by David Weible on the PreservationNation Blog, 2013)

Jane Addams was not initially intended for impoverished families. The development was created to house the large influx of workers who were left behind after the war manufacturing industry declined. Once new migrants could establish themselves in the city, they would move onto single family homes and other working class families would replace them in the public

102 Milnarik, Elizabeth Ann. “Julia C. Lathrop Homes” National Register of Historic Places Inventory -- Nomination Form, 18. 84 housing projects. Historically, Chicago’s Near West Side housed European immigrant communities, with the Addams project sited in the midst of an Italian-

American commercial district. Just outside of the Loop, manufacturing and industrial interests were interspersed with residential areas, creating convenient commuting opportunities for workers. For subsidized temporary housing, the government encouraged siting near the places where residents would be most successful in maintaining employment. As a demonstration development, the

Jane Addams Homes set architectural and site planning precedents for other

PWA projects nationally, showing the importance of a complex, diverse, and well-designed community.103

The uniting force in Jane Addams was its architectural style and materiality. Differentiating themselves from the nearby wooden structures, the dark red brick apartment buildings and row houses emphasized the collective support of a community. Otherwise, the buildings were architecturally muted.

In stark contrast to the houses in the neighborhood, the project was coveted by other local residents. Common to PWA projects, the buildings were constructed in the International style, featuring flat roofs with simple tile copings and steel casement windows. The majority of the project had 3-story apartment buildings, with the JPI block as the outlier, containing a variety of heights across row

103 “Jane Addams Housing Complex, Chicago, Cook County.” Written Historical and Descriptive Data, Historic American Buildings Survey, 1998. 2-3. 85 houses and apartment buildings. The apartment buildings use articulated stair towers to create vertical punches, setback from the facade and finished with round, metal balconies. To maximize return on investment, the buildings were solidly built and fireproof, reassuring to the development’s new residents.

As grand as the Animal Court was, the Jewish People’s Institute block on the north side of the development isolated itself from the rest of the site.

Looking inward, the block had little connection to the other buildings at Jane

Addams. Sharing form language, the development gave the appearance of a semi-cohesive site, but intermingling between residents on other blocks was rare. The Animal Court was rarely visited by residents in the south portion of the site, cut off from the northern blocks by Taylor Street, the existing buildings, and the surrounded slum blocks. The rental office was located just north of the

Jacob Riis School on Taylor Street in an attempt to bridge the north-south divide.

When the PWA dissolved, Addams was handed over to the CHA’s management. After World War II, the population evolved from working class, first generation European immigrants to the African-American families who moved to northern manufacturing centers during economic migration. West and

South Side neighborhoods already contained African-American enclaves, but the addition of more non-white residents was a violent affair. Private housing 86 stock was closed off from African-Americans, and white neighborhoods resisted non-white expansion into other housing. Public housing was open to all, and before the various policy and judicial decisions of the 1950s and 1960s, Jane

Addams was one of the few places where African-Americans were freely accepted into quality public housing.

Jane Addams and the later build neighboring housing projects, collectively called ABLA104, were cordoned off from the rest of the West Side by completion of the Eisenhower (I-290) and Dan Ryan (I-90/94) Expressways in 1962. The University of Illinois claimed additional formerly residential areas, further isolating the ABLA development to the east. Under HOPE-VI funding in the 1990s, the local advisory council began redevelopment plans. Starting planning in 1996, they chose to rehabilitate the Brooks Homes to avoid conflict with the Gautreaux court. To reduce density, they decided to tear down every third building within the Brooks development. HUD rejected the proposal for the next phase of redevelopment, stating that the CHA was not moving fast enough in altering the ABLA site into a mixed-income neighborhood. For resubmittal, the CHA proposed eliminating the Addams and Abbott Homes,

104 Jane Addams Homes, Robert Brooks Homes and Extension, Loomis Court, and Grace Abbott Homes 87 and rehabilitating the rest of Loomis Court. The cleared land would then be leased to private developers to create a new mixed-income neighborhood.105

ABLA and Roosevelt Square are incredibly desirable land for Chicago, on the edge of a rapidly gentrifying area. Proximity to the Loop and the

University of Illinois-Chicago elevates its appeal. Community groups fought against redevelopment. Different options arose; would there be enough replacement public housing? how did the planning proposals involve the community, and not just the larger institutions? who were the stakeholders allowed in the plan discussion? ABLA had a strong local advisory council leader who fought to keep public housing on the site. The rehabilitated Brooks

Homes and Loomis Court would remain exclusively public housing and the

CHA agreed to hire from ABLA residents during the construction phase.

The CHA began demolition in November 2004. When construction began on the new neighborhood development, 2,137 units were eliminated, or about sixty percent of the collective projects. Another 627 units have since been torn down. Many residents have found other housing in other CHA projects or moved onto voucher housing. As of 2008, 253 new public housing units were added to the development. As residents attempt to return, the new

105 Gebhardt, Matthew F. “Politics, Planning and Power: Reorganizing and Redeveloping Public Housing in Chicago.” 188-189. 88 admission requirements were harsher than in the past and not all will meet the new standards.106

What remains of the Addams site is a single building, located at 1322

West Taylor Street. Through deals with the CHA, the National Public Housing

Museum (NPHM) accessioned the largest item in its collection: a former housing project building. Seen as “obliterating a community,” the NPHM wanted to create a place to honor former public housing residents. Former housing project residents agree. A Cabrini-Green working group feared public housing’s erasure from the Chicago landscape, as if it never existed at all.107

Through fundraising efforts and different schematic designs, the museum hopes to move onto the site in 2016. Organizationally, the museum hopes to devote one-third of the space to exhibits showing model apartments from different eras of public housing in Chicago; one-third to an interpretive space; and one-third to office and operative functions. The museum exhibits follow a model created by the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York. There, the story of immigration, garment workers, and the Great Depression’s Hard Times show the struggle to survive in their new surroundings. In Chicago, the Museum hopes to exhibit the different eras of public housing on the West Side: a Jewish family during the Great Depression who moved in on the first day, an Italian

106 Ibid.,196. 107 Ibid., 91. 89 family moving into an ethnic neighborhood, and a working class African-

American family who was prevented from moving to the suburbs.108

Figure 3-3: Proposed street elevation for the National Public Housing Museum (Landon Bone Baker)

The museum remains formally similar to the housing project. Initial designs obscured the formality of the structure, but the current scheme shows the original exterior facade almost untouched. The main change is to the Taylor

Street elevation, using colored panels to demarcate the public entrance.109

Plans are in place to return the Animal Court sculptures to the museum site. The

NPHM describes itself as a “site of conscience,” a place which allows connections to the past and opportunities to preserve community. Specifically,

108 Gurley, Lauren. "Public Eye: An Interview with Todd Palmer, Interim Director of the National Public Housing Museum." South Side Weekly. 109 "National Public Housing Museum » Landon Bone Baker Architects." Landon Bone Baker Architects. 90 the NPHM will show how public housing created a shared experience of resiliency amongst working class families of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds.110 The site hopes to welcome the community while changing public housing’s form of notoriety.

Julia Lathrop Homes

The Julia Lathrop Homes is one of the largest, intact PWA housing projects left in the United States. Of the fifty-two projects built by the PWA, only thirty-five remain. Of the five largest, Lathrop Homes is one of three still standing, and the best example that remains of the three built in Chicago.

Nationally, it was the fourth largest in terms of number of units, and the sixth largest considering acreage.111 Combining paired down Classical Revival decorative brickwork with the triumphant verticals of the PWA aesthetic, the structures appear simultaneously modern and familiar, giving the site a timeless appearance.

The site is a strange, oblong shape on Chicago’s North Side, bounded by the North Branch of the Chicago River on the western edge, defined as

Leavitt Street, turning north at the Damen Street viaduct and continuing northwest along Clybourn Avenue. Like the Jane Addams site, the project is

110 "National Public Housing Museum (USA)." International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. 111 Milnarik, Elizabeth Ann. “Julia C. Lathrop Homes” National Register of Historic Places Inventory -- Nomination Form, 18. 91 divided into north and south sections by a main road: here, Diversey Parkway.

Before the Housing Division purchased the land, the site was owned by

International Harvester, a rolling mill for agricultural machinery and a subsidiary of John Deere. Housing Division construction moved quickly repurposing the plans from the Blackhawk site, designed by a team of six architectural partnerships headed by Robert DeGoyler and landscaping by

Jens Jensen. DeGoyler was known for constructing luxury apartments and hotels, seeming well suited to lead the design at for large complex. Jens Jensen joined the team as a consultant, previously designing municipal parks and the landscaping around other institutional homes nationally. Jensen believed in avoiding an overly formal garden with exotic plantings and relied upon indigenous plantings and creating picturesque scenes. The site plans were repurposed and approved for the Lathrop Homes in July 1935, and they broke ground later that year in November. Based on the design ideals of the Garden

City movement, the new development created “outdoor rooms” and limited car traffic through the development. The buildings were scaled to the site, creating a walkable, human feel. When the project was completed, it had 925 housing units on approximately thirty acres of land.112

The southern section of the site is divided by Hoyne Avenue. Along the eastern edge bounded by the Damen Street viaduct, stand four 2-story row

112 Ibid., 18. 92 house buildings. On the corner with Diversey, a 3-story apartment building creates an anchor to the busy parkway. Each of the row houses has its own rear yard, giving the residents their own private greenspace. Across Hoyne

Avenue are seven apartment and row house buildings, with two 4-story apartment buildings, mirroring each other in plan, anchoring the corner at

Diversey. The buildings down Hoyne Avenue alternate between 2-story C- shaped row houses and 4-story T-shaped apartment buildings, varying the rhythm of the street wall. The C-shaped buildings create courtyards along their rear facades, while the T-shaped buildings form deep grassy yards in front of asphalt courtyards. Between the buildings, 1-story colonnades mark the entrance to the rear greenspace. The G-shaped apartment buildings at the corner feature an interior asphalt courtyard and open lawns. Originally, there were two playgrounds on the river elevation, but a senior housing apartment building has since been added to the site. The landscaped street elevations surround the buildings with intermittent trees, creating a parklike atmosphere.113

113 Ibid., 5-6. 93

NORTH CLYBOURN AVENUE

NORTH LEAVITT STREET

NORTH

WEST DIVERSEY PARKWAY NORTH HOYNE AVENUE

BRANCH

NORTH DAMEN

CHICAGO RIVER

LEAVITT STREET STREET

Project Buildings

Demolished Buildings

Other Buildings

Figure 3-4: Julia C. Lathrop Homes, Chicago, Illinois (author’s interpretation, based on HD Construction Plans, RG 196, NARA II) 94

In the north section, the site leans to the northwest, following the bend in the North Branch of the Chicago river and Clybourn Avenue. Divided by

Leavitt Street, the structures are mostly on the eastern portion of the site, creating a rhomboid shaped block. Similar to the southern portion, the apartment buildings and row houses alternate between T- and C-shapes along

Clybourn. Again, the buildings’ rhythm engages the street elevation and provides deep grassy areas for residents. The colonnades are repeated here as well, preserving a private feel towards the rear areas. As the site tapers on the north and south ends, L-shaped 3-story apartment buildings occupy the corners, with wide-set lawns on the inside of the elbow. As Leavitt curves towards the river there sits a new recreation center, housing a Boys and Girls

Club. Behind Clybourn, along Leavitt, two twisting pairs of 3-story apartment buildings anchor the north and south ends of the rhombus, bracketing the large recreation space at the center of the development and creating a gateway to the river. Two large playgrounds and thoughtfully landscaped areas fill the space, elevated above a recreation path along the river.114 Between Leavitt and Clybourn, along Diversey, two L-shaped 3-story apartment buildings mirror the courtyards of the G-shaped apartment buildings across the parkway. On

114 As the property line ends before the river, thoughtful landscaping creates the edge of the site while engaging the riverfront but leaving space for public use below a short bluff. Today, there is a recreation path. 95 the southern tip of Clybourn sits the Administration building, creating a gateway to the district.

Materially, the Lathrop Homes are unified. The housing and auxiliary buildings are constructed in variegated brown brick with limestone detailing and flat roofs. While the materials are consistent, the designers altered the fenestration details to make each building unique and distinct. The National

Register of Historic Places documentation highlights ten different apartment building entrances and ten different row house entrances; the site totals twenty- nine residential structures. The report also discusses “four brick beltcourse types, seven limestone finial types, seven cornice types that include both distinctive brickwork and a limestone coping, and twelve different penthouse variations at apartment buildings.” The consistent palette and building types maintain a formal unity yet allow each building remain unique and expressive.

Inside, decorations were kept to a minimum to curtail construction costs. Walls were plaster, floors were asphalt tile, kitchens contained linoleum, and bathrooms were ceramic. Stair halls were adorned in glazed terra cotta and cement floors, adding to their durability.115

The use of Unit Plans is apparent at Lathrop. In each of the three types of structures, apartments, row houses, and buildings combining the two, Unit

115 Milnarik, Elizabeth Ann. “Julia C. Lathrop Homes” National Register of Historic Places Inventory -- Nomination Form, 8. 96

Plans’ principles directed construction. In the apartment blocks, heights and number of penthouses vary. Generally, the entrance stair halls face the main streets, presenting a more ornate doorway decoration, and one- and two- bedroom apartments are clustered around each. Brickwork creates visual detailing, suggesting quoins or surrounding an inset medallion above secondary entrances. The row houses have paired entrances with semi-circular surrounds. The row house units mirror each other, conserving construction costs. Instead of brick details, the row houses employ different cornice and finial treatments, and repeat the use of decorative insets above entrances.

Combination buildings allowed the idiosyncrasies of the site to influence the design process, creating anchors for the ends of the site while retaining the intimate, human scale for residents. The details are more variegated, alternating between entrance, finial, and cornice detailing to articulate the different types of housing.

When first opened, the Lathrop Homes were a segregated, white project. Situated in an Eastern European immigrant community, the neighborhood composition rule prohibited African-American families from moving into the project. After the PWA’s dissolution, the Lathrop Homes were given to the CHA to continue to manage. The Gautreaux decision directly affected the projects, prohibiting the formerly ignored housing needs of 97

African-Americans through de facto segregation; admissions policies shifted towards the neediest, disregarding race. Following the original deposition,

Judge Austin, speaking for the Gautreaux court, created the “general areas” and “limited areas” plan to limit concentrated housing. It limited occupancy within the project to twenty-five percent minority residents, beginning the

Lathrop Home’s shift to becoming an incredibly diverse project through today.116

Since the HOPE-VI grant funding has come to Chicago, all of their housing projects have been under fire. Lathrop Homes were never immune to the problems that plagued all of the CHA projects, including higher crime rates and drug use, but residents continue to say they want to stay in their homes.

Over the years, the CHA has been slowly emptying the Lathrop Homes and consolidating residents into the south section of properties, moving from over seven-hundred families in 2000 to only 140 occupied units in 2014, boarding up the northern portion. What was once undesirable industrial land in the

1930s is now prime real estate for a new mixed-income development, situated near integrated schools, desirable employment opportunities, and trendy gentrifying, adjacent neighborhoods.

Initially, in 2000, the property was slated to remain one hundred percent public housing, undergoing a complete renovation. Residents were

116 Bowly, Devereux. The Poorhouse Subsidized Housing in Chicago. 168. 98 persuaded to move away with housing choice vouchers and told they would be able to return once the renovations were complete. Since then, the CHA has reconsidered and, in 2006, shifted towards a mixed-income development; of the 1,200 proposed units, four-hundred would remain public housing.

Demolition was scheduled in 2009, yet today, all of the original buildings remain. In 2011, requests for proposals were sent to the community, causing dissent between current residents, preservationists, and real estate and housing developers.117 In 2012, the Lathrop Homes were listed on the National Register of Historic Places, placing them under tax credit funding for facade restoration and nationally recognizing their importance to American history.

In 2013, the Lathrop Community Partners, a team of affordable housing developers and community interests, created a Master Redevelopment

Agreement which was approved by the CHA. The plan would increase the number of units on the site to just over 1200, with about half designated as market rate. The other half would house four hundred public housing units and designate 212 residences as affordable. The ninety-two senior apartments in the newer high-rise development would remain untouched. The initial phases of redevelopment would target rehabilitating the historic properties in the northern section and build two 6-story mid-rise apartments at the corner of

Clybourn and Diversey, creating a new gateway to the project, demolishing

117 Dukmasova, Maya. "The Fight to Preserve a Model Public Housing Project." Chicago Reader. 99 the administration building and one of the apartment houses in the process.

Future phases plan to demolish most of the southern section, replacing the undulating apartments and row houses with taller structures. The design team is adding vertical emphasis into the new structures, recalling the stair halls of the original development, and differentiating the masonry at heights above the

Figure 3-5: Rendering of new development construction at Lathrop Homes (bKL Architecture, 2015)

LEED-ND gold certification (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-

Neighborhood Development), the US Green Building Council’s (USGBC) historic elevations, turning from a darker colored material to a cream-colored masonry. Another strong selling point of redevelopment is standard for sustainable neighborhood development.118 Landmarks Illinois and other preservation advocacy groups have fought under the classic rallying cry that the most sustainable, “green” building is the structure that already exists,

118 "Farr Associates : Room To Region." Farr Associates : Room To Region. 100 encouraging the redevelopment team to consider rehabilitation tax credits before wholesale demolition. This argument has mostly been lost under the debate around housing allocations.119 Construction is set to start early in

2016.120

A selling point of the new development is to change the opinion of the

Lathrop Homes and public housing as a whole. However, the site never had the same stigma that the high-rise, South Side projects adopted. Residents repeatedly talk about how the project never felt like a housing project at all. It never felt like warehousing, or the manner in which the Cabrini-Green or Ida B.

Wells high-rise towers created a stark, dehumanizing landscape. Former residents’ children talk about the adjustment between the Lathrop Homes neighborhood and their new housing, and how segregation and racial dynamics have affected school performance and their personal sense of safety.

The Lathrop Homes are a prime example of how the imposed narrative on public housing does not match the reality on the ground. Outside of the development, the public views all public housing as a place of crime, drugs, and the social ills of society, clustered together to fester into urban decay and deviance. However, the narrative here could not be more wrong. Like other low-income areas, especially areas lacking adequate social supports, Lathrop

119 Landmarks Illinois. "Landmarks Illinois Lathrop Homes." Landmarks Illinois. 120 Bentley, Chris. "Feature>Remaking Lathrop." The Architect's Newspaper. 101

Homes had their difficulties, and many of the units suffer from deferred maintenance that plagued public housing nationally throughout the 1970s and

1980s. But, like many projects, the Lathrop Homes created a vibrant community. One of the most ethnically diverse, residents who moved away fondly remember their former apartments. The open areas, while not necessarily fostering the best connections with the surrounding neighborhoods, were places of refuge. In the past, kitchen gardens and flowerbeds were common and residents hung their laundry outside. In demonizing the site, the developers are missing the enriching relationships that define public housing for those who actually use it.

The problems of desegregation, public housing availability, and CHA funding have come to the forefront of the debate. The Gautreaux attorneys, focusing on desegregation, see the Lathrop Homes as a potential island of poverty, and using money to renovate and maintain the units as public housing is a waste of resources. Instead, they propose gentrification of the neighborhood and support the potential for a mixed-use development. Tenants disagree with this assessment, showing how the Lathrop Homes are an ethnically diverse community that should count for an argument that the project is already integrated, even if that integration is not based on income. The neighborhoods around the project have also already gentrified, with recent 102 home values selling between $500,000 and close to $1 million. Without public housing, former residents have no opportunity to return to the area they have always lived in.

Chicago as a whole has a persistent and expanding gap between public housing needs and public housing availability as the Plan for Transformation marches on. Changing the Lathrop Homes into mixed-income housing, or allowing it to remain shuttered, only exacerbates the problem. In the most recent Master Plan, developers plan to maintain only four hundred public housing apartments. That cuts the existing public housing units by more than half. The CHA has yet to restore and return to the market the 25,000 public housing units promised under the Plan for Transformation, falling short by close to three-thousand units. The CHA also has no official plans to restore the 525 units that will be lost under the Master Plan.

Finally, the CHA is still collecting federal subsidy funding for the Lathrop

Homes units, regardless of occupancy. The Chicago Housing Initiative (CHI), a coalition representing neighborhood and community housing associations, estimated the CHA has reserves between $300 million (the CHA reported figure) and $600 million (CHI’s calculations), far more than a housing authority should have in its records under federal guidelines. The most recent audit of the

CHA’s finances, at the end of 2013, showed that the agency had at least $440 103 million in reserves, including payments to reduce debts and interest payments costing $185 million in 2012. The CHA explains their high reserves are from the housing market collapse, and they are now just starting to recover, build capacity, and continue with the Plan for Transformation.121

121 Grim, Ryan, Arthur Delaney, and Kim Bellware. "Rahm Emanuel's Housing Agency Sitting On Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars With Massive Waitlist." The Huffington Post. 104

Milwaukee

Creating Milwaukee’s Housing Authority was a long process. The state approved legislation to create a housing authority in 1935, prior to federal legislation under the Housing Act of 1937, focusing strongly on the needs of

Milwaukee. However, strong labor unions and lobbyists for the construction and real estate industries slowed the local process to a halt. The heavily favored city council could easily overrode the mayor’s requests, and as aldermen were beholden to constituents, they continued to support businesses.

Under the Housing Act of 1937,

Milwaukee created the

Milwaukee Housing Council

(MHC), as a way to enforce the

new federal legislation.

The city created a special

committee to look into the

problems faced by the Sixth

Ward. In 1944, they released a

report detailing the significant

levels of blight within the Inner The Inner Core Census Tracts City of Milwaukee

Figure 3-6: Milwaukee County Census Tracts, 1960 Core, defined as twenty-six 105 census tracts northwest of downtown, some with populations almost completely

African-American and culturally defined as the “black ghetto.” The boundaries were defined as Juneau Avenue to the south, 20th Street on the west, Keefe

Avenue to the north, and Holton Street on the east.122 Two years later, in a

1946 neighborhood survey, the city found that almost sixty-seven percent of housing stock in the Inner Core was housing African-Americans and was in need of significant repairs, housing and overwhelming majority of the migrating population from the South. Citing Urban Redevelopment under Title

III of the Housing Act of 1949, the city began to take aggressive measures to develop new housing, hoping to build 2,500 units immediately. These units were to be split between Hillside Terrace and the unbuilt Lincoln Terrace.

Planning stages began in 1950.

Milwaukee constantly faced segregation woes that were never quite resolved, and still remain an issue today. Today, modern census tracking shows that Milwaukee has one of the highest geographic racial disparities, meaning a larger percent of the population would need to move to a different neighborhood to create integration than remaining in their current homes.

While the wave of post-World War II African-American migration north to

Milwaukee was delayed by a few years, the population explosion followed the

122 University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, School of Social Work,. The Inner Core--North: A Study Of Milwaukee's Negro Community. By Charles T. O’Reilly. 1. 106 strong blue-collar jobs market, supported by the tanneries and breweries in town. A project in the Inner Core would face less hostility compared to the majority white property owners in outlying areas, and the political pressures would rest on a weak renters’ market. This policy of disrupting and replacing residents in the Sixth Ward only reinforced the segregation that existed before the development. Within ten years of constructing Parklawn, Hillside, and three veterans’ housing projects, the city found that Hillside was almost ninety percent African-American, while the other four sites were ninety-five percent white.123

Parklawn

Parklawn was built as one of the few integrated PWA projects, designed for lower middle-class families who were hoping to eventually buy homes. The project was initially planned for just north of downtown in the Sixth Ward, where the city had concerns regarding an over crowded, economically depressed neighborhood known as the Inner Core. The federal government began buying land in 1934 to assemble a piecemeal site. As rumor spread that the government was interested in buying property, landlords raised their asking price. Most residents in the Sixth Ward were renters in buildings that were

123 Santacroce, Phyllis. “Rediscovering the role of the state: Housing policy and practice in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1900-1970.” 156-157. 107 constantly subdivided into smaller apartments than were safe or legal.

Milwaukee zoning laws required access to fresh air, plumbing facilities, and fireproofing. Those laws, however, only applied to new construction, exempting the older wood construction of the Sixth Ward. Minority and ethnic white families with many children were crammed into small spaces. As protective covenants and discriminatory renting practices, including redlining, kept African-Americans confined to certain areas of the city. Landlords took advantage of their captive markets, charging much higher rents for much smaller places than in any of the outlying communities. Within the first year of land acquisition, a property owner sued for damages, stating that the government was seizing property without due process. An injunction was granted, and the PWA was forced to move the project to another site on vacant land. Five months after Parklawn’s approval from the PWA, they were began construction on the northwest side.124

Construction was completed between 1936 and 1937. Parklawn covered forty acres. There were eight 2-story flat roofed apartment buildings, known as the widow’s apartments, and fifty-four 2-story row houses, constructed from common brick on hollow tile. The architects wanted to reference the local vernacular style, instead of leaning towards the modernist

124 Christoph, Erica. “Preservation and the Projects: An Analysis of the Revitalization of Public Housing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.” 31. 108

WEST CONGRESS STREET NORTH NORTH

NORTH FORTY-SEVENTH STREET NORTH 46TH 44TH SHERMANNORTH BOULEVARD

STREET MONUMENT STREET PARK

WEST MARION STREET

WEST HOPE AVENUE Project Buildings Demolished Buildings

Figure 3-7: Parklawn, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (author's interpretation, based on Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, vol 13, 1930-July 1951) aesthetics of other PWA projects. The apartment buildings still had flat roofs, but the row houses had traditional gabled roofs. The windows were varied based on interior program, and were often double hung in the main residential areas. The entrances had wooden trellises with flat canopies. Residents entered their houses from a streetfront. 109

The housing structures were arranged in quadrangles around the site, while cars were relegated to parking in the rear, and residents entered their houses from the streetside. The buildings covered about twenty-three percent of the site and thirteen percent of the site, or about five acres, were devoted to roads and play areas.125 The site’s north-central area contained a community

Figure 3-8: "Music" by Karl Kahlich, in Monument Park (HACM, 2005) center, play areas, and a park, just across from Lincoln Creek. The park had fanciful PWA sculptures by Karl Kahlich, part of the Wisconsin Federal Art

Project, featuring themes from everyday life. The sculptures, titled “Fishing” and “Music,” are carved from locally quarried limestone and remain today on the site as focal points in Monument Park. The community center housed an

125 Department of City Development for the Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee. Public Housing in Milwaukee. 23. 110 auditorium, social room, community kitchen, health clinic, sports areas, and community meeting space.

Parklawn was incredibly popular after opening. For the 518 units on site, they received over 3,100 applications. The development was not for the lowest income earners, but was occupied by working-class families saving for a down payment on a single-family house.

However, over the years, Parklawn entered a slow decline. Being the oldest project under the Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee (HACM),

Parklawn needed the most improvements, encompassing modernization and decades of deferred maintenance. The main problems determined by the

HACM were deteriorated utility systems, residents’ feelings of physical isolation from surroundings neighborhoods, and concerns with safety. In their 1998

HOPE-VI grant proposal, the HACM hoped that “[u]nlike some public housing developments that cannot be effectively revitalized without 100% demolition,

Parklawn… can be successfully and much less expensively transformed with a strategic mixture of partial demolition and new construction, selective renovation, site redesign, and an aggressive self-sufficiency program.” The

HACM recognized Parklawn’s historic significance, and did not want to see it destroyed. They proposed to add through streets, in order to reduce the drug and crime opportunities and allow emergency vehicle access. Parking closer to 111 units and breaking apart the superblock design would encourage better defensible space, important as community members needed to feel safe at home.126

The HACM reconnected the project the city grid. In doing so, the widows’ housing was completely demolished, reducing the number of units from 518 to 400. The small, one-bedroom apartments were considered undesirable to future tenants and not easily altered into a more serviceable layout. Their small size attracted single adults and, the HACM found, illegal activity. As the only example of this type of housing on the site, it is disappointing that they are gone. However, in considering the needs of the tenants, the HACM worked to maximize sensible configurations, and cutting streets through the one bedroom apartment blocks seems to best meet those needs. It also cleared land to create mixed-income housing, reducing the economic isolation within the housing project. In its place, the city built twenty new single-family homes, creating opportunities for low-income residents to enter the housing market and furthering the HOPE-VI goals by creating self- sufficient tenants. Residents began moving into the homes during the second half of 2003.

126 Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee,“Urban Revitalization Demonstration Implementation Grant Application for Parklawn.” 112

The city also renovated the exterior spaces in front of the apartments, creating a central walkway instead of parallel paths and widening the front porch areas. Parklawn originally had rich landscaping and, while not returned to previous levels, the new plantings were a marked improvement.

Consolidating the pathways into one, central axis made have been a maintenance and snow removal concern, but it altered the platting of the project from a formal garden with parallel lines to a meandering forested path.

The porches have peaked roofs, compared with the modern, flat roofs of the original construction, but created larger and more useable spaces for the tenants. The change in styles to the current trends in residential construction is just as important to consider as the historic integrity: if no one wants to live in

Parklawn, retaining its former modernist formality is senseless.

Another important factor in Parklawn’s revitalization is the family resource center. A YMCA, built in 1996, is one of the largest branches in the city and was the first in the nation built inside of a housing project. Next-door is the Central City Cyberschool, a technology based first- through eighth-grade charter school attracting students from within the Parklawn development and surrounding neighborhood. Keeping with the ideals of the PWA projects, the community center perpetuates the social welfare culture. The park space in front of the community center, called Monument Park, highlights two of the 113 original 1937 Wisconsin Federal Arts Projects (WFAP) sculptures and the

HACM added a gazebo. The gazebo features a permanent timeline of the history of Parklawn and public housing, beginning with the PWA and veterans’ housing involvement and ending in an explanation of the HOPE-VI program. In the park, there is a play area, benches, and time capsules, one from the original 1937 construction and one from 2000, when the renovations occurred.

Parklawn is a community that has culturally remained in tact. The residents were not significantly disrupted by the HOPE-VI revitalization projects, and in keeping most of the units in public housing, residents were not forced out based on new income and rent requirements, as happened in

Chicago.

The Public Housing Administration

The United States Housing Authority (USHA) became the national housing managers after the Housing Act of 1937. Acting as a loan agency, they provided up to ninety percent of the initial costs related to land acquisition, demolition, and construction, creating sixty-year term limits on federal loans with low interest rates. The Act intended to give the government more power over eminent domain, but the provisions to avoid competition with 114 private industry crippled the program from the start. Provisions pushed housing’s transformation away from working class opportunities and pigeonholed it into constructing housing for low- and very low-income earners, subsets of the population which private industry ignored.

Through executive orders during World War II, the USHA was reorganized under the Federal Works Administration into the Federal Public

Housing Authority (FPHA). The FPHA primarily focused efforts on providing supportive housing for war effort employees. After the War, they continued to build temporary housing to serve returning veterans at a bare minimum, but tried to stay away from the direct build market and focused on their lending powers. Nearing the 1950s, housing shortages ballooned as veterans continued to return from overseas and population dynamics shifted to favor urban environments. The FPHA revised the income requirements after World

War II, and evicted many of the stable working-class families from public housing, strengthening the perception that public housing was only for low- income earners.

Compared to the former PWA housing programs, the USHA and FPHA had very different goals in mind. The PWA projects were interested in innovative ideas in siting, design, and production, using the Direct Build program as a laboratory to test out new ideas around the burgeoning 115 discipline of urban planning. Working class families were the clients and at the heart of the resident base. Since employment and manufacturing were key during the Depression, budgetary concerns were downplayed. Under the

USHA, production and moral values played a larger role. Determining how to manage the population explosion was just as important as determining who the deserving poor were and how to house them. As projects grew in size and moral opinions arose, the political minefield consumed the space around housing.

Hillside Terrace and Addition

Hillside Terrace and Addition were built as a United States Housing

Authority (USHA) project. It was the first project in Milwaukee after the

Housing Act of 1937, influenced by the Milwaukee Housing Council (MHC), a pro-housing organization uniting different civic interest groups. The Common

Council encouraged the MHC’s recommendations, as public housing in

Milwaukee in the past, Garden Homes, Greendale, and Parklawn, had not catered to low-income families. The Wisconsin legislature, with endorsements from Milwaukee representatives, passed the Wisconsin Housing Authorities

Law in 1935, enabling local housing authorities to exist. Municipal housing authorities were responsible for improving housing conditions, but conflict 116 between public and private financial interests delayed such an agency in

Milwaukee. The Housing Act of 1937 created legal contingencies tied to federal funding behind an official housing council. Milwaukee attempted to subvert the federal system for as long as possible, waiting until 1944 to established the Milwaukee Housing Authority (MHA), the predecessor to the

Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee (HACM).127

Hillside Terrace’s site is located on the near North Side. Originally, the site was chosen for Parklawn, the PWA project built on outlying vacant land and completed in 1937. Located in the Inner Core and part of the Sixth Ward,

Hillside’s site was always a concern for city reformers. Only seven blocks from downtown, the development could offer all of the cultural, educational, and employment opportunities available in the central city. The site was seen as the logical choice to implement one-for-one clearance policies, creating the Hillside

Neighborhood Urban Renewal Area to facilitate its construction. The initial development was completed in 1950, with the Addition following in 1956.

Hillside Terrace was built in a superblock design. Initially combining two city blocks into one narrow strip, the development later eliminated other through streets on the western addition to the development. The eastern portion of the site, the primary development, is a two block, 8.5-acre area. It originally

127 Santacroce, Phyllis. “Rediscovering the role of the state: Housing policy and practice in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1900-1970.” 87. 117 had twenty-five buildings, including five row houses, twelve 3-story walk-up apartments, and eight buildings which combined apartments and row houses, housing about eight hundred people in 232 units. The USHA generally preferred more walk-up apartments to row houses, but the relatively small

Hillside Terrace had even more row houses than Parklawn. Hillside Terrace hoped to cater to families, and offered greenspace amenities for children to play. The residences were erected in solid masonry faced with common brick, mimicking the locally established materiality. Stucco details between window spans add texture to what would be an otherwise plain facade. The buildings were all fairly similar, and employed similar building details to the surrounding neighborhoods, including end-gabled roofs and double hung windows.

The primary site was almost completely closed to traffic, with a small parking area on the north end. Pedestrian walks connected the buildings to one another and to the central recreation area. While Hillside Terrace had fewer amenities compared with Parklawn, it still offered a daycare center and centrally located park one-half acre in size. The close proximity to Carver Park meant the HACM did not feel the need to provide as many greenspace amenities as it may have in other, more isolated developments. To maximize other on site greenspaces, the buildings occupied only about twenty-six percent of the site, a number just over the USHA’s suggested twenty-five percent. 118

WEST GALENA STREET NORTH SEVENTH STREET

Lutheran Church

WEST VLIET STREET NORTH EIGHTH STREET

Primary Development

Figure 3-9: Hillside Terrace and Addition, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (author's interpretation, based on HACM Urban Revitalization Grant application, 1993)

119

The Hillside Terrace Addition was a much larger expansion to the original project. Located on the western edge of the primary development, the

Addition crosses the only north-south road through the site. It added approximately six city blocks, totaling sixteen acres, to the site. The Addition was almost double in size compared to the primary development. Construction worked around the block containing St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, school, and parsonage. The German church had been on the site since the

1880s. The only road through the second part of the development served St

John’s congregation; otherwise, the Addition continued the superblock design.

The new buildings were sited around central courts, creating urban greenspace for the residents. The seventy-six 2-story walk up apartments and ten 2-story row houses were built using wood frame construction, a less costly and less sturdy form of construction compared to the original section, adding

340 new units to the site. An 8-story apartment building stood on the northeast corner of the Addition, increasing the total number of new units to 404.

Originally, the site called for four to six high-rise apartment buildings, but limitations on the urban renewal zone prevented any further erections. The high-rise catered to couples without children, while the row houses and walk-up apartments were for families. 120

The buildings themselves maintained the language of the community in their exterior appearance. The low-rise apartments and row houses were faced with brick veneer on the lower story and asbestos siding above, mostly maintaining the vernacular architectural vocabulary of the neighborhood. The high-rise was concrete masonry with a brick veneer. Like the primary section before, the low-rise buildings had end gable roofs and double hung windows, with flat roofed porches facing into interior courtyards. These courtyards provided more greenspace for residents and places for children to play. In total, the HACM added about 1,600 tenants, increasing Hillside’s total population three-fold. The buildings covered just over twenty-one percent of the site.

Urban renewal projects came to Milwaukee after their enabling legislation created funding from the Housing Act of 1954. Funding for the new developments’ sites were tied closely to central city universities and the Sixth

Ward/Inner Core slum clearance initiatives. The federal highway program created new boundaries downtown and demolished hundreds of homes, mostly housing African-American families, in the process. Positive outcomes from slum removal and redevelopment include a middle-income project north of downtown and the expansion of Marquette University, a private Jesuit college disrupted during the highway program. The Hillside Neighborhood 121

Development Corporation, created concurrent with the housing project development, expanded slum clearance development opportunities within the same area.

Urban renewal in the Halyard Park area, which includes Hillside

Terrace, was slow and many projects took close to twenty years to complete.

North of Hillside, a thin strip along the expressway was cleared for development, but finding a builder proved difficult; eventually, this became the

Lapham Park housing project and accompanying townhomes. The Roosevelt

Project and Highland Park Project shortly followed, significantly increasing the quantity of low-income and elderly rental units in the same neighborhood. By

1970, the area evolved into an enclave of low-income housing, pushing out any former diversity. The neighborhood encompassed fifteen percent of the city’s entire public housing stock and forty percent of all low-income housing in the city.128

To the southeast of the Hillside Neighborhood, cleared land sat vacant as the Park East expressway was constantly reconsidered. The tract between the Sixth Ward and Lake Michigan would begin as a spur towards the

Eastside; under Mayor Norquist, the cleared land eventually reverted back to residential development, culminating in the removal of a freeway overpass on the northern boundary of downtown in 1999.

128 Ibid., 209. 122

Criticisms and perceptions halted urban renewal efforts. The federal highway determinism was off-putting to local residents, and the housing relocation programs were uncoordinated at best. African-American families, who faced fewer housing alternatives in the city before open housing ordinances, were affected the most. Demolition rumors generally moved faster than relocation efforts. Housing stock was abandoned as families tried to act before they were evicted; this left vacant buildings primed for vandalism and general decay. Relocation efforts were generally poorly executed; in the past, the city engineered smaller scale projects only experienced marginal complications.129

In the 1990s, Milwaukee was one of the first cities to apply for HOPE-VI grants as a method to clean up their housing projects. Hillside Terrace and

Addition, like many housing projects, was a concentration of poverty.

Compared to the rest of the HACM communities, Hillside had the highest percentage of unemployed residents, the lowest median household income, and most households living below the poverty line. Ninety-four percent of households were female headed and eighty-three percent had no earned income. Ninety-three percent of the children at Hillside lived below the poverty line. In those conditions, Hillside was a bleak place. The former sense of

129 Ibid., 200-205. 123 community that residents felt was slowly eroded away as crime from the surrounding neighborhoods seeped into the housing project.

Hillside Terrace is another example of vilified public housing. From the outside, the maze of dead-end streets and monotonous facades painted a bleak and desolate landscape. However, residents did not agree with or own that identity. They viewed Hillside as homey, and were proud of the tot lots, play areas, and Boys and Girls Club on site. That does not say that the renovations under HOPE-VI were not gladly welcomed, but the residents did not appreciate the media pigeonholing them into the degenerates of society.

Former resident, and later Housing Authority Chairwoman, Ann Wilson cried when she first moved into the development, fearing the worst for her family after what she heard from the local news. Instead, she saw a community that just needed to get to know its neighbors better, making sure everyone attended tenants’ meetings and became acquainted with each other, to keep an eye on the goings on within the community.130

In 1993, the HACM received HOPE-VI funding, hoping to complete the renovations over the next three years. The primary goals were to reduce density within the project, reduce the physical isolation of the project by reconnecting it to the surround neighborhood, and encourage self-sufficiency

130 Nichols, Mike. "Hitting Home: Renovation Project Transforming Hillside City Hopes Residents, as Well as Neighborhood, Will Be Revitalized." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. 124 for their tenants. Prior to submitting the grant application, the process allowed the HACM to study their populations within the nominated projects.131 In order to reduce density and reconnect the project to the community, the HACM proposed clearing fifteen buildings. Three buildings in the original section were previously converted into a Boys and Girls Club, offices, and other social services for the residents. The reuse was clumsy at best, and the grant funding allowed the project to build a community center that would actually meet the needs of their business tenants. This new structure became the focal point for self-sufficiency initiatives.132 The other nine demolished buildings would allow the city to create through streets into the project. Residents welcomed this change; trash pick up would be more straightforward and emergency vehicles could access units much easier while residents could provide better surveillance to counter drug and gang activity. The HACM also planned to use the funds to update interior fixtures and utilities after years of deferred maintenance, and add bigger front porches to create a better sense of more private and personal outdoor space. The work began in November 1994 and was completed in

June 1998. As the first HOPE-VI project completed in Milwaukee, Hillside

Terrace set the example moving forward, influencing changes at Parklawn and the nearby Lapham Apartments.

131 Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee. “Urban Revitalization Demonstration Implementation Grant Application for Hillside Terrace.” 132 Nichols, Mike. "City Wins $40 Million US Grant." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. 125

The HOPE-VI work on site managed to maintain a lot of the original character of the project. In adding the new roads, the City was able to keep many of the original structures. Changing the superblock character of the neighborhood altered the historic feel and eliminated much of the greenspace that was formerly available for play areas. However, Carver Park has always been a nearby amenity. Another major change are the porches on the units.

Compared to the former structures, they are elongated and have a peaked roof. While considered a vernacular style with the neighborhood and mirroring the roofline, the change alters the mid-century character that previously existed. Changing the outdoor space does not protect the visual character of the community but enhances the community itself. Residents feel better ownership of their own space, and use the larger porches as an extension of their house. A lived in community is better than an empty one, and Hillside became desirable once again.

A portion of the project funds went towards purchasing housing and apartments for displaced residents. The national HUD guidelines stated that scattered site housing could not be purchased in areas that are over forty percent impoverished or minority occupied, mitigating the potential to exacerbate segregation or further depress a single area. This went contrary to residents’ desires. Most wanted to stay in the same neighborhood instead of 126 moving more than ten miles to outlying urban and suburban areas. In the past, suburban communities were resistant to accommodating public housing residents, prolonging the already arduous relocation process. Critics viewed relocating housing residents in the same area as a political cop-out, unaware of the tenants’ preferences. After an appeal, HUD agreed to meet the HACM halfway, allocating funds for thirty-nine scattered site units in the Hillside neighborhood.133

When looking at public housing, the value of community is just as important as the physical shelter itself. As preservationists, we need to understand the difference between preserving perfectly in a moment of time and adapting for the best interests of the user. Here, the HACM considered the good of the buildings themselves and how their residents might best use them to their benefit. While some of the historic integrity is lost, the utility for residents and the public housing system as a whole were gained. In maintaining many aspects of the project, the narrative of the residents’ lives remains. Keeping housing under the HACM preserves the community that residents have fought to establish and maintain, whether through struggles before the HOPE-VI reinvestment or finally coming home after the renovations.

Before the renovations, the HACM had difficulties obtaining new tenants. From a waiting list over ten thousand long, families would often refuse units at

133 Nichols, Mike. "HUD Approves City Plan on Housing." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. 127

Hillside Terrace, moving them to the bottom of the list, beginning a waiting period lasting close to six years. New background checks and welfare reform allowed the HACM to change their tenant screening policies and create a better functioning housing system.134

134 Thomas-Lynn, Felicia. "A Few Years Ago, Even the Desperate Turned down a Chance to Live at Hillside Terrace. Today, It's a Close-knit Community That Watches out for Its Own - A Fresh Start at Hillside." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. 128

IV. Where We Go From Here

Preserving public housing comes in two forms -- educating preservationists to understand the importance of certain public housing details, especially those mentioned the National Park Service’s Determination of

Eligibility-Multiple Property Submission, and understanding the needs of the residents who still live there and who still have a narrative about where they lived at one time.

How we view public housing into the future shows how we value our past. Created as a utopian escape from the slums, housing has come quite far to today, and the innovative ideas are starting to re-emerge as community needs evolve. Yet, we continue to treat public housing as a cesspool instead of an extension for the public good. As the often-perplexing counterpart to the

FHA mortgage market, public housing has only had the narrative embodying the worst aspects of our society. Yet, conventional projects establish widespread decent, safe, sanitary, and truly affordable housing, remaining in perpetuity for the public good. We need to prioritize viable funding schemes.

When considering housing, we need to determine our stance behind who gets to live in our projects and how we support those individuals and families. 129

Viewed as the housing of last resort, especially in the last thirty years, public housing is just starting to turn around back to the uplifting environment of the

New Deal era, when families celebrated their new piece of heaven.

How we view public housing directly relates to our construction policies and widespread use of housing choice vouchers: the federal government is one step removed today. Under New Urbanist incentives, authorities are introducing varied housing stock and breaking up the monotony associated with public housing, however its debatable if these structures really significantly better than their predecessors after discounting the facelift and revived public persona. Originally, housing projects were built to last, built to withstand the test of time, and built to withstand a lot of criticism. We need to be mindful of how demolishing one building eliminates so many former homes, intertwined with so many personal origin stories.

Housing is important. Housing is a place to feel safe, cared for, and a sense of identity. Changing the narrative, learning about the stories from within housing, and realizing the importance of place means public housing does not have to keep its battered reputation and some of it is already fading away. As preservationists, we should consider the importance of history and experience before supporting complete erasure, regardless of infamous reputations. We 130 need to maintain continuity and treat residents fairly while also reforming and rebuilding broken structures.

131

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Santacroce, Phyllis. “Rediscovering the role of the state: Housing policy and practice in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1900-1970.” PhD diss., University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2009.

Said, E.W. “Invention, Memory, and Place.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 26, no. 2 (Winter 2000).

Stoloff, Jennifer. “A Brief History of Public Housing.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, San Francisco, 2009.

Still, Bayrd. “The Mature Metropolis: 1910-1940.” In Milwaukee: The History of a City. Madison: The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1948.

139

------. “The Metropolitan Era: 1920-1970s.” In Urban America: A History with Documents. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1974.

"The Gautreaux Lawsuit | BPI." BPI Chicago. http://www.bpichicago.org/programs/housing-community- development/public-housing/gautreaux-lawsuit/

Thomas-Lynn, Felicia. "A Few Years Ago, Even the Desperate Turned down a Chance to Live at Hillside Terrace. Today, It's a Close-knit Community That Watches out for Its Own - A Fresh Start at Hillside." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 23, 1998, State ed., A News sec.

Tung, Anthony M. Preserving the World's Great Cities: The Destruction and Renewal of the Historic Metropolis. New York: Clarkson Potter, 2001.

Terkel, Studs. "Public Servant--The City." In Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression. New York: Pantheon Books, 1970.

Umhoefer, Dave. "Rejection Rate High for City Housing Units - Screening Said to Improve Conditions for Existing Tenants." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, December 30, 1999, Final ed., News sec.

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, School of Architecture and Urban Planning. Public Housing in Milwaukee--1970. Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee,1970.

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, School of Social Work. The Inner Core— North: A Study Of Milwaukee's Negro Community. By Charles T. O’Reilly. Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 1963.

"Urban Design Prize to Calthorpe." ArchitectureWeek. November 29, 2009. http://www.archweek.com/2006/1129/news_1-2.html

Vale, Lawrence J. From the Puritans to the Projects: Public Housing and Public Neighbors. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007. 140

Von Hoffman, Alexander. “The cure for durability: why housing for the poor was built to last.” Journal of Housing & Community Development, Vol. 55, Issue 5 (September/October 1998).

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Wittman, Alethia. "Discovering Our Inclusion Model: The National Public Housing Museum." The Incluseum. February 25, 2015. http://incluseum.com/2015/02/25/discovering-our-inclusion-model-the- national-public-housing-museum/

Legislation

Housing, etc., for Shipyard Employees, US Statutes at Large. 65th Congress, 2nd Session, Chapter 19, Public Law 102, March 1, 1918.

National Industrial Recovery Act, US Statutes at Large. 73d Congress, 1st Session, Chapter 90, Public Law 67, June 16, 1933.

National Housing Act, US Statutes at Large. 73d Congress, 2nd Session, Chapter 847, Public Law 479, June 27, 1934.

Social Security Act, US Statutes at Large. 74th Congress, 1st Session, Chapter 531, Public Law 271, August 14, 1935.

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United States Housing Act of 1937, US Statutes at Large. 75th Congress, 1st Session, Chapter 896, Public Law 412, September 1, 1937.

Housing Act of 1949, US Statutes at Large. 81st Congress, 1st Session, Chapter 338, Public Law 171, July 15, 1949.

Housing Act of 1954, US Statutes at Large. 83rd Congress, 2nd Session, Chapter 649, Public Law 560, August 2, 1954.

Housing Act of 1961, US Statutes at Large. 87th Congress, 1st Session, Public Law 87-70, June 30, 1961.

Civil Rights Act of 1964, US Statutes at Large. 89th Congress, 1st Session, Public Law 88-352, July 2, 1964.

Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965, US Statutes at Large. 89th Congress, 1st Session, Public Law 89-117, August 10, 1965.

Department of Housing and Urban Development Act, US Statutes at Large. 89th Congress, 1st Session, Public Law 89-174, September 9, 1965.

Demonstration and Metropolitan Development Act of 1966, US Statutes at Large. 89th Congress, 2nd Session, Public Law 89-754, November 3, 1966.

Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, US Statutes at Large. 90th Congress, 2nd Session, Public Law 90-448, August 1, 1968.

Fair Housing Act of 1968. US Statutes at Large. 90th Congress, 2nd Session, Public Law 90-284, Title VIII, April 11, 1968.

Housing and Community Development Act of 1974, US Statutes at Large. 93rd Congress, 2nd Session, Public Law 93-383, August 22, 1974.

Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, US Statutes at Large. 99th Congress, 2nd Session, Public Law 99-570, October 27, 1986. 142

Cranston-Gonzalez National Affordable Housing Act, US Statutes at Large. 101st Congress, 2nd Session, Public Law 101-625, November 28, 1990.

Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), US Statutes at Large. 104th Congress, 2nd Session, Public Law 104-193, August 22,1996.

Legal Decisions

United States v. Certain Lands in the City of Louisville, Jefferson County, Kentucky, et al. 9 F.Supp. 137 (W.D. Kentucky, 1935)

Shelley et ux. v. Kraemer et ux. 334 U.S. 1 (1948)

Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al. 347 U.S. 483 (1954)

Dorothy Gautreaux et al. v. the Chicago Housing Authority et al. 22 F.Supp. 582 (N.D. Illinois 1967)