Lake Meadows, Chicago, an experiment in early redevelopment

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the post-World War II era, faced with what were called blighted neighbourhoods around Chicago’s commercial core, the city’s leaders pioneered the programme known as urban redevelopment (the forerunner of urban renewal), wherein the Federal and state governments granted the right of eminent domain and funds to cities to acquire land which was then turned over to private developers. The first such project in Chicago, a national leader of the entire programme, was Lake Meadows on the city’s near south side, a middle to upper class apartment complex that still thrives today. The developer was the New York Life Insurance Company and the architect Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, both well known for large projects in this era. A close examination of the project’s origins and implementation reveals the intentions of the principal players as well as the hideous complexity of getting such a project completed in Chicago. It also demonstrates the value of a concrete vision around which participants can coalesce, in this case a vision of the modernist city. The project’s creators, in all senses of the word, looked on Lake Meadows as a grand experiment, the results of which are still with us and deserve periodic reexamination.