The Ida B. Wells Homes, which also comprised the Clarence Darrow Homes and Madden Park Homes, was 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 city's mayor, and has a budget independent from that of the city of C ...

(CHA)

public housing Public housing is a form of housing tenure in which the property is usually owned by a government authority, either central or local. Although the common goal of public housing is to provide affordable housing, the details, terminology, def ...

project located in the heart of the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side of

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...

. It was bordered by 35th Street to the north, Pershing Road (39th Street) to the south,

Cottage Grove Avenue Roads and expressways in Chicago summarizes the main thoroughfares and the numbering system used in Chicago and its surrounding suburbs. Street layout Chicago's streets were laid out in a grid that grew from the city's original townsite plan pl ...

to the east, and Martin Luther King Drive to the west. The Ida B. Wells Homes consisted of rowhouses, mid-rises, and high-rise

apartment building An apartment (American English), or flat (British English, Indian English, South African English), is a self-contained housing unit (a type of residential real estate) that occupies part of a building, generally on a single story. There are ...

s, first constructed 1939 to 1941 to house

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

tenants. They were closed and demolished beginning in 2002 and ending in 2011.

History

Named for African American

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

and newspaper editor

Ida B. Wells Ida B. Wells (full name: Ida Bell Wells-Barnett) (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931) was an American investigative journalist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement. She was one of the founders of the National Association for ...

,Caryn Rousseau,

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...

"Ida B. Wells Sculpture To Be Built In Chicago"
Chicago Impact, ''

Huffington Post ''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...

'', December 28, 2011. the housing project was constructed between 1939 and 1941 as a

Public Works Administration The Public Works Administration (PWA), part of the New Deal of 1933, was a large-scale public works construction agency in the United States headed by Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. It was created by the National Industrial Recove ...

project to house black families in the "ghetto", in accordance with federal regulations requiring public housing projects to maintain the segregation of neighborhoods.Harvey M. Choldin
"Chicago Housing Authority"
Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago,

Chicago Historical Society Chicago History Museum is the museum of the Chicago Historical Society (CHS). The CHS was founded in 1856 to study and interpret Chicago's history. The museum has been located in Lincoln Park since the 1930s at 1601 North Clark Street at the int ...

, 2005. It was the fourth public housing project constructed in Chicago before World War II and was much larger than the others, with 1,662 units. It had more than 860 apartments and almost 800 row houses and garden apartments, and included a city park, Madden Park. Described as "handsome ndwell planned", the project was initially a sought-after address and a route to success.Nicholas Lemann
"The Origins of the Underclass," Part One
''

The Atlantic ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...

'', July 1986: "It is common in Chicago to meet successful blacks in their late thirties and early forties who spent part of their childhood in the projects."

Darrow Homes and Madden Park Homes

In 1961, the Clarence Darrow Homes were built adjacent to the Ida B. Wells Homes and in 1970, the last of the Chicago Housing Authority's high-rise projects, the Madden Park Homes, were built east of the Wells. The "three huge, contiguous projects" lined the northern edge of the

Oakland Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay A ...

community area.

Problems

Like many other Chicago housing projects, the Wells homes were plagued by problems such as neglect by the housing authority,

gang violence A gang is a group or society of associates, friends or members of a family with a defined leadership and internal organization that identifies with or claims control over territory in a community and engages, either individually or collectivel ...

shootings Shooting is the act or process of discharging a projectile from a ranged weapon (such as a gun, Bow and arrow, bow, crossbow, slingshot, or Blowgun, blowpipe). Even the acts of launching Flamethrower, flame, artillery, Dart (missile), darts, ha ...

drug abuse Substance abuse, also known as drug abuse, is the use of a drug in amounts or by methods which are harmful to the individual or others. It is a form of substance-related disorder. Differing definitions of drug abuse are used in public health, ...

, and

drug dealing The illegal drug trade or drug trafficking is a global black market dedicated to the cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of prohibited drugs. Most jurisdictions prohibit trade, except under license, of many types of drugs throug ...

. The

Black P. Stones The Almighty Black P. Stone Nation often abbreviated as (BPS, BPSN, Black Peace Stones, Black P. Stones, Stones, or Moes) is an American street gang founded in Chicago. The gang was originally formed in the late 1950s as the Blackstone Rangers. ...

gang in particular asserted authority over the area and residents of the Ida B. Wells Homes; Eugene Hairston, co-founder of the gang, was shot dead at his home there in September, 1988. One mother-and-son cocaine ring in the project reputedly had customers standing in line "50 at a time, 'like at a Popsicle stand on a hot day'". The 30-minute audio documentary '' Ghetto Life 101'', released in 1993, was made by two teenagers from the project,

LeAlan Jones LeAlan Marvin Jones (born May 8, 1979) is an American journalist who lives in Chicago's South Shore. His radio documentaries have received critical acclaim and numerous awards. Jones was the Green Party's 2010 nominee for United States Senate fr ...

and Lloyd Newman. Their second audio documentary, ''Remorse: The 14 Stories of Eric Morse'', which won a

Peabody Award The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Peabody, honor the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in television, radio, and ...

, deals with the murder of 5-year-old Eric Morse in the project on October 13, 1994; he was pushed from the window of a vacant 14th-floor apartment by two older boys (aged 10 and 11) after he refused to steal candy for them. The project was also the location for

Frederick Wiseman Frederick Wiseman (born January 1, 1930) is an American filmmaker, documentarian, and theater director. His work is "devoted primarily to exploring American institutions". He has been called "one of the most important and original filmmakers wor ...

's 1997 documentary ''Public Housing''.

Demolition

In 1995, the

United States Department of Housing and Urban Development The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government. It administers federal housing and urban development laws. It is headed by the Secretary of Housing and Urb ...

took over the Chicago Housing Authority's public housing projects and decided to demolish the high-rises. Demolition began at the Ida B. Wells Homes in late 2002 with the high-rise buildings on Cottage Grove Avenue. It was completed in August 2011 with the demolition of the last two residential buildings at 3718 S. Vincennes Avenue. Construction began in 2003 on the mixed-income community of Oakwood Shores, which will replace all three housing projects, Ida B. Wells, Madden Park, and Clarence Darrow, A commission, led by Well's great grand-daughters raised funds for a public memorial to honor Wells near the site, which had also been close to Wells' own neighborhood. The Light of Truth Ida B. Wells National Monument created by well known abstract sculptor and Chicago artist Richard Hunt was unveiled on June 29, 2021.

History

Darrow Homes and Madden Park Homes

Problems

Demolition

See also

References

Further reading