Dearborn Homes is a

Chicago Housing Authority The Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) is a municipal corporation that oversees public housing within the city of Chicago. The agency's Board of Commissioners is appointed by the Mayor of Chicago, city's mayor, and has a budget independent from that ...

(CHA)

public housing Public housing, also known as social housing, refers to Subsidized housing, subsidized or affordable housing provided in buildings that are usually owned and managed by local government, central government, nonprofit organizations or a ...

project A project is a type of assignment, typically involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a specific objective. An alternative view sees a project managerially as a sequence of events: a "set of interrelated tasks to be ...

located in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side of

Chicago, Illinois Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

. It is located along State Street between 27th and 30th Streets, and bounded by the

Metra Metra is the primary commuter rail system in the Chicago metropolitan area serving the city of Chicago and its surrounding suburbs via the Union Pacific Railroad, BNSF Railway, and other railroads. The system operates 243 train station, stati ...

rail line to the west. It is one of only two housing projects that still exist from the State Street Corridor which included other CHA developments:

Robert Taylor Homes Robert Taylor Homes was a public housing project located in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois. Constructed in 1962 and demolished by 2007, it was the largest housing project in the United States. The developme ...

Stateway Gardens Stateway Gardens was a Chicago Housing Authority, Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) public housing Public housing in the United States, project in the Douglas, Chicago#Bronzeville, Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side (Chicago), South Side of ...

, Harold Ickes Homes and

Hillard Homes Hilliard Towers Apartments, formerly known as the Raymond Hilliard Homes CHA housing project, is a residential high-rise development in the near South Side of Chicago, Illinois. It was designed by Bertrand Goldberg and is bounded by Clark Stre ...

. The project occupies and consists of mid-rise, six-story, and nine-story buildings.Dearborn Homes
,

They were designed in modernist style by Loebl, Schlossman & Bennett, with cruciform towers to allow for ventilation and light, placed in a parklike setting.Blair Kamin
"CHA architecture gets it right with Dearborn Homes: New limestone decorations transform the buildings from hulking to inviting, and the update has improved the interior too,"
Cityscapes, ''

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'', May 22, 2009; repr. "CHA Polishes Its Rough Edges: Architect dresses up the Dearborn Homes, Georgian Style, and Upgrades Living Spaces Inside," in Blair Kamin, ''Terror and Wonder: Architecture in a Tumultuous Age'', Chicago: University of Chicago, 2010, , pp
244
��47.D. Bradford Hunt, ''Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing'', Historical studies of urban America, Chicago: University of Chicago, 2009,
p. 123
There were 800 units.Donna Leinwand

''

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'', June 22, 2006.

History

Dearborn was the first Chicago housing project built after World War II, as housing for blacks on part of the Federal Street slum within the "black belt". It was the start of the Chicago Housing Authority's post-war use of high-rise buildings to accommodate more units at a lower overall cost, and when it opened in 1950, the first to have elevators. While still unfinished, it was used to receive lower-income residents displaced by redevelopment; half the buildings were also increased in height by three floors when more money became available during construction. The buildings soon fell victim to vandalism; in 1958 a ''Chicago American'' reporter visited Dearborn and wrote of "torn window screens, mutilated storm doors, yards littered with garbage, . . . walls, doors, and casings marked by knife slashes and crayon marks; holes gouged in plaster; ndobscenities scrawled on the stairway walls".

Crime and drugs

By 1980, the project was "notorious", a high-crime area where " erybody live in fear". The

Mickey Cobras The Mickey Cobras are a gang based in Chicago and affiliated with People Nation. The gang is considered stable, and its colors are green, black, and red. Factions of the gang are being established throughout the Midwest. On April 5, 2005, US At ...

gang dominated the complex during the 2000s. In 2006, following an undercover drug conspiracy bust, numerous people living at and near the housing project died of overdoses from a potent form of

heroin Heroin, also known as diacetylmorphine and diamorphine among other names, is a morphinan opioid substance synthesized from the Opium, dried latex of the Papaver somniferum, opium poppy; it is mainly used as a recreational drug for its eupho ...

. Raids followed the deaths and resulted in 30 gang members' being arrested at the complex. On August 11, 2013, two men were shot in the complex, leaving one dead and the other wounded.

Renovation

From 2009–2010, The Chicago Housing Authority renovated the buildings, adding detailing—stone

quoin Quoins ( or ) are masonry blocks at the corner of a wall. Some are structural, providing strength for a wall made with inferior stone or rubble, while others merely add aesthetic detail to a corner. According to one 19th-century encyclopedia, ...

s and triangular ball-topped

gable A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aesth ...

s and metal porches—to give the original plain brick a neo-Georgian appearance, and has installed its first resident computer center there.Natalie Moore,

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"CHA opens first tech center in public housing,"

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, March 7, 2012. The number of apartments will be reduced to 660.

History

Crime and drugs

Renovation

References

Further reading