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 | Slipping into the PJs
entry by meganb
8/3/2004 12:59 PM
| INTRO
The following is an article I wrote for a magazine that I am supposed to be writing for, but the publication dates keep getting bumped and I am not sure that they will ever even use this particular piece. It is basically a "mission report" that I wrote about exploring the Addams homes in Chicago, including a bit of history and background.
~M
Slipping into the PJs
An outsider's view of the projects.
The section of buildings sprawled out before us is quite abandoned. Windows shuttered with wood and steel. Crumbling pavement and unkept lawns. The place looks odd and is in an odd place. To the north is a small stretch of well groomed park and a very gentrified neighborhood. To the south, more buildings like these abandoned ones, except that they are occupied and subsidized. The place is public housing, the projects, also known as "the PJs".
Once consisting of 32 buildings, (987 walk-up units and 52 row houses), Chicago's premiere housing project, the Jane Addams Homes, are now only partially inhabited. Many of the buildings stand shuttered, unoccupied and in various states of decay and disrepair. Succumbed to the elements and years of neglect, the "Animal Court", crumbling old WPA (Works Progress Administration) animal sculptures, still stand. The children run, play, yell and shoot hoops with hardly a notice to the ever deteriorating statues. The "Animal Court" is bordered by populated apartments to the south and abandoned and shuttered buildings to the north. Just a street north of the abandoned buildings lies a stretch of gentrified playing ground. Here, young professionals engage in games of baseball, soccer and frisbee toss. The two-flat homes in this area start around $400,000, a far cry from the rent paid at the Jane Addams Homes across the street. The contrast of housing in this area is startling. Night and day, black and white, rich and poor.
Public housing got its start in the 1930s. With the onslaught and aftermath of the Great Depression, many people found themselves jobless, homeless and in need of places to live. Under the Housing Act of 1937, public housing became available through the federal government, but was to be managed by local, municipal authorities under federal regulation.
In late 1930s and early 1940s, many housing projects were developed throughout the city of Chicago. The first of these projects to be completed was the "Jane Addams Homes", in 1938. These "homes" were a slew of apartment style buildings built for predominantly white families (and formerly employed home owners) displaced by the Great Depression. At that time they were seen as a temporary solution to be remedied by the eventual recovery of the American economy.
Although the economy improved greatly by the 1940s, the need for public housing was never satiated. After World War II legislation expanded both the Federal Housing Administration and the Housing Act of 1937 declaring that the goal of the federal housing policy was to create "a decent home and suitable living environment for every American family".
During the 1960's and 1970s, the idea came about for a "housing allowance" which would provide housing at a cost proportionate to that of the family income. In 1974, congress created Section 8, a subsidized housing program for low-income families with housing expenses based on a percentage of family income. This program also allowed for privately owned properties to provide this type of living arrangement through a voucher system.
Our group arrived in this area one afternoon to shoot film and photos of the old buildings rumored as being scheduled for demolition soon. We panned out across the open lot of 3 story buildings, gazing up at the brick and concrete structures shuttered with wood panels and perforated steel. The entrances of buildings were blocked by odd installations of steel doors with peep holes and strange punch-code locks.
We moved about the yard and headed toward a building whose door was wide open. Steam poured out from the opening permeating the concrete stoop with moisture. We cautiously looked about, then filed into the building, heading through the steam and straight up the first flight of stairs. Few people dared a peek into the basement entrance near the open door. Steam poured out so heavily that visibility was almost impossible. The source of the steam leak was intriguing and the few who had peered into it felt the urgent need to find the source.
The rest of the crew moved about the building, photographing and filming what little evidence there was left of human habitation. There were kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms and other living areas. Each, hardly distinguishable from the next save the presence of kitchen cabinets and bathroom fixtures. A tile or two remained off-kilter, still clinging to a wall, through steam and all. Non-circulating, kitchen ceiling fans still hung. Their blades, wilted like dead flower pedals dripping from the ceiling. The fans were not all that dripped. Moisture glittered on the walls and particularly the ceilings where it would occasionally drip onto our bodies as we passed beneath it. Later, we were to find out from a long time resident, that this steam leak had been happening for over 15 years while people had occupied the building. She told of huddling under the shelter of an umbrella within her own apartment. It certainly wasn't the open umbrella that had brought bad luck to this neighborhood.
As we wondered through the halls, through the rooms, the doorways and even through the walls, I thought how much the place looked like the clips on the evening news from places like Iraq, Bosnia, and even Vietnam. The light filtered through holes in the shutters. Rays of lit steam beamed down to the droplets of light on floors and bare cupboards. One could imagine the shuttered windows riddled with bullet holes instead of machined as such.
We made our way through the stairway and up to the roof, which afforded us a moment of perspective. To the south was where the people lived in this place. Children played basketball, people walked around, some even grilled food outdoors or just hung out with friends and relatives. To the north were fancy condos and people playing frisbee in a park. Some people were jogging as women walked about with small children in strollers. None of the people in the park were anything but white. To the east was the Sears Tower looming tall in the background.
We made our way back into the building and down the stairs. We wondered into one of the many apartments and found a large hole bashed out of the wall to the adjoining building. We stepped through and crossed over into much of the same. It was a cooler climate as the steam had not really seen its way into infiltrating this building. There weren't any droplets of steam from the ceilings and the only real damage, besides the hole, seemed to be from the elements. Paint still peeled, but not as badly. Still, all rooms were bare and after a short while we had decided that we had seen enough. One room after another were pretty much identical. Three apartments to each floor with a central staircase leading from the basement to the roof.
We stepped back out into the daylight and gathered at the sidewalk in front of one of the buildings closest to the street that seemed to divide rich from poor and the park where a game of frisbee still ensued. We were talking for awhile when someone came up to us heavily clothed in layers with several bags slung over the back. The bags turned out to be musical instrument cases and the person turned out to be a woman. She told us that if we wanted to get into one of the buildings that the people in the office would easily grant us permission. This was the first thing that she informed us of, but she most certainly did not stop there.
I felt that I had to ask about the instruments, being quite a music lover myself. I pictured her playing in some jazz or blues club down the street on Sunday afternoons. This was not the case though, she was a street musician and worked the Chicago Transit Authority train subway platforms. She played the 12-string guitar, the violin and another instrument that I wasn't familiar with. She was on her way home (the Jane Addams Homes), for lunch. She obviously was not unintelligent and seemed to have a great head on her shoulders. I gave her the $4 that I had in my wallet and she accepted it graciously, thanking God, crossing herself and kissing the money, before tucking it into the deep recesses of her jacket.
She told us the story of how she had lived in the Addams Homes since 1952. She told of the struggle her family had in trying to get into the homes because they were Native Americans not African Americans. She said that some people consider anyone with dark skin to be black when that just isn't the case. She told of the trolley that had once ran next to the place and of the horrible conditions that existed while she had lived in the buildings, such as the "umbrella". She warned us of the neighborhood and its evils of drugs, violence and even murder. The murder of a woman that had occurred not so long ago, in the building we had just left shortly before her arrival. We didn't let on to the fact that we had already been in the buildings, but I would think that she already knew that we had. Matter of fact, there were 2 people who had slipped into the building right in front of us shortly before her arrival. As I spoke with her, I looked up to see one of them cautiously glancing down at us through the 2nd floor window. I tried to inconspicuously nod him away from the window, hoping that he wouldn't try the doors again after she had told us that they were alarmed into the police station.
The lady went on, speaking more about the history and her childhood there. She remembered fondly her music teacher, and how the steam had ruined her last guitar and all of her clothes. "I am reduced to wearing this", she said, spreading her jacket to reveal more layers of clothing. All were clean and tidy and even looked new. I saw no fault with them, but apparently the point was that she was used to something better.
The Jane Addams Homes weren't always bad. They had been quite a pleasant place in the 40's, 50's and perhaps even into the 60's. Old photographs show the "Animal Court" embedded with sprinklers and children playing in them. The photographs also reveal individual lots of small gardens sectioned off with chain-link fences. The lawns had once been nicely landscaped, lushly planted and obviously cared for when the homes were in their prime. Now the lawns barely existed and seemed mainly to be filled with mud and occasional patches of sick grass. The landscaping was gone, save for the trees that had originally been planted. One tree bared thorns, which somehow now seemed appropriate for the place.
~M
UPDATE:08/05/04 - Buildings in article above have been demolished.
[last edit 8/5/2004 6:07 PM by meganb - edited 1 times]
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