The Poorhouse: Subsidized Housing in Chicago

8. The Community Renewal Foundation and the Kate Maremont Foundation

120 8. The Community Renewal Foundation and the Kate Maremont Foundation There was little activity in the field of subsidized moderate-income housing in Chicago during the 1940s and 1950s other than that of the Chicago Dwellings Association. Two interesting low-budget projects were built on the South Side by private developers, but they were not subsidized. Both of them, however, anticipated in many respects the design of later housing in the city, both subsidized and nonsubsidized. They are both composed of two-story row houses on compact sites. The earlier development, built at the end of World War II in 1944, is called the George Washington Carver Garden Homes and is located on a split site on either side of Michigan Avenue at 37th Street. It was built by the late Newton Farr and his large Loop real estate firm of Farr, Chinnock, and Sampson. Farr constructed the project, originally on a part-rental and part-sale basis, as an experiment to see if a private developer could build moderate-income housing in the inner city for a profit. His company was familiar with the Near South Side because it had dealt with industrial property there and had done extensive land assembly for the expansion of the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology. The land chosen for the Carver project was occupied by marginal residential buildings, which were purchased and cleared. The instructions to the architects, Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, were to build solid but not fancy houses. Each of the fifty-four houses has two bedrooms and a full basement. The cost of the project was about $290,000, with the original rents set at $56 per month and the sales price at $6,250 per unit.1 As time went on, more and more residents asked to purchase their homes, and eventually all were sold at a profit. The other project, called Drexel Gardens, is located at 48th Street and Drexel Boulevard. It was built in 1954 by Jack Witkowski, a real estate appraiser, and architect Bertrand Goldberg. Their hope was that racially integrated housing could be privately developed without subsidy , at a cost equal to or less than that being spent for public housing. Early in the development, Arthur Rubloff and Company was brought into the endeavor, and two of their officials, Stanley Goodfriend and 121 Community Renewal and Kate Maremont Foundations Built in 1944, the George Washington Carver Garden Homes project was designed as an experiment to see if a private developer could build moderate-income housing in the inner city for a profit. The units were planned on a part-rental and part-sale basis, with initial rents set at $56 a month and sale prices at $6,250 per unit. Eventually, all were sold at a profit. Photograph by Mildred Mead (negative no. ICHi-00785), courtesy of Chicago History Museum Abel Berland, became co-developers. Each of the men put up about $5,000 equity money, with Goldberg in charge of design and construction and Witkowski taking care of the financial and technical real estate matters. The fifty-two units, each of which has three bedrooms, are grouped in seven rows of houses. They sold for $13,950, with a $2,500 down payment . It turned out that the hoped-for integration did not materialize, since none of the units were purchased by white families. The savings and loan association that provided the mortgages did not encourage purchases by whites, because it felt that white families who would purchase housing in an integrated development would be so “radical” as to not be good mortgage risks. The market for the houses turned out to be not as strong as expected, and not all of them were sold. Some were rented by Rubloff and later sold off in a package. Although all of the contractors were paid in full, the four investors lost about half of 122 Community Renewal and Kate Maremont Foundations the equity money.2 Goldberg won an award in 1959 from the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects and one from Progressive Architecture magazine for the project. Both Drexel Gardens and the Carver Homes originally had extensively landscaped courtyards for their houses. Carver is constructed of red brick, Drexel Gardens of concrete block painted pastel colors. Both groups of houses have a large expanse of glass in the front and rear walls. Both are well designed and...