The Last Stateway Gardens Highrise Awaits its Fate

I shot this building from every conceivable angle, and tried to show its proximity to the IIT Research Institute highrise (both about the same age), Sox Park, and the new construction going up on the north end of the former Stateway Gardens site going toward 35th St.

They haven't started demolition on the highrise yet, but they're going to town on the long, low building in front of it (Do any former Stateway residents know what that building was? A community center?)

At the end, I do a 360-degree pan to show how much vacant land was left when they tore Stateway and Robert Taylor down. (Robert Taylor Homes started at 39th St. and went south to almost 55th St.) I was standing on Federal just south of 39th St when I did the pan.

To the south,beyond that viaduct at about 40th St., more new mixed-income homes are going up.

Part 2 is at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeOad3WOde0

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• Chicago
• Housing
• Authority
• CHA
• Stateway
• Gardens
• housing
• project
• demolition
• high-rise
• CTA
• IIT
• State
• Street
• 35th
• 39th

[tstruss912]

This was ranked the poorest neighborhood in America. Maybe it's best that they dozed it.

[artistmac]

@tstruss912 The only problem was, they finished demolition just as the economy crashed; most of the land where Stateway and Robert Taylor used to sit is still vacant, and the city's planning dept. was estimating 7-10 years to rebuild; that was before the recession. See my recent videos in which I drive State and Federal from 35th to 55th. Except for 35th and State, It's a moonscape.

[tstruss912]

@artistmac Ya, that's totally unacceptable. The way the poor are treated in this country--especially in Chicago--is unbelievable. The rich and powerful get hundreds of billions in tax-payer monies every year and almost nobody ever complains...or knows; but, the poor are treated like some disease. I say all poor working people go on strike until this system changes.

[artistmac]

@tstruss912 They can start by not sitting out "off-year" elections, like last year. The Tea Party is out to gut every social program they can find. And next year? There should be lines out the doors of polling places in every poor-to-middle class neighborhood in the country. Whoever the Republican candidate is should get steamrollered, if the millions of people suffering in this recession vote their interests like the rich do.

[rsharrieff]

@AvenueD417 : No the projects in Chicago were not in isolated parts of "town"...lol. They were purposefully constructed right in the middle of the neighborhoods they were designed to house. It looks isolated because everything has been torn down and boarded up for decades. And many neighborhoods have lost hundreds of thousands of residents and of course white businesses over the years.

[myrabradwell40]

How ironic this is the building my family lived in up until 1975... Looking at its surroundings bring back so many memories..

[AvenueD417]

i realized the projects out in the Chi are located in isolated parts of town. the projects out here in NY are located in areas full of traffic, businesses and schools. they seem more live but out in Chicago they seem depressing. ive lived in the St Nicholas Projects in Harlem for 6 years and the neighborhood is slowly being swallowed by gentrification as well.

[tstruss912]

This was ranked the poorest neighborhood in America in 1995....9 of the top 10 were CHA. Good that they took these fucked up neighborhoods apart.