Chicago’s Public Housing Disaster | The Robert Taylor Homes
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- Опубликовано: 15 май 2024
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In this video, we take a deep dive into the history and legacy of the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago, one of the largest public housing projects in the United States. Starting with an introduction to the topic, we explore what the Robert Taylor Homes were and why they were built in the first place. We then look at the man behind the project, Robert Taylor, and his transformative vision for the South Side of Chicago.
From there, we examine the construction of the Robert Taylor Homes and take a tour of the interiors to see what life was like for the residents. We also explore the many challenges faced by the residents and why the project ultimately failed. We cover the downfall of the Robert Taylor Homes and what led to their eventual demolition in the late 90s.
Throughout the video, we highlight the different decades in which the Robert Taylor Homes existed, with a focus on the 1980s and 1990s. We also touch on the celebrities who grew up in the project and went on to achieve great success.
By the end of the video, viewers will have a comprehensive understanding of the Robert Taylor Homes, their history, and their legacy. They will gain insights into the social, economic, and political factors that shaped public housing in Chicago and the United States as a whole.
Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction: The History of The Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago
00:32 - What were the Robert Taylor Homes? A Look at Chicago's Public Housing
00:41 - The Uninhabitable "Black Belt" of Chicago: Why Robert Taylor Homes Were Built
01:26 - Robert Taylor's Transformative Vision for Chicago's South Side
04:50 - Building the Robert Taylor Homes: A Monumental Public Housing Project
05:53 - Inside the Robert Taylor Homes: A Tour of the Interiors
06:31 - The Robert Taylor Homes Disaster: Why They Failed
09:30 - The Downfall of the Robert Taylor Homes: The End of an Era
11:51 - The Robert Taylor Homes in the 1980s: A Troubled Past
13:36 - The Robert Taylor Homes in the 1990s: An Uncertain Future
13:50 - Demolishing the Robert Taylor Homes: A Controversial Decision
14:59 - The Legacy of the Robert Taylor Homes: Lessons Learned
15:51 - Celebrities from the Robert Taylor Homes: Inspiring Success Stories
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Anyway, that term paper wound up on many desks in Chicago government!
Do a Episode on New Juneteenth Liberation Day Holiday.
All this mumbo jumbo I thought immigrants stayed in these buildings before colored folks so why now start off with the real history
Please be advised their was a police station at 48th and Wabash Ave.
It is a lot that you are missing. I worked for Cha security and police depth, CHAPD.
Ironically, when they tore down all of the projects, crime skyrocketed. It took the crime being located in areas like cabrini and taylor homes and spread them out throughout the city. Almost like dismantling organized crime
Not true crime was always around can't blame project people what you think about us ain't even true fr
@@isaachoward89 He not saying crime was not around, he just said it sky rocked.
Much was written about this topic in the newspapers (in 2017) when all that shooting & killing took place in South Shore around Nadia's Fish & Chicken restaurant.
@isaachoward89 It's the truth believe it or not.
@R S no it ain't the truth. I have been born and raised in the projects live there I even got baptized in the project church not true
I grew up on those. And I hated every single day of it. The only good thing I can remember about living there is that I had my own room. Living there was like a living nightmare. The school that I had to attend was a joke. My family had to go out of our way to go grocery shopping about 5 to 6 miles, to be exact. And at some point and time of you actually living there, you will have to fight. They would knock out the lights in the stairs. And jam the elevator so that when you tried to use the stairs, you would get robed. And if you called the cops they might show up. I could go on. But I'll just end this up by saying they never should have built those things. Those projects destroyed a lot of families.
People did what they thought was right. The other option was to just have a bunch of homelessness.
It wasn't the projects, but some of the people mindset in the projects.
"Those projects destroyed a lot of families" Yes that was and is the Democrat Plan all along
Don't forget when certain individuals weren't allowed to enter the building. I experienced this often when I worked for a service provider.
MY FAMILY GREW UP THERE " THE HOLE" IS WHAT THEY CALLED IT.
I went to the Robert Taylor Project, once in my life. The purpose was to help, my cousin, his then girlfriend move in to one of the apartment; the description you gave was fairly accurate, except for one thing.
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five recorded a song, The Message. Broken glass everywhere people pissing on the stair they just don't care...
I never understood this lyric; after Robert Taylor. I understood all to well. Literally there was broken glass everywhere, when I write everywhere, juxtapose grass with broken glass that how much broken glass laid on the concrete.
Like a jungle sometimes; it makes me wonder how I keep from going under. The moment I stepped into the building; then the elevator. I had to assume a false bravado that is not my nature.
I can only imagine the mental illness.
Ironically: It wasn't till this day, I knew the man behind the eponymous project.
Even more grateful to my father and mother having the determination to escape the ghetto.👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿
I dated a few chick's in there. The long elevator wait was true. I'm talking 15 to 20 min. And he left out CHA police. They would stand and watch as a 15yr old banger would pat you down. But, I never had any issues
Funny how New York still has their projects; can't be no better.
chicago still has most of theirs too, despite green, ickes, taylor no longer existing. plus, there are lots of other high-rise older brick apartment buildings throughout urban cities that have always been privately owned, yet their exterior architecture is identical to public housing.
@jakespizza-tj2of The exterior was not the problem. From a distance, it looked like your standard apartment building. It was the self-contained concrete jungle.
i''m from manhattan, and most of n.y.c. (except for staten island) is one giant concrete jungle, but could you elaborate on
what you mean by self-contained, and that you know the man behind the eoonymous project?
I was one of the babies that fell out of the windows at The Robert Taylor Homes. I did not live there but was simply being babysat by my mother's friends. Her sons were swinging me around in a room, and somehow, I went flying out of the 12th floor window. This happened 33 years ago, and although I don't remember the incident, I've had long-lasting mental and physical health issues.
Damn
Oh wow!!!
So sad
Thank God for your survival
I don’t believe u
I was born in the Robert Taylor Homes in the late 80s and we lived there for 10 years. I feel I had an okay childhood but that was an awful place to grow up in. In addition to the crime, it was a food and health desert. I have many fond memories of our apartment but I was also elated when I saw them come down.
I witnessed one of the buildings be imploded. The staging area along the Lakefront was too close. When the cloud of dust reached us we were covered in dust. It had a smell of urine and pine cleaner. The Rev. Jessie Jackson fled to his chauffeur driven car as he was allowed to park on Lakeshore Drive that had been blocked from traffic.
What was he rev.of?
You’re absolutely right those buildings in particular were called Lake Michigan Homes and they closed in 1985 and sat there vacant for almost 20 years until they were employed. And the smell was all the years of mopping with up Pee throughout the 4 buildings at that site with dirty Pine-Sol water💯💯💯
Every time I'd drive into Chicago I'd always look at those buildings ...burned out windows. Busted windows. Curtains flapping out ...sad.
We used to COUNT them, when we were leaving Chicago on the expressway. "Well, they're all still standing." (I miss seeing them now.)
@@bramlintrent1145 Dearborn medium sized buildings still up on state st
@@jaythomas3224 I've seen those 6/7 story ones on State between 26th St & 31st St.
12:21 Jussie Smollett? Is that you? Hardly recognized you without the noose and Subway sandwiches
I stayed in the Robert Taylors for about 2 months in 2000, what a shit hole. The stairways had what looked like raw egg whites on the ground, it was so nasty. They had the cages up by then and the incinerator never worked so garbage just piled up. They used to throw broken refrigerators and tires etc over the balcony killing people below which is why they has to cage it up. On a few occasions someone would be running from the cops and everyone would start shouting to close your doors because they would often run into any open apartment bringing the cops with them. I also lived in the Harold Ickie Homes on 23rd and State, first floor too, apt 101 so the gunshots would cause everyone to lay down so avoid getting shot. I'm also white, my grandma is Dakota Sioux but I'm generally thought of as white so it was rough! I lived with a family that cared for me as if I was one of their own so that helped, 10 kids in that family so I didn't get messed with because most knew I was with them but the ones that didn't, they would try to assault me. I had to get into a few fist fights just because, no real reason, once because some girl that lived in the building was jealous of my long hair and wanted to rip it out, she didn't succeed. I grew up in juvy and group homes, I knew how to defend myself. Even though its been 23 years since I lived there I will never forget it,....like the girl sitting in the Robert Taylors holding what I thought was a barbie but turned out to be an actual infant, this girl was maybe 11 years old too, sad as hell.
The problem isn’t the projects. It’s the people there. I had friends that grew up in the projects back in the day but there wasn’t as much crime and many more community gatherings. Nowadays, it’s crime ridden, and the community isn’t cohesive! It’s a prey on each other culture.
But how did the ppl get that way how come projects were built in the first place and why?
@Mr. MXB you must be yte?
@@firstladychosen186 We don't have to be white to disagree with you. We have life experience. I saw plenty with that "slum mentality" in the military. I wonder where they are now?
My father worked for the company that install the heating systems in these buildings. They weren't given a choice. If they wanted to do business in Chicago then they had do this kind of work at cost.
I had a copy of the blueprints to these buildings when I was a kid.
Very interesting!
Yeah, that's called socialism.
@@onieyoh9478 Congrats on demonstrating you don't know what Socialism is.
Cool! I would love to get blueprints and floorplans of these (and other) projects, but they're so hard to obtain.
Socialism and fascism are exactly the same thing. Pyramid scheme, ponzi scheme, different terms, same thing.
And at 8:55, I see my grade school, Beasley Academic Center... Believe it or not It was a top school, you had to qualify with good grades to go there...The building had not a single window facing the projects, the windows were all in the back.. The Robert Taylor Homes were 20 blocks of desolate, menacing buildings, it was crazy
I remember as a kid in grade school in the 80s, a few of the kids in my school were recommended to go there some did and some stayed.
Beasley was a great school!! Now Beethoven and Colman were a different story.
Tower blocks just don't work, the UK also tried them and got the same result. People need good jobs. When people work for their money, they have more self-worth and stronger families. Housing has to be clean, safe and family friendly. It was good jobs that built the middle class. Maybe quit sending so many jobs overseas and keep them here.
You want good jobs for them, but they don't want to put in the work / education to get the good job
@@drwalka10 Take away the "taxpayer funded" free stuff and people will start to work again. In san frincisco the homeless get paid to be homeless.
You mean they don't work in the US and the UK. If you take a look at continental Europe, they work rather well. It's a very common type of housing in Eastern and Central Europe.
@@drwalka10 The attitudes that are ingrained now, were developed when the work ethic was there. Not a lot of the kids have good examples. In every aspect of life, destruction is easier than building. You can start a fire with a match, but you can't put it out with something so cheap and easy.
Access to jobs should been the aim from the start instead of direct assistance because a lot of government assistance is set up in a way that if you get a job, the assistance goes away before you get enough incoming to sustain without it, so you're almost punished for working too much.
You see the same thing with unemployment in the middle class. There could be plenty of jobs available but middle-class people will stay on unemployment until they can get a job comparable to what they had because if the engineer gets a job stocking at the grocery store to cover the gap, he's going to lose money.
@@Gunshinzero Thank you.
Robert Taylor, Cabrini-Green, Pruitt-Igoe, the pattern is clear. They were quick fix solutions that opted to group lower income families together hoping the problems with those troubled areas would resolve themselves with these supposedly attractive apartment offers, and instead they just exacerbated such problems in the cities by providing no real opportunities for anyone in these projects to really find a better way of living.
Public housing country wide has always interested me. Whether it's NY, Chicago, St Louis...I find it all very interesting. Chicago was the poster child for failed public housing. The episode is pretty good.
Smaller NY cities have the best. But they are still a nightmare.
in the late 90s I had a heroin habit and as a 17 yr old white boy from the suburbs i drove out south a few times to cop dope. I found it extraordinary how the drug dealing system was set up. you would walk up to one of the units and be directed down different gangways depending on what drug you wanted to buy and then even further on how much $you wanted to spend 5, 10, 20 etc
I bought weed there a few times. worked with a guy who lived there and he was my escort. when they fou8nd out I had family that cooked shine back in north Wilkesboro they got real friendly :) ( thank goodness for the statute of limitations)
Me too. I went there sometimes, but as I lived in Humbolt Park at the time, I ended up going to the area(s) around Chicago and Trumbull. Easy bike ride. First time in, I got stopped and frisked by some dude. After that, I was 'known'. The operation in both locations was run better than most large corporations. Thankfully, I've been clean since '02. Ironically, I do miss riding over there at night and BSing with the guys even tho I stuck out like a big pink toe. There were no working street lights, but I could tell there were a lot of people on porches and front steps. I never worried about getting assaulted/robbed as they kept things quiet and controlled. As I was on bike, I didn't worry too much about cops - as opposed to being in a car.
I live on the far south--side now and for about 10yrs was the only white on the block. My neighbors are great and we all keep an eye on the street and have each others ph. nos. if/when we see any unknown cars parked up, we'll text and either call the 5-0 or go outside and confront them.
@@stringlarson1247 oh man me and my friends hanging out at his place or him eating dinner at our place. good memories. Of course, this was years ago, and we were mostly young and stupid, trying to find something to do tht wouldn't get us killed or locked up.
His mom was the best. and a lot of the folks were good folks. Ya just had to know who was and who wasn't a problem.
So you guys were a big part of the problems then? Yes you were.
@@RageBaby587 it's been quite a while since I was in Chicago. probably longer than some of you have been alive. some of us were idiots when younger. do I miss hanging out with friends and having dinner with my buddy's family yes...do I miss the other stupidity not one bit. would I do it differently if I had a chance..oh hell yeah.
I grew up in Chicago, and it was just known that there were certain places that you simply didn't go to. Robert Taylor was one of them. Cabrini Green was another. I was a teenager in the 80s and Chicago was essentially my playground, but I don't think I ever came within six blocks of either of them.
You just didn't go the Southside in general if you were smart.
@@johniii8147That's an ignorant statement considering most of Chicago is the Southside.
Can't say I blame you, I use to work up there and it's hard to scare me as I served twenty two and a half years in the military but up there I was always watching my back.
@@johniii8147 What's funny about your statement is that the Southside people said that about the Westside people. "Don't go to the Westside -- they're crazy over there. You'll get killed." I grew up in Robert Taylor -- 44 & State. Funny though, when I was 10 we moved to K-town on the west side.
@@thpyeman That's rooted in the segregation of the city. Lot of different communities have had their hood and traveling outside of them isn't welcomed. Also rooted in a lot of historic rasim.
My aunt and her children used to live in a Robert Taylor Homes! Fortunately, they moved out of Robert Taylor Homes! Blessings and Hugs 👑💜
Hey Ryan excellent episode!
I have always been fascinated by the Chicago high-rise projects, I think because of the promise of what it could have been versus the reality of what it became.
Every level of government played a role in the failure of these buildings. Also some, but not all, of the residents played a role as well.
The buildings should never have been built as tall as they were. They should have been half of the height.
They should not have been built to any less of a standard than any other high-rise apartment buildings. The elevators should’ve been better, the apartment sizes should have been designed much more efficiently and on site resident managers and maintenance people and security guards should’ve been installed from the get-go.
There should have been a police substation and medical services building as well.
These buildings were basically built as cheap as possible to house as many people as possible in order to warehouse the poorest of the poor into a particular area and to keep them there.
Unfortunately for all of the law abiding good people that lived there the place turned into an absolute nightmare.
There’s an excellent book entitled “American Project” which I encourage everyone to read, excellent excellent book on the history of the Chicago high-rises.
What about Mayor Ricard J.Daley using federal funds to build an express way to segregate the residents from the rest of the city?
@@troypaul2379 Every city in the country did this in the 1960s. You can look at most cities and see their redlines followed the freeways with the poorer side getting removed. There is now a reason things like this are in the NEPA process for approving any highway project.
@@sstrange1973 YES, I'm aware of this , there is documentary about this very issue.
They were built to keep a voting bloc together. Democrat idea.
@@sstrange1973 That kinda shit has been going on for DECADES. Ever hear the term 'other side of the tracks'? 8 lanes of expressway? Way better than 1or 2 sets of tracks...
I saw in another documentary that the first residents of Robert Taylor Homes were working two parent families that were vetted before they moved in. They stayed around 5 years or so until they could buy their own homes. The single mothers moved in after that.
it's still that now low income housing still won't let the dads be with their family. the mom will lose her benefits. in their eyes the dad makes to much money. if the mom makes to much money then her rent will go up.
Where ever single mothers go, crime and destruction follows.
I had friends as a child who lived in the projects of Tampa, FL. They were much smaller than Chicago's but still horrible places to live. ( roach and rodent infestations, broken windows, crime, leaking roofs, you name it!) The federal government built these warehouses for poor people with good intentions, but did little or nothing to maintain them, no encouragement to promote community pride, education, or strong families. They should have been used as a temporary place of living until possibly job skills were learned or better education acquired to move up the economic ladder. Some of the people I knew did move out, but many remained stuck in this lifestyle.
And I live about 20 miles outside Chicago and have my whole life. I seen it all.
"They should have been used as a temporary place of living until possibly job skills were learned or better education acquired to move up the economic ladder"
Why didnt they do so ? So many got complacent ... you know it I know it
The government never had good intentions. If they had, they would've taken care of these places. All they wanted was, like you said, to shove poor people into "warehouses", to gather them all together in one place, so the rest of the city doesn't have to see or think about them. They do not care about poor people. They only care about looking good in the eyes of the rich people and corporations who finance their campaigns and vote them into office.
A good book to read is There Are No Children Here, which follows a family living in RTH. Very eye opening story
is that the Book that Oprah produced the TV movie about?
@@BadTV1993 yes I believe so. I've never seen the movie but the book is very interesting
That book was on the Henry Horner projects but still an excellent read.
Good Times tv show was supposedly based on Cabrini-Green projects.
Dynomite
True.
It was.
I never lived there, but I have been working on a project to redevelop the area that seems to have hit a stand still in the recent years. I didn't realize that it was right on top of these buildings until this video.
I went to high school just walking distance from the Robert Taylor Homes. Majority of my high school friends lived there & i spent most of my youth in that area. I lived in a great home far away from the projects & was in private school since Pre-K, so it was a whole new world for me, but I wanted to be in high school with my favorite cousin so I switched to public high school in Chicago. There were ALWAYS fights,lots of drug dealing, no grocery stores, & the elevators barely worked. I'd always be at building 4947 or 5135. Crazy part is, those were some of my best childhood memories. Sad part is, 90% of the guys I knew from there are either dead or in jail, & the girls were on their 2nd or 3rd kid by the age of 18.
The first public housing project of this type was Regent Park in Toronto. Built in 1948 it cleared 40 blocks of slum in eastern Toronto. It sadly became a model for other projects, such as Robert Taylor Homes. High density, apartment style buildings. It too became a focus for crime etc. It too was replaced in the early 2000's with mixed use and condos. Interestingly enough when the tenants were relocated, they were moved to an apartment complex in Whitby and for the three years they resided there, crime exploded including two murders and several fires. There hasn't been a high density project like Regent Park since the early 70's.
Techwood in ATL - 1930s...built for all white families who were under the poverty levels.. & on the land that 100s of Blacks had been evicted from
I would love if you did a video about "The Lost Railyards of Chicago's South Loop" in the area that became Dearborn Parks 1 & 2, The 78, and Ping Tom Park. Lots of interesting material to cover there including civil engineering to straighten the river, the originally end-to-end double bridge that was moved to be side-by-side, the railyards demolishment instead of being built-over like other downtown railyards, the long viaducts, gentrification, hobos, homeless, Rezkoville, the Chicago Tunnel Company runs under it, the Wells-Wentworth Connector and why does The 78 remain undeveloped...
I remember reading that while they were building the new White Sox park, they had found bullet holes in some of the upper deck seating along the first base line that faced the projects. Hence another good reason why they are gone.
I can believe that
I've moved to another state but I grew up in Illinois. I remember being at a White Sox game and hearing gunshots from the projects. Imagine a gunfight from a few hundred feet away that's so intense that you can hear it over a baseball game.
@supertuber120
My cousin lived in Stateway Gardens RIGHT by the stadium. We would go up to the top floors and watch games off the porch.
Yeah I remember hearing about that too. Maybe once year we’d go to a game at Comiskey and I’d always look at those enormous buildings across the street
I would like to see an urbanist perspective on why these and other projects failed. I think one of the biggest issues was that it concentrated poverty as if it was some sort of containable disease. I also notice the general lack of mixed development. Where were the local shops, groceries, and other businesses where the residents could find employment? And what was the connectivity to Chicago's transit system like?
Hard to have business when there is high crime. The cost to maintain your shop, increased cost for deliveries, insurance, etc. Not to mention being robbed, or the customers under threat of assault at any time. The lack of policing is also a factor, and broken window policing was not pushed hard enough so crime skyrocketed. Crime causes poverty more than poverty causes crime, but the main driving factor is wealth disparity in a small area. That's the factor that needs to be looked at mostly.
"Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing" by D. Bradford Hunt. Urbanist Perspective, I HIGHLY recommend it if the subject interests you.
You made a comment saying how the housing project buildings were featureless and resembled similar structures in the USSR. The design was very similar to the Pruitt Igoe Projects in St. Louis, with an infamous history of all its own that deserves its own episode. The US military and CIA used Pruitt Igoe to simulate radiation attacks on the Soviet Union by dumping radioactive cadmium sulfide powder in the hvac systems on the roofs of the buildings. A lot of the people who lived there developed serious illnesses including cancer in the years following its closure as well.
Damn that’s crazy😮
I'm glad you posted this, I learned about this from a documentary on the Pruitt-Igoe homes!
Wow!
The design of those towers was copied after dorms at Stanford Univ., with apartment doors opening onto an exterior gangway, rather than an interior hall. Works great in sunny Palo Alto, not so much in a Chicago winter.
THIS WAS MY FIRST HOME ! It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t the best but man the memories are unmatched 💯
I used to live in the ones on 35th and state in the late 90s… it was a terrible place to live… it’s also why I’m so against any type of government housing
Man we use to be all up and through there
I currently reside in public housing in the southern United States, and I assure you that these down here are much nicer and well maintained. The problem isn't government housing. the problem is the cultural. People in certain demographics, who are predisposed to certain elements, are just not going to care about their environment because they live in an environment that doesn't care about them, which is why you have places like Cabrini Green and Robert Taylor homes. Down here in the housing I live, the apartment managers maintain them well. I just received a brand new refridgerator and they received a grant to remodel, they added central heating/ air conditioning, brand new windows and interior and exterior doors, to name a few. We have a very low crime rate and you feel safe. So the issue is not government housing, it is the culture of those living in them.
@@patriciarobinson2102 Facts 💯 I was born in the 70's in the Robert Taylor Homes and I live in Mississippi and you are right about the housing projects, down south which I call them apartments 😂 I live in Laurel and there nice
It doesn't surprise me that there would be resistance to the plan of kicking people out if their kids didn't go to school. Parents probably knew that they either couldn't control their kids, or didn't care. Of all the people I have worked with, that was the prevailing attitude.
And.... if their kids were bringing home "good money" from drug trafficking, mama didn't bother to send kids to school.
Or.... the schools were absolute garbage and the kids benefited 0 for going.
People shouldn't have too many kids . I grew up with my mother and stepfather . They could barely control the 7 of us. my older brothers moved out when they were 15 and 16 . I knew I would never have kids .
All these comments are true and there was no one reason.
The city didn't care about the residents or the neighborhood, either. Robert Taylor himself knew what was going to happen and he so desperately tried to avoid it, to no avail.
@@debrh.b agree. Kids will keep you in poverty
I live in Baltimore. When they tore down most of the projects throughout the 90's, they moved those people into different areas of the suburbs. Those people didn't change the way they behaved. They took their crime and lack of moral compass with them and ruined the next bunch of free neighborhoods that were built for them. Somehow the local government is still trying to social engineer other parts of the metro area. Point blank, it's not working.
Us truckers on 94 called it the Robert Taylor Homes Gun & Knife Club. Late at night on 94 we'd blast by at 70-80 mph onto the Northside.
Emergency button not working 😂😂😂actually not funny born and raised in NYC public housing (Drew Hamilton projects) so I’m very familiar with that. Anyone from NYC projects would be. What you described is the same as NYC, not sure of any other places in the US that have large complexes. As a child had the most fun and ignorantly in dangerous situations but as a grown man far replaced from NY and that condition, it’s sad how many people are financially stuck in this environment their whole life. We need to take advantage of educational services offered that many don’t. Had many opportunities in public school. I was able to go to Cornell U for two HS summers. I don’t even think I was a top notch student because I was kicked out of school in 9th but I got my act together very quickly. I think it truly is a lack of education. That will change a child’s way of thinking. I just so happen to be an engineer now…edit: I actually was giving my opinion before you asked for it at the end lol.
Chicago was worse though.
@@ksavage681It's not a contest.
Yeah, no where in America has/had big housing project buildings like Chicago or NYC, Also the only 2 American cities with an awesome skyline.
well said, while in third place is killadelphia, and fourth? newark, new jersey
I find it interesting how it’s everyone’s fault BUT the people who lived there? You are responsible for your neighborhood. Clean up, take care of things!
Great video. The PJs were their own biome. Original food deserts. Schools, bogedas, restaurants, and, "amusements." Your stock photos of kids playing double-dutch brought me back. Can't say I was sad to see them come down, I just wish the plan was better for the residents.
Yea, definitely we’re still good people in the jets throughout the things that was going on around them.
The trouble with central planning is that the planners can never attain all the enormous knowledge they would need to avoid spanners getting into their ingenious works. That is why I abhor progressives, because they keep arrogantly assuming that their plan will work when the exact same plan failed repeatedly for others prior.
@@ladymacbethofmtensk896 Absolutely! The Arrogance!
@@ladymacbethofmtensk896 what's a spanner
@@nikicarrie4071A wrench
I always think of the TV show Good Times when I see or hear stories of the Chicago Projects. Also the 80’s film Wildcats too. Seems these should have included in it’s original concept Police Fire and Hospital/ Public Health Departments within these buildings. Also an incorporation of private markets restaurants and retail that accepted food vouchers and other assistance programs. Kids would have had access to start up jobs and better education. Plus a safer environment to live and learn. BUT I’m sure this would have been met with prejudices from all sides and seen as a glimpse into socialism.
Good Times was set in Cabrini Green.
Hard Ball with Keaunu Reeves
I heard that old man Daley planned the route of the Dan Ryan expressway so that it would act like a wall between Bridgeport and the projects. I wonder if there is truth to this.
There is a lot of truth to that. Believe me. Old school folks know.
Anyone who knows Chicago politics knows there's no way that was a coincidence
This was 100% done on purpose. His home was located on the 3500 block of South Lowe Avenue, just a block and a half east of Halsted Street, the main road bordering the 1.5 mile northern strip of the Dan Ryan. During construction, he suggested the eway constructed to make an S turn, essentially swerving the direction of the interstate 90/94 around his home and neighborhood towards the area of the original Robert Taylor Homes, rather than it going straight down through to connect to interstate 57
@@quamoo I remember a lot of folks from that day saying something similar. Also, racially, that was the dividing line.
Only because he 'wanted to preserve disorder', lol
these are so great thank you so much. we can't wait for the next video
I grew up in the 4120 S, Prairie building, and attended Herman Felsenthal elementary for a half of a year before my moms got us out that hell hole project.
i worked i the Robert Taylor homes in 1980 as a supervisor of the Census takers..it was risky as they thought I was a policeman; I worked in Cabrini Greene in 1993 as an extern for the US public service doing well baby checks. I am from NYC (Harlem) but did not grow up in the projects. The main difference in the two cities is that in the New York projects people worked, went to the University; some moved on and some are still there 70 years later! The communities were stable with stable institutions. The NYC projects were built in the 1940's as a temporary solution the allow newly landed immigrants from the South.
1980s, can you tell me about the GDs? I wanna know the name of the main guy there who collected taxes in return for protection? And had his people in stairs so that you don't get mugged. Maybe you'd know because you were there
@@mi-y no,I never got to meet the bosses
@@bookerevans8316 I'm not gonna meet them, I just want to know about them since I read a book on those people
the elevator shafts were used as garbage bins. When these projects were torn down the residence spread throughout the city and now there's turf wars. It's unfortunate the perpetual crap generation after generation has to go through. I wish I knew the answer.
I know the answer but it will be a bitter pill to swallow and until brutal truths are faced nothing will be corrected.
Personal accountability!!
Stay in school. Don't have kids out of wedlock. Don't quit a job until you have another one lined up. Don't do drugs.
@@dudehere340 And acquire skills that the rest of society values.
Money is the answer, Stop giving it to growing billionaires and Make them pay their fair share, if we made all the shit that we bought there would be plenty for all. Stop spending it all on War and global expansion, Start farming in a sustainable fashion. It started with a racial divide which hasn't stopped but now is a smoke screen for the terrible economic disparity. Just sayin.....
Seeing them as a kid going to Comiskey to watch the Sox play and seeing the buildings with burn marks on them. I will never forget that image and I think it is the ones in your video. I always wondered how hard life was in there and it was good to see them gone.
Man, walking through there felt like you were in another world once your there you better know no officer can save you, you just mind your business do what you came to do and keep it moving, especially if you don’t live there. I never lived there but been in and out plenty of times, I smoke weed and they had the best, I preferred to buy out the projects then any where else in the city.
I remember walking from 35th after school always seeing the Robert Taylor homes slowly but surely come down one by one.
I was 15 years old when the last high rise came down. I remember when I was little they lined the Dan Ryan expressway and got demolished one by one..
Most excellent video, as one has come to expect from It's History!
I'd love to see videos on the history of Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and other places....
Keep up the outstanding work! 👍🏻👌🏻👏🏻
Thomas Sowell would likely blame government management, because whenever government tries to do something good, the result is epic failure. I imagine that Robert Taylor wished at the end that he could have had this revelation much sooner. Fortunately for us, Sowell did and wrote extensively as a result.
I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.
you can joke all you wanna about that phrase, but a country has to have some type of structure/government/leadership, etcetera... for its citizens and society to function. as for reagan, his over the top deregulation allowing japan to flood the usa with electronics without high tariffs left many americans standing in the unemployment line
a friend of mine was a tactical officer that spent years working them
@9:41 I definitely experienced this as I had to be freed from those elevators of 4022 S State St on my bday by firemen in the early 90s 😭
Lol
🤣🤣
Great accounting of what happened.
This "poor planning" & "unexpected displacement" of many more people than intended, or more than the "project" can serve is the most succinct explanation of what the American Colonies project spiraled into over the course of the centuries of it's many changes.
A great book about Robert Taylor is called "Gang Leader For A Day". An Indian sociologist went there and chronicled life there, experiencing the same conditions as the residents. They majority of the residents there, despite the drugs and gangs, took care of their own the best they could considering the city basically left them to their own devices.
I believe that he has been discussed multiple times in the Freakonomics books.
Perhaps I missed the context, but the buildings of Prairie Shores and Lake Meadows were shown. These communities were EXTREMELY exclusive when built and are somewhat still today. They were NOT public housing, and were built to accommodate the doctors, nurses and staff of the now demolished Michael Reese Hospital complex/campus. You had to have excellent credentials and be in high financial standing to even put in an application, and still be placed on a waiting list. I lived in 3 of the 5 Prairie Shores buildings in my lifetime, and it was pleasantly enjoyable experience.
It would be great if you could do something on the the Michael Reese Hospital history and demise. Many historical medical breakthroughs and other things happened there. The first game of Softball was played on the grounds. The architecture of the 28 buildings that made up the campus were extraordinary. Most were built by the great Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus School .
yes but the exterior architecture of both lake meadows and prairie shores looks like pubic housing, and their located on the south side in a dangerous high crime area at night
Driving south State street into the city in the 90s as a white teen, I was amazed. I've lived in L.A. for 23 years now, been to south central regularly, compton, East LA, Pacoima, Nickerson Gardens, Imperial Courts, etc. I've seen NOTHING that even compares to south Chicago. It's Disneyland out here. On south state, I'm talking thousands of people just in the street, literally, from IDK 79th up.
Los Angeles and San Francisco are no walk through the park either. Drug addicts and the homeless in tents. Democratic ran cities.
Yep. Nothing like it. Fascinating.
When I was younger I remember driving through the State Street corridor that included Robert Taylor Homes and a few other high-rise housing projects with my dad once.
Even as a kid I remember grim vibes coming from them.
Been there. Every stairwell stunk like piss
Because they pissed in the stairwells.
Why did they do that? I think because not enough people care.
It wasn't like that in the 60s 70s
It was the mid 80s on when they brought the crack rock drugs in
Good insight/reporting :)
Sadly, the current generation of kids on the So. side and W. Side. don't have job opportunities and the previous gang structure has morphed from a tightly run hierarchy into a 'block-by-block' amorphous situation where guns are everywhere and shootings are common.
Over the past decade, organizations such as Growing Powers, et. al. have been converting more and more vacant land into small scale
farms. This has started to help these areas/food deserts in a big way. There's a long way to go, but things are getting better. If you live in Chicago, please take the time to find these local producers and support local farmers markets.
I don't remember hearing as to what features were not built strong. Why did it wear out so fast? What broke?
Or did they tear it up themselves?
They tore it up and refused to fix their own living space. Only tearing it down pissing everywhere and breaking everything, selling drugs. Somewhere that was supposed to be for kids. Leeches came and literally ruined it
I've been living in Panama City FL 50 year old hud projects since 2005, substance disorder is rampant among tenants, management doesn't care about tenants who are violent and children are recruited for gangs, the rent is income based so I pay very low monthly rent, I just armed myself due to violent, threatening neighbors, these projects are the last of huds creations as new projects are contracted to wealthy corporations
There was a Fire House in the parking lot of the Taylor Homes that housed an engine and ambulance,E16 A35. Ambulance 35 at one time was the busiest in the city. I know this for a fact because I worked at that fire house. The Fireman and Paramedics would get their cars broken into and vandalized on a regular basis.The gang members would drag their wounded to the front door of the firehouse and leave them there.The residents would shut off the elevators whenever the ambulance arrived so the medics would have to use the stairs.
this vid tries to blame the project on the city planners when in fact the PEOPLE that lived there were the problem So sick of this bias when its blatantly obvious what happened
Ok, so this is the firehouse I was was referring too near the building I use to go buy weed from, then you had the BP gas station on 43rd and state. You just brought back memories.
@@MsSaudm almost like the Irish huh?
I had the "pleasure" of working that station as well and remember all the windows on the south side of the station were taken out and replaced with steel plate. The Bud Billiken parade day was something else there too.........
Currently right now, new apartment buildings now stand where these were. My college was about 15-20 minutes from the sight and my Metra train ran right next door to the empty plot of land that now houses new and currently continuing to be built new apartments. Which look very nice and is right next door to IIT.
Love this channel.
Thank you. I appreciate this. I grew up in 4101 S. Federal, went to Hartigan had family in building 3919. 4022, 4037, and 4444. When I was younger in the 80s, as a young child I looked at my surroundings and saw how close it was to downtown and other affluent areas and how from the Ickies to Stateway and Robert Taylors how it was restricted. The closest grocery store was One Stop or going on 47th. I honestly believe that they were built as a setup just like all of the housing projects that have come down because it is close to prime real estate. CHA claimed that they were going to rebuild the community into a mixed-income area, but due to gentrification that did not occur. For crying out loud there is a Starbucks where the "Treball" sat.
We lived in 4022 in the late 60s to mid-70s. Robert Taylor declined due to mismanagement and the Crack epidemic of the 80s.
Same problems we face in Nigeria today. We do not fix the PEOPLE and then build COMMUNITIES and get shocked at the HORRIBLE results.
Yes I remember Robert Taylor apartments I remember all of those apartments on State Street I used to pass by there on the bus on my way to work I worked at Conrad Hilton hotel in those days I was in my twenties I used to go to church right across from Robert Taylor Reverend Blair was the pastor at that time who is deceased this brings back a lot of memories that I have about Robert Taylor homes and stateway
I like your videos. I learn a lot in them. I have a problem though trying to pay attention to the narrative when the background music has whispering lyrics in it. Otherwise, I enjoy your content.
They asked JJ Walker how he thought they should demolish the projects. He said “Dyn-O-Mite!”.
U A 🌽🏀
@@donruga627 🙏 🙏 🙏
this is so typical , blame everyone except yourself -CHA didn't go pee in the elevators , put trash in the hallways , prevent kids from going to schools , nor did they have 8 kids on welfare - the residents failed not the system, but the system to this day still prolongs it
Tell me you come from silver spoon without telling me
@@JOHNDOE-vg9ge so being poor means you cant have pride in where you live? he's right..typical..
The problem is mixing people who just want to live their lives and raise their kids with people who have criminal intent. You had no choice; that is where the subsidized housing was, not near food stores, not near medical offices, and with gangs mixed in so your kids and you weren't safe. You'd love to move out but to where? You couldn't afford anything else and this is what there was. By age 11, some of your kids, possibly not well attended because you had to work, are in with gangs and uncontrollable by you. The fault was in not removing the criminal element strenuously until it developed into a cesspool. The very design of these buildings led to crime: The notorious Pruitt-Igoe projects in St. Louis had breezeways "so the housewifes could meet and congregate" but of course what really happened was they became bottlenecks of criminals selling drugs and impossible to pass through because they were dangerous. The entire set of units were demolished. Some people say they were designed like Stanford Univ dorms but I think they were copied from Soviet "Krushchev Apartment Blocks" and bauhaus brutal-architecture housing design which was all the rage in Europe at the time.
I only been scared 1x in life...when I came from Atlanta and visited my Aunt in the Robert Taylor Homes in 1996. Never seen anything like that. Was a gangland literally. Had to go through a metal detector in enter building. Smh
🤣🤣🤣🤣
We were probably on the same flight going to the same place. My uncle was shot right in front of the RTPs in 96. Damn near my whole family on my dad's side lived there.
@@letmeadjustmycrown1984 Hell on Earth
As a teenage delivery boy I was mugged in broad daylight by 3 project residents in front of the corncob building at 5:14. This location is the corner of 22nd and State Street, not far from Chinatown. The perps ran across 22nd Street to the now-demolished Harold Ickes housing project that ran south alone state starting at 22nf Street (Cermak Road). A police car happened to drive by right afterwards, and he picked me up to pursue. When we entered the projects with his lights flashing and slowly driving between buildings, a large number of residents started throwing all sorts of debris (rocks, lumber, bottles, etc) at the police car from multiple directions/altitudes. They had immediately decided that the police did not belong in there, and they did care if an assault had transpired. It was a revelation to a west-coast suburban boy (such as I was) of the problem attitude of the project residents. There is no hope for crime control without respect for law enforcement. The Ickes homes were not as tall as the Taylor homes further south on State, but they were nonetheless violent. Keep in mind this was in the relatively gentle 1970s. The topic of personal accountability is totally ignored when addressing crime, and crime has gotten worse even in the absence of the terrible housing projects. If the same scenario played out today, I probably would be shot, and the police officer shot at, as well....
That is a very intense story; thank you for sharing!
My thumbs up is for the video. Not for the content - if you know what I mean. You did a great job describing this normally unspoken subject.
I think they were built like that "accidentally on purpose"
I’m shocked, shocked that central planning and communalism failed.
My aunt Tootsie Roll use to live in the Robert Taylor with my cousins Fatgirl and Nene in the early 90s. (sorry, I just had use their names lol) I remember pulling up with them at night time after buying glow in the dark dominoes. The shit looked like some kinda of post apocalyptic, terror dome type of shit. Literal trash can fires everywhere with people standing around them. It was so fucking dark and scary walking up to those big ass towers with just hella noise from people. My aunt's unit was actually decently decorated, but it felt like a dorm/prison. The hallways were scary with cages, trash and graffiti. There was a gaping hole in the middle of one the floors. Nuts
Housing disaster? You mean a people disaster? 🙄
I lived there! So many memories!!
Government Assistance like Section 8, EBT, etc can be a crunch recipient of those services if educational services needed to get them out of the projects aren't enforced.
Leroy Brown came from the Southside of Chicago. He was the baddest man in the whole damn town. 😠💀
Why did they keep showing photos of Lake Meadows and Prairie Shores, they are condominium complexs and they are still in existence and the Robert Taylor Homes were not located any where near Prairie Shores or Lake Meadows! Also, I find it interesting that this documentary did not mention the fact that at the same time the Robert Taylor homes were being built entire communities were being built in the suburbs across the United States exclusively for non minority communities and were financed by the HFC and FHA!
The good old days when we had a choice to choose a safe nieghborhood to raise our kids. Section 8 pretty much destroyed that
I wondered about the reason for including Prairie Shores and Lake Meadows too. They're obviously not "projects" and don't look anything like "projects".
yes they do, almost like pruitt-igoe in st. louis.
What do you have on Riverview Park that was at Belmont and Western back then?
Remember this housing project Norman Lear show Good Times had apt modeled after this building.
They were made for temporary means till they got a job
There’s projects in practically every country of the world, you don’t see degenerates trying to burn down their own building or clogging trash chutes or turning to an absolute life of crime and fighting against the police. It’s the same people in the US that inhibit crime and entitlement to their native homeland of 21st century Africa, look at the crime rates there. For the few that contribute to society, the majority completely cloud the rest.
WELL, WHAT WAS THE BEST IDEA, raising the property tax's so high, spreading crime thru out the city, one group of people have to pay the bulk of the tax's and the other are parasites.
That's what we have now. The working people pay for all of the stuff that the parasites destroy. I say destroy the parasites.
I worked for a Dean Foods distributor and made one delivery at Cabrini Green...it was 7am and I saw one police cruiser with the officers wearing bullet-proof vests. Nice sight to see 😮
They are supposed to wear bullet proof vest.
I grew up there when I lived there i had a blast my best memories from my childhood is from the taylors
I grew up there. It was literally hell on earth! I was raped at seven years old while coming home from school by myself. I thanked God when we were able to leave that place!
I was born and raised in Robert Taylor Projects, the red buildings. Moved away in the early eighties way before crack and heroin came on the scene most of my childhood memories were very pleasant living there. The gangs back then were the Gangster Disciples and the All as Wells aka El Runkn. There was a free summer lunch program we use to call “chokes”
Can you tell me about the GDs? I wanna know the name of the main guy there in 80s who collected taxes in return for protection? And had his people in stairs too
People today who are demanding "affordable" housing don't realize that the rent they pay will not even come close to covering maintenance and repairs. Its better to figure out how to provide for yourself and your family instead of demand handouts. The same problem with rent control. If you refuse to pay market you are not going to have many places in decent condition to rent. I am not sure why the people who live there are not invested in not letting their free home turn into a slum? I think the lesson is try to build public housing that does not require expensive maintenance if that is possible at all.
I'm not sure you're diving deep enough. Hizzoner Richard J. Daley was mayor, and even after he died, the machine still lived on for years.
Follow the money. It will probably explain a lot. I'm not going to say the machine was corrupt, because there are plenty of others that will say it was corrupt...
And still corrupt.
Give people the basic necessities of life, paid for by other peoples money, and this is what you get. When everybody pays, then nobody pays, and when nobody pays, nobody cares.
It’s the people that make the home…can’t blame anyone but themselves…..no respect for the way they want to live…
Here is my story. Glad I was not living there. If I were there, I would have been gunned down by a Gangster Disciple, Vice Lord, or Peace Stone member, or if not shot down, badly "violated" (gang-beaten), even if I was not even initiated. I was never a gang member at all, but ever since I heard about a gun-down of a high school student at Simeon Vocational High School in the 1980s, I was schooled that there are some places in Chicago you need to stay away from. I grew up in Englewood in the early 1970s where there was no Robert Taylor homes, but the crime spiraled out of control there in the late 1970s when we got out to move to Beverly.
We were on a Christmas church mission in the mid-1980s where as dusk broke, a group of us did the unthinkable. At that point, knowing that we could be killed off, battered, have objects thrown at us, or run out of the building, we went into one of the very scary 28 buildings just near Comiskey Park--of the dreaded Robert Taylor project complex. I saw the grandeur of the building with square windows, the scary grated shafts cutting through the middle (making the terraces and balconies in the apartment feel like more a prison) and having to walk up the stairs. I had a gut feeling that gunshots outside could go off at any time there (fortunately I did not hear anything go "bang!"), and I am thinking that whole building complex was something like being in Bogota, Colombia, or being in an enclave full of hardcore registered sex offenders, which can be equally dangerous. We sent those Christmas gifts to a few residents, and then we got out of there, and then we survived.
I also keenly remember Jane Byrne also doing the unthinkable - temporarily staying at the Cabrini Green housing projects when that project became as dangerous as the Robert Taylor place. I knew that!
Do Priutt Igoe in St. Louis next!
😢 miss the old days but should do a video on Cabrini-Green
Just finished watching Cabrini green and the pruit Igoe housing documentary
I think i used to skate with this dude back in the day!! You ever rollerblade?? Halfpipe skating?
Yeah we used skate back in junior high!!! What up socash!!!
Wish Chicago was like the town of Chillingbourne - no housing crisis. 🏡🏡🏡🏡🏡