The Last Cabrini-Green Highrise Demolition, Pt. 2

For this installment, amid the wrecking dust, I wanted to concentrate on the details of vanished lives: interior wall graffiti, ceiling fans, multiple floors of exposed electrical panels -- in short, everything but the kitchen sink.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• Chicago
• IL
• Illinois
• Northside
• near north side
• Cabrini
• Cabrini-Green
• Cabrini Green
• CHA
• Chicago Housing Authority
• housing
• project
• projects
• highrise
• high
• rise
• apartment
• building
• Starbucks
• Dominicks
• Heneghan
• Wrecking
• demolition
• concrete
• Gold
• Coast
• Gold Coast
• Division
• Scott
• Halsted
• crane
• wrecking
• ball
• reinforced

[artistmac]

This building wasn't always "like this". When it was built, the CHA was still a tough, effective landlord. In the mid-to-late '60's, things went downhill.

By the way, how is this highrise any different than Hillard Homes, which was rehabbed into mixed-income housing, Victor Olander Homes, made into mixed income Lake Parc Place, and every CHA seniors-only highrise building in the city?

Sandburg Village, 1 mile east, is mostly highrises. Is it a "ghetto complex"?

[spcjen]

@artistmac Because the Goldcoast is down the road?

[artistmac]

@spcjen And Cabrini isn't just down the road from the Gold Coast? It's a 15-minute walk from 1230 N. Burling to CIark & Division! If Arthur Rubloff had been the kind of hands-off landlord at Sandburg (from '62 to the late '70's, they were rentals) that the CHA was in its later years, Sandburg would have been as much of a blight on the North Side as Cabrini was. It's all about tough, effective, no-excuses management. Violate the lease terms too many times, hit the bricks.

[spcjen]

@artistmac I agree with you 100% on that. But why did they build Cabrini when they didnt have the money to maintain them? I saw a documentry that said during its creation they where told it would cost 1m per building per year. This happened during the Richard M. Daley days.

[artistmac]

@spcjen When the Cabrini rowhouses were built, in the late 30's - early 40's, they were well-maintained and racially integrated. By the time the Cabrini & Green highrises were built 20 years later by Richard J., the CHA's mission went from providing quality, temporary low-income housing to warehousing exploding numbers of poor Southern blacks in the smallest space possible. Hence, the highrises. Cost of maintenance? Not an issue, as long as public housing wasn't built in white neighborhoods.

[artistmac]

@spcjen Add in the Brooke Amendment, which tied rents to income and caused thousands of working-class & middle-class families to leave CHA housing, and the imposition of welfare rules which penalized families with fathers present, and you have a recipe for disaster. But make no mistake: in the beginning, Cabrini, Ida B. Wells, Altgeld Gardens, ABLA, Lathrop and other early CHA projects were beautiful places to live. For people who had been living in squalid Depression-era slums, it was heaven.

[CDTbossy]

That is what I call a Ghetto complex! Why would anyone want to live in a building like this? Good thing they are tearing it down!