In Dominic Pacyga’s Chicago: A Biography ‘Daley City’ we learn the influence one man had over one of the largest cities in America. When Daley began as mayor of Chicago the cities downtown, area faced immense problems because of lack of any investment in the area.Daley shaped major institutions and civic buildings, such as the U.S. Courthouse.He also pushed for there to be a four year state university within the city limits. Many public housing developments had come out of the New Deal, such as Jane Addams Homes and Lathrop Homes.The inner cities hit a major set back though when investments were made in suburbia after the war and not in the downtown area.From the 1940s until today the city has continued to decline in population with many people moving to the out skirts of the city or suburbia.After World War II the city of Chicago just like New York City began constructing high-rise public housing.Although Daley tried to fight, the high-rise plans more then once in Washington, advocating for smaller four-story buildings, they were built anyways.They would later become some of the most problematic areas within the city of Chicago.The housing projects such as the Robert Taylor Homes created massive population density, and the overcrowding soon allow the newly constructed developments to become horrific spaces.In the 1950s housing projects were predominately populated by African Americans, while the suburban areas were mainly Caucasians.Because Caucasian aldermen opposed construction of any public housing in their communities and African American aldermen saw the public housing as a better form of housing and also a solid way to get votes in an area.
With the construction of the Congress Expressway in the 1950s cutting right across the city.“The new system tied the city and suburbs together and cut great holes in the cityscape bringing dramatic demographic changes in its wake.”To describe the expressway construction as cutting holes in the cityscape is visually drastic way of describing the effects that the highway had on the city.Chicago a city that had developed
up because of the railroad was now shifting away from this form of transportation of goods to trucking because of the government’s investment in the country’s highway infrastructure. The construction of the Dan Ryan Expressway continued to segregate the city separating whites and blacks.The expressway was constructed through “poor and working-class white and minority neighborhoods.”The areas surrounding the Dan Ryan Expressway were predominately populated by blacks when it was constructed.In the 1960s, Daley’s support from the black population began to slip with the increasing civil rights movement throughout Chicago and the country.
Photographer Richard Nickel collected photographs throughout Chicago, with an immense focus on photographing Louis Sullivan’s architecture before it was torn down or while it was being torn down.It was clear that Nickel’s found beauty through the photograph of buildings during their “death”.
