Successful renovation
Yet the same ideas that transformed 850 W. Eastwood Ave. have worked in public housing. They helped hammer out a new environment in six buildings at the Ida B. Wells Extension, part of the public-housing development of the same name.
About a mile and a half east of Comiskey Park, the 40-year-old Wells Extension is removed from the State Street corridor and sits near middle-income developments such as Lake Meadows.
In a departure from the high-rise stereotype, its boxy brick-and-concrete buildings are seven stories tall, a mid-rise height that is at once manageable for maintenance crews and small-scale enough to allow residents to recognize each other.
The CHA has comparably sized elevator buildings at Ickes Homes, Dearborn Homes, Cabrini-Green and the Henry Horner Homes. Those at Ickes, Dearborn and Wells have interior corridors, unlike the open-air galleries at other CHA high-rises.
Before the 1993 renovation by the Chicago firm of Dubin, Dubin and Moutoussamay, tenants at Wells Extension had many of the same problems as at the Eastwood building, only worse. Residents became tired of waiting for maintenance workers, so they unscrewed incandescent light bulbs from ceiling-mounted hallway fixtures. That plunged the corridors into darkness. Condensation formed on cement-block interior walls, building into rivulets that ran down the walls and shorted light sockets.
“You could go ice skating on some of these floors,” said tenant Velma Owens.
The difference between “before” and “after” in the six renovated Wells Extension buildings is startling. A first-floor children’s room brims with positive images, including a tank with brilliantly colored fish and an aquarium for turtles. On the wall is a poster of Ida B. Wells, an anti-lynching crusader. The building’s non-profit managers, The Woodlawn Organization, say that such rooms are important for keeping children engaged in constructive activity.
Framing the entrance to each building, tough glass-block windows allow light to penetrate into lobbies manned by security guards. Corridor floors are furnished in a pleasant blue tile. Ceiling-mounted lighting fixtures in the hallways protect long fluorescent bulbs that cannot be used in individual apartments. Upgraded apartments include new kitchen cabinets and range hoods. Back entrances have been sealed off, so there is only one way in and one way out-the front door, which is patrolled by guards.
Outside are new entrance canopies, brown paint that softens the harsh demeanor of the exposed concrete frames, plus tuckpointed brickwork. The latter has vastly improved insulation, so in wintertime, the cinder block walls don’t “sweat” with moisture.
Residents say the physical changes, along with improved tenant screening and the introduction of private management, have had a dramatic impact.
Drug dealers no longer operate in the renovated buildings. The six rehabbed buildings are practically free of graffiti, while the four that are awaiting renovation are covered with it.
In the refurbished structures, managers say they have little difficulty enforcing rules, such as a $50 fine for children playing in elevators. “Most people are so happy to be in a setting such as this-believe me, they’re not breaking the rules,” said Deborah Mallory of The Woodlawn Organzation.
The renovation cost $40,000 per unit, less than half the per-unit price of scattered-site townhouses in Chicago.
It was cheaper, said Richard Rucks, the project architect for Dubin, Dubin and Moutoussamay, because it did not require some of the most costly items of new construction, including a foundation, internal structure and exterior walls. In addition, he said, it is easier to secure building materials within a renovated structure than a fenced scattered-site property.
A little glamor never hurts
That still leaves unanswered the question of how to improve the CHA’s gallery buildings. These constitute the majority of the high-rises and include one of the most architecturally significant public-housing designs-the Raymond Hilliard Center, where architect Bertrand Goldberg employed the design theories that created the famous corncob-shaped towers of Marina City. Hilliard’s circular 16-story high-rises are for seniors while its two arc-shaped 22-story buildings are for families.
The complex is a humanistic alternative to the crushing monotony of standard CHA boxes, but it is not problem-free. The galleries in its family buildings leave tenants as exposed to the elements as in other CHA high-rises. And in his history of subsidized housing in Chicago, Devereux Bowly Jr. notes that the curving buildings “magnify sound and make for a high noise level throughout the project.”
A fresh alternative comes from Christopher Groesbeck and Richard Knorr of the Chicago architectural firm of VOA Associates: public housing that’s practically glamorous. It would transform an empty gallery building in the 4000 block of South Oakenwald Avenue into a mixed-income development resembling a classic Art Deco apartment tower.
Commissioned by the CHA in a 1993 competition for teams of architects and builders, the plan would divide the blocky high-rise into a classic three-part composition with a bottom, middle and a top.
Subtle details would enhance the tower’s visual appeal. Brick staining would change from dark to light as the building moved from earth to sky. Horizontal bands of precast concrete would line the facade every three stories. Vertical bands of glass block would create a dramatic nighttime image. Precast concrete medallions would provide an additional layer of visual delight, like so many bellybuttons.
Public housing, the planner Oscar Newman has observed, is never supposed to approach the luxurious in appearance, which is one reason to expect that this design won’t be constructed to its original plan. Another is neighborhood opposition to more public housing in the North Kenwood area, where the CHA’s mixed-income Lake Parc Place high-rises are just north of the abandoned Oakenwald site.
But even if the VOA design is not constructed there, the plan deserves to be built.
Forget the Art Deco jazz. Its guts work, and they show how to make gallery buildings livable.
The key is filling in the “U” of the gallery buildings with new apartments. That would provide room for interior corridors monitored by security cameras. The corridors would be straight, with no nooks in which criminals could hide, and they would enhance privacy within apartments. People walking down galleries can see into living rooms. They can’t do that in a conventional hallway.
Though its structure would remain intact, the building’s interior would be gutted and rebuilt with a mix of apartment sizes, from two to four bedrooms. Larger apartments would have two baths, an acknowledgement of modern families with two people going to work.
A potential weakness is that some four-bedrooms would not be located close to ground level, making it difficult for parents with large families to supervise their children. But the overall plan-a refinement of the original “tower-in-the-park” model that would break down vast open spaces into human-scaled niches-is appealing.
So is the projected cost of $12 million, about $80,000 per unit. That’s double the price of the Wells renovation because the plan calls for a complete rebuilding, not just a refurnishing, of the interior. Still, the cost is $20,000 less per unit than scattered-site housing.
The VOA design would not mark the first time that monolithic public housing got a face lift and a reworked interior. At Boston’s Harbor Point, a subsidized complex that became a mixed-income development, drab yellow brick buildings were renovated and given a reddish-brown stain and peaked roofs that enable them to blend with new structures. Though tenants favored saving the buildings, they insisted that the appearance change. Otherwise, they said, Harbor Point would retain the stigma of public housing.
But the issue of renovating high-rises is about more than the structures themselves. Ultimately, rehabbed towers should be part of the city, not as objects set apart from it. At Harbor Point, renovated buildings were linked to a new street grid that joins them to a greater urban whole.
In many cases, it will be cheaper to demolish public-housing towers than to renovate them. But there is a range of workable alternatives for renovating high-rises. With a mix of income groups, defensible space, good management and location, rehabbed high-rises can save the very taxpayers who insist on destroying them.
An enlightened architectural plan is clearly more constructive than a stick of dynamite.
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Next: The tools to do the job.
