Edward Keegan: The future of public housing is on Chicago's Taylor Street

Chicago Tribune

2 days ago

Public housing in Chicago began on the Near West Side's Taylor Street — and the last few months have seen the opening of a new institution dedicated to telling the story of public housing and its residents and a new building that points toward its future.
The National Public Housing Museum, or NPHM, opened this spring at 919 S. Ada St. following a decades-long journey. It's housed in the last remaining building from the Jane Addams Homes.
When the Addams complex opened in the late 1930s, the idea of public housing was new in Chicago and in the United States. Named after Chicago's pioneering social activist who died just a few years before the homes opened, the initial 32-building complex set a promising pattern of well-built low-scale apartment structures that reflected forward-thinking ideas for multifamily housing initiated in Europe. The complex's courtyard spaces were animated by an Animal Court featuring a pool and fountain populated by whimsical sculptures by Edgar Miller. A number of these pieces have been restored and are now part of the courtyard within the NPHM.
The remodeling of the 919 S. Ada St. structure into the new NPHM has been done by Chicago-based LBBA, a firm founded in 1987 by architect Peter Landon that has been dedicated to producing socially conscious design throughout its history. LBBA worked with the NPHM group for almost two decades, and the results reflect this long and thoughtful gestation with the assistance of many collaborators, including multiple directors and innumerable public housing activists and residents.
The Jane Addams Homes reflected a minimalist design sensibility but were not without adornment. A team of notable Chicago architects — Ernest Grunsfeld Jr., John Holabird, Philip Maher, John Merrill and others — included decorative concrete around the entries, elegantly curved balcony rails and sturdy well-proportioned steel frame windows that made for attractive low-rise apartment blocks situated in a parklike setting. 'There were these really nice streamlined details, but when you take those away, it's just a very simple building,' Landon said.
The NPHM occupies the restored south and west wings of the U-shaped building; the north wing is once again home to residents in 15 remodeled apartments. The Addams Homes were well-built structures with good solid bones — concrete frames with masonry exteriors. LBBA has revealed these innards within the primary public spaces of the new museum. Along the west side of the building, the architects dropped the first floor to grade in order to make an accessible entry but also provide taller ceiling heights in the entry, a community room and the first portion of the main gallery, creating a more monumental series of spaces that elevate the experience of the museum.
Landon notes that Executive Director Lisa Yun Lee clarified how the museum should be presented: 'She wanted to tell people's stories,' he said. LBBA has nimbly allowed the repurposed building to provide a container for those stories. 'She always brought that sharing; it's big stories and small stories everywhere,' he said.
Beyond the smart new galleries, three historic apartments have been re-created to demonstrate home life in the Addams Homes between 1938 and 1975. Seeing these remarkable exhibits requires reserved tickets and a 60-minute tour with one of the museum's educators.
Related Midwest, the same developer behind the South Loop's The 78 project and South Chicago's Illinois Quantum & Microelectronics Park, is the master developer of the 67-acre site formerly home to the Chicago Housing Authority's ABLA Homes, which included the Addams Homes as a part. The area is now dubbed Roosevelt Square and is slowly evolving. Six years ago, they completed the architecturally distinguished Taylor Street Apartments & Little Italy Branch Library designed by SOM and located immediately west of the NPHM.
The newest addition to Roosevelt Square is the recently completed mixed-use structure at 1002 S. Racine Ave. Located just a block east of NPHM and designed by LBBA with Moody Nolan, the six-story-tall structure has 67 apartments along with street-level retail spaces facing Taylor. Seventeen of these apartments are reserved for CHA tenants with the remainder available as market rate rentals.
The building is conceived in three parts: a three-story brick block at the corner of Taylor and Racine, a single-story base with retail along Taylor and five stories of apartments clad in textured panels above. The design is neat and tidy, a sophisticated essay in contemporary architecture. Metal surrounds at the storefronts mask the use of thin brick, a nod to economy in the building's design. Finely textured vertically ribbed panels clad the upper floors of the building. There is a subtle cant to the Taylor Street facades, which creates a broader and more gracious sidewalk in front of the building while giving the mass of the upper floors just a bit more interest than a more conventional boxlike design. It could be seen as a gimmick, but in LBBA's capable hands, it elevates the structure's prominence on the street just so. Along Racine, the three-story-tall masonry block smartly mimics the predominant scale along Taylor and protects a covered resident entrance at the corner.
Despite some excellent architectural lineage, the Addams Homes' spare aesthetic helped set a tone for future public housing in Chicago (and elsewhere) that's often cited as a contributing factor in the failure of these developments. But architecture and design can't solve every, or even most, problems of affordable housing. Housing is a social, economic, political and architectural problem. It takes enormous effort by a team committed to solving all these problems to have a chance at success.
More than two decades on, the reimagined Roosevelt Square shows glimmers of architectural success, but so did its predecessor.
The National Public Housing Museum is at 919 S. Ada St. Museum hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday; it is closed Monday and Tuesday. Admission is free. The historic apartment tours require a timed ticket that can be purchased in advance: adults, $25; seniors (65-plus), $15; students (18-24), $15; and youth (6-8), $15.
Edward Keegan writes, broadcasts and teaches on architectural subjects. Keegan's biweekly architecture column is supported by a grant from former Tribune critic Blair Kamin, as administered by the not-for-profit Journalism Funding Partners. The Tribune maintains editorial control over assignments and content.