Stories & Memories

Growing up in Jane Addams

I would like to start off by saying thank you to whoever though of doing this keeping a long part of Chicago history alive. With that said I cried when I read upon this. I’m 28 years old, a full grown man and seeing this brought me right back to a child. My grandmother lived in the projects 42 years - her address don't stand anymore 909 S. Lytle Chicago, IL 60607 APT #935. She raised 6 kids and 13 grandchildren in that house.

Mr. Vincent Cusimano



Running Around

Some of my best childhood memories are from living in the projects. As children we had so much fun. We lived on the 13th floor and I can remember we would stand in the middle of the floor one kid would take off in one direction and another in the other direction, We would run down the stairs , cross to the other end, run back up, and see who would reach the middle first.

Mrs. Chrystal Smith



A Place to Call Home

I have never had more stable & affordable housing than since I became a resident of public housing.  My daughter, Sofia Democracy, was born in our home in public housing in 2003.  I am very grateful to have a safe & affordable home in which to raise my daughter.  It has ebabled us to be engaged & productive members of our community.

Mr. Ed Democracy



The Bench

I was born into the Projects in 1956, the youngest of 3 girls.  We lived in the Glenwood Housing Projects in Brooklyn from the day it opened till I turned 12 when we moved to Staten Island.  We had a two bedroom apartment, 3A, and I remember it as though it were yesterday.  As summer draws to an end, my most vivid memories of growing up in the Projects emerge with stark vividness.  Everything that happened and everyone it happened to could be found on The Bench at some point during the long, hot days of summer.  We'd spend all our time sitting, gossiping, playing handball or ringolevio outside by The Bench.  Our neighbors' lives unfolded before us as we sat on that long, hard, paint-peeled green bench.  It was the one place we could escape the oppressive heat of the building, and from the first morning following the end of school to the last day before we had to go back, we were outside, growing up around The Bench.

Ms. Kim Crabbe



Kid Heaven

We lived in Building 1 in the brand new Luna Park Houses in Coney Island right across the street from the beach. I was pre-school age and I remember the Tuesday night fireworks which I would watch on the boardwalk safely perched upon my father's shoulders. This was a very safe area and my mother would send my older sister and I to my aunt & uncle's apartment in Building 3. They had a great view of Steeplechase Park and we would watch the parachute jump (and when it got stuck), have our "Bubby" make us the best french toast and play with our much-older cousins Herbie and Steve who would throw me across the room while my sister screamed that I would end up out the window (no screens that far up & pre-window grates). There was always a pack a kids to play with- a real kiddie heaven.

Mrs. Naomi Rothenberg



My happiest memories

I lived in Lathrop Homes on Clybourn in the middle 60's until 1980 My dad worked for the housing authority he was head custodian we had beautiful flower beds no one was allowed to walk on the grass my childhood memories were made there with my brother and 4 other sisters it was a great place to live.
The projects were a bad place to live if children weren't monitored just like anywhere else you live you can't let children go and not keep them busy. There was plenty to do for kids in the projects it helped create the people me and my siblings are today. We would come to West Virginia every summer for vacation and that is where I was introduced to cigarettes and alcohol it wasn't in the projects we moved from there to West Virginia my dad feared for our safety because the gangs were starting to get bad then in 1981 my younger sister was hit by a car and taken off life support after 5 days because she was brain dead. That is why the projects hold such a special place in our lives that was our happy years.

Mrs. Kimberly Chapman

 
My family and I moved into 4155 So Lake Park because of our parents divorce. When we first saw the building we were so naive we thought we own it. As reality set in we got our apartment broke in daily. But it was here that we learned life lesson that has brought us from there to here. In my blue print of life I was not suppose to fail. I dropped out of school and had children. Today I will graduate from Jackson State University with a Masters Degree. As a preschool teacher I know how important it is to mold young mind positively! Because these life lesson last a lifetime. Just like the ones I learned in Jackie Robinson, and Oakenwald-South on Lake Park. I learned to laugh, love and live. I also learned that disappointment comes, but they are not dreams denied but deferred. I am a success story and a living testimony that brick by brick the projects build towers of power and not failure. Thank you for listening!

Mrs. Pamela Reynolds



Giving back to the community

My grandparents moved in Altgeld when it was built in 1944. Growing up in Altgeld Gardens is the most memorable event of my life. We were one big family whom ate, slept, and cried together. My mother served as a community activist until she passed away in 2000 and also co founded the drug abuse clinic for veterans and tenants alike that experienced post war heroin addictions. In Altgeld she received countless awards, have dedicated streets to her and a playground was built in her honor. I followed her footsteps, my daughter is following mine but, she is the generation that ends the cycle of living/raising her kids in Public Housing, by seeking her PhD in counseling minorities.
Growing up in Altgeld, raised by strong parents has allowed me to realize, it is not only what you do for yourself, but what you do to help others. That is why I ran for LAC Vice-President and was elected 2x served until I moved out. I also, raised my 3 children their, My oldest is earning her PhD at U of Iowa in Counseling to better serve places like Altgeld.

Ms. Debra Parker, Project Assistant, Holabird & Root Architects

Growing through the Gallup Housing Authority

I left high school at the age of 17. I received my GED from a local community college and went to work, due to the fact that my 16 year-old girlfriend (now wife!) gave birth to our first son.

We lived in income-based housing for 3 years. The week I returned from our honeymoon I received a call from the Gallup Housing Authority for a temporary maintenance/painting position. Well, 11 years later I am a home owner and the Executive Director of the housing authority that is so dear to my heart.

Danny E. Garcia, Executive Director, Gallup Housing Authority, NM



"Uphill to the Podium:" Living in Lathrop Homes

I was born and raised in Lathrop Homes, '44 thru '65, came from a broken home, raised by mother and grandparents, bilingual. All but illiterate in 7th grade, Schneider, I forced myself to 9th grade math and 10th grade reading, attending Lane Tech high and grading in 3 and a half years, Valedictorian. I have an MA, and am college adjunct with a 7 page CV, two books, nearly 30 papers. I am self motivated, and an example of what an inner city, ghetto kid can do in succeeding in life. I look for a full time teaching/research position. I am thinking of doing an autobiography "Uphill to the Podium."

Lathrop was the ideal place for single people, and families raising children. Accessible to transportation, shopping, schools,  downtown and suburbs, recreation near and far. We had a reunion recently.

Michael Kazanjian, Chicago, IL



Great-Aunt Genevieve: A place of her own, baseball and bragging rights

My great-aunt, Genevieve Traffley, was one of the original tenants in the CHA senior citizen building at Clark and Irving, now known as Mary Hartwell Catherwood Apartments.  It opened in 1969, and Aunt Gen lived there for about 20 years.  She was proud of her home for two reasons:  it was a place of her own (most of her life she lived with relatives) and it was just a short walk from Wrigley Field.  Between Ladies Days and Senior Citizens Days, she was there a lot. 

Whenever we stopped by to drive her to family events, she loved welcoming us into her apartment, where we would say hello to her friends from around the building.  Something I learned right away is that all of them, Aunt Gen included, used to talk about the politician who supposedly helped them get into the building. Whether this was real or not, I don't know, but there seemed to be a kind of pecking order in bragging, based on the rank of the politician who supposedly was involved.  (For the life of me, I have no idea how Aunt Gen would have known the politician she claimed.) 

There were couples as well as singles, and I heard a lot of laughter in the hallway.  Aunt Gen arrived with a couch and an upholstered chair, but as the years went by, the people passed on, but the furniture remained.  By the time we helped Aunt Gen to move out, her apartment was wall-to-wall with couches and chairs.  She bequeathed them all to her friends, whose apartments already looked like furniture showrooms, yet somehow they managed to absorb them all before our final good-byes. 

She lived another five years, sharing an apartment in the suburbs with her sister, but she always was nostalgic about her 20 years at Clark and Irving, where she had a place of her own and the Cubs were just down the street.

Gary Johnson, President, Chicago History Museum

Could Life be any Better for a Kid?

When I first heard about the Public Housing Museum, I was thrilled.  When I heard they were trying to get the building at 1322 W. Taylor memories went off in my head like fireworks, my Mother, brother and I had lived in apartment 281 from August 1948 to July 1954. I went to Jacob A. Riis School from first thorough sixth grade.

Our apartment was bright and warm. Bright because we got the morning sun from the east but none of the harsh west afternoon sun. We had 2 windows on the north but the best were the 2 south windows that gave us great winter light. This triple view also gave Mom a vista to see most of what we were doing outside.

I'll try to describe our neighborhood. There was a play lot behind our building, the Animal Court was 1 block (no streets), Peanut Park was 1 block away, Riis School was 1 short block, the Garden Theater was 1 block east on Taylor Street and the bus stopped 1 block away.  Could life be better for a kid?

Yes! The Midwest Grocery Store and the bakery were across the street, there was a beef stand 1 block west on Taylor Street.  For a couple of years there was a carnival that set up across the street in the empty lot for a week or so in the summer.  Could life be any better for a kid?

Yes!  Angie's Candy Store was just across Taylor Street.  But wait, it got better.  One summer day there was activity on the empty lot just across from our living room window.  What could they be building?  A Tastee-Freez!!  How good was life for this kid?

We lived in a compact, clean, convenient, safe world.  Like Carol Rizzi said in her letter: We didn't know we were poor. We lived in a rich environment.

Patricia (Gwodz) Fitzgerald, Lemont, IL

P.S. I remember Carol Rizzi; she was a darling 3 year old.  Her sister and I were friends.  When I saw her letter I finally got my act together to write a little of how I remember growing up at 1322 W. Taylor Street, Apartment 281 in the Jane Addams Project.

In Memory: Beauty Turner

A powerful story about leadership, commitment, and accomplishment in public housing:

Beauty Turner, 51: Chicago public housing activist and reporter - Chicagotribune.com
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-hed-turner-19-dec19,0,5695932.story   

Playing in Animal Town

"I lived at 1322 W. Taylor as a child. I was born in 1950 and lived there until 1957; first floor west side of the building. I never realized that I was poor growing up there; I had a lot of friends and most of my family lived nearby.

I played in Animal Town and the back of the building. Animal Town was full of concrete animals that you could climb on and there was one big combination of concrete animals and if you could climb that you were really something! I loved when they opened the Johnny Pump (fire hydrant) all the kids would jump in the water and the older kids would hold it to make a spray of water.

I went to Riis School and Our Lady of Pompei Catholic Grade School.

My aunt had a grocery store across the street, the building is still there, it is a three flat and I think the last time I rode down Taylor Street, I saw a "For Sale" sign on the building. You would walk down the stairs to the grocery store. My aunt sold fresh ice cream cones in addition to groceries.

My brother and sister remember a lot more than I do about living in the projects because they are eight and nine years older than me and were teenagers when we lived at 1322 W. Taylor. My brother mentioned the following to me:

The hallways were always clean because everyone on each floor took turns cleaning them.

Isn't that nice to know that people actually cared about the building that they lived in and helped maintained it, even though it was a housing project?!"

Carol Rizzi, Chicago, IL

Childhood Memories from Jane Addams Homes

I lived at 920 Lytle, second floor from approximately 1949 to 1953. During that time I attended Riis School and have attached a Class Picture The smiles on my classmates faces tells you that this was a happy time for us. My teacher Mrs. Brown was well liked by all of us and I thought she was very pretty. Most of best memories involve playing outdoors at recess and in the court where all the stone animals were. I also enjoyed playing in Peanut Park which got its name from the outline that the treetops which surounded the park made.

My friends and I spent time swimming at the YMCA. We thought we were sneaking in but later found out that they were letting us swim for free because we all came from poor families, but none of us realized it at the time. I attended Our Lady of Pompei Church and that was where I made my First Holy Communion. My father was a laborer in a factory and my mother stayed at home with my brother and I. We were close to all the people in our building. No one locked their doors and we all felt free to go into each others apartments to visit or just say "hi."

Living in the Jane Addams projects was an important part of my growing up and I wll carry the memories of that time with me forever. I now have two grown sons and my dream is to one day bring them and my wife to this place that meant so much to me. I hope my message encourages others to write their own stories and support the museum to keep our memories alive.

Vince Tulipani, Alliance, OH

Bartram Village, Philadelphia

I lived in Bartram Village public housing in Philadelphia, 1943-1953.

Later I went on to win a scholarship to MIT. I received a graduate degree in city and regional planning from University of Pennsylvania.

In 2003 I was serving as an expert witness in federal court in a case involving the racial segregation of public housing in Baltimore. In the course of a detailed deposition, the Justice Department attorney defending HUD was frozen in her place - for what seemed like a minute - when I revealed that I knew what it was like to live in public housing, having experienced it for a decade of my young life. I'm now 68.."

Joe Nathanson, Urban Information Associates, Inc., Baltimore, MD

Robert Taylor Homes

"I lived in Robert Taylor Homes, in the 4946 S. State Street building from the year 1976-1995. Despite the hardship and violence that has been advertised and spread via mouth and media, I miss my community. I've always dreamed about bringing my children by and saying to them "this is where your daddy used to live." I still can, but the buildings are gone. All I can show them is a piece of land. I can help them imagine what I've seen and experienced but they will never experience it for themselves. I have written songs and raps that have been inspired by my childhood in Robert Taylor. As an adult, when I look over the lyrics, I am always amazed by what I was thinking about at the time I wrote them and wished that I had journaled about my experience more."

Credell Walls, Illinois State Coordinator, Roots&Shoots Great Lakes Office, Chicago, IL

Glenwood Projects in Brooklyn, NY

Jack lived in 5905 Glenwood Rd. (Apt 6E) from 1950 to 1962.

"Thanks to my old friends for posting their memories. Here are a few of mine: Walking through the projects on fall evenings. The smell of burning leaves from nearby streets on dry nights, and the smell of wet leaves on damp nights. Walking home from Hebrew school on winter nights, admiring the sprinkling of Christmas lights in the windows. Going to neighbors to see their Christmas trees. The strict rabbis at Hebrew school. Learning my haftorah from a 78 rpm record. Seeing Shari Lewis do a show for kids at the synagogue. The big park: Running through the sprinklers and going on the swings and big slide as a little kid. Playing handball. Watching the big kids play softball. Collecting pads of outdated transfers from the bus drivers laid over on Ralph Avenue outside the big park.

Going to after school programs in the community center near the big park. Building a volcano out of paper mache and using dry ice to simulate smoke. Listening to the big kids harmonize on warm summer nights. The pretzel man. The knish man. Seltzer bottles lined up outside apartment doors. The smell of the incinerator. Kron pharmacy. Kandie's drug store. Lionel toy store. The small professional building on Raplh Avenue where my dentist practiced. Charlotte Russe and other mouth-watering pastries at the bakery on Ralph Avenue. My father teaching me how to hit a baseball in a vacant lot. My father giving me a few dollars to buy the Sunday Times and a dozen bagels, "assorted." All the great times I had with my best friend, Stuie Feinberg. Exploring the lots and later the construction sites. Playing skelley with bottle caps. Playing football (touch & tackle), baseball, punchball, stickball, buck-buck, potsie. Running from Mooney the Housing Authority cop when we played on the lawns or rode our bikes in the projects. Jackson the cop ran faster! Pitch & Putt golf course. GIl Hodges bowling lanes. Swimming at the Brownsville Boys club - and buying hot dogs from the vendor in the little shack across the street. A vanilla Carvel cone dipped in chocolate. Carvel ice cream sandwiches. Lining up for free cocktail franks when the deli opened on Ralph & Glenwood Road after the Chinese restaurant closed. Getting a haircut from Armand at the barber shop on Avenue H. Butch wax. Vitalis.

Attending Tilden Day Camp and going away to Camp Vacamas for two weeks one summer. Building a scooter with a wood fruit crate from Krasne, a 2x4 from a construction site, and an old roller skate. Decorating it with bottle caps. Our mothers leading Cub Scout den meetings in our apartments. Boy Scout trail blazing outings through the vacant lots. Pitching pup tents in Canarsie park. Our mothers' Mah Jong parties. Not believing that people actually lived in neighborhoods like the one on "Leave it to Beaver."

Going to PS 251, PS 208, and Meyer Levin Junior High. Looking forward to attending Tilden HS. The garden at PS 208, maintained by my second grade teacher, Miss Getru, who rode a bicycle to school. Borrowing books from bookmobile when it parked on Ralph Avenue on its weekly visits. Running extension cords from one apartment to another when electrical service to some apartments was interrupted. Spending the day at Coney Island. Coming home sunburned and happy. Getting mail from our mailman, Red. Asking my mother for a potato when Al Eisen was making latkes for all the kids. Getting a ride home from the subway in Al Eisen's taxi. Trying to be quiet when Al was sleeping after driving his cab all night. Yelling up to my mother for money so I could buy ice cream from the Bungalow Bar or Good Humor truck. My mother would wrap some change in a paper towel and toss it out the 6th floor window. My parents telling me how lucky we were to move to the Glenwood Projects when housing was tight in the years following WWII. Being very sad to leave my friends and Brooklyn when we moved to a little town in central Pennsylvania when I was in 7th grade (January 1962.)"

For more memories from the Glenwood Projects, go to the website.

Jack Valancy, Cleveland Heights, OH

Cabrini Green Poem

I lived in Chicago's Cabrini Green from 1969-1983. My mother Rosetta Scott moved into Cabrini in the early sixties after the birth of my oldest brother, Thelonius Ambrose in 1961.

An Inner City Tale
(Ode to Cabrini Green)

Born into a tenement in the heart of the windy city in the summer of sixty-nine,
Fourth small mouth to be fed and second girl in line.
A time just after the assassinations of Malcolm, Medgar, JFK, and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King
A time when proclamations like "Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud," were the in thing!
When Bell-bottomed jeans and afros swayed effortlessly against the wind,
An era when Motown was king and Stax was In! Our guardians were diligent and always instilled in all of us the need to get ahead,
Stressing that there is strength in numbers and to stick together no matter what was said.
70's, school bells, limited teaching apparatuses and burned out teacher and no recess,
Escaping boredom, through reading autobiographies always held my interest.
Benefiting from RIF (Reading is Fundamental) reading Angelou, Hansberry, Morrison, Moody, X and Cruz.
Discovering and rediscovering, Richard Wright, Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes.
Brown scarred knees from repeatedly falling upon thick blacktop.
Corner stores, liquors stores, ice cream, pickles,
Now-n-laters, barber and beauty shops.
Loud sounds blaring to break through red glistening project walls,
Aretha, Chaka, Diana, O'Jays, Jackson, Curtis Mayfield and Lou Rawls.
Broken elevators, and broken dreams, straightening combs and fade creams.
Mayoral candidates making mockeries out of project residents by handing out V-necks, turkeys, and miniature Christmas trees in exchange for votes.
Some project residents coming undone and always at each others throats.
Skateboards, hopscotch, jump rope, Red Light Green Light and Mother May I?
Young men masquerading as gangsters on street corners,
over already-conquered city turf, why?
Soon childhood laughter is silenced by gunshots and young bodies dropping.
Caskets, tears, sensing my own mortality at 13, anticipating my own heart stopping.
Guardians' tenacity paid off in the spring of '83 they rescued me,
Before our transition out of the ghetto, I noticed young women making spaces in their bellies for little ones,
completely throwing caution to the wind,
Yeah, babies having babies starting the cycle all over again.

{Published by the ALESTLE in Feb. of 1999}
For more poetry by Doreen see her website

Growing up in Ida B. Wells

"As a teen in Ida B. Wells I was voted Top Teen by the Chicago Park District and Junior Citizen by Chicago Housing. Our 3-story walk-up was surrounded by community resources. There was the YWCA, the Park District, and the Public Library all offering classes, after school activities and summer programs to keep young minds active and involved in learning. I went from Ida B. Wells to the University of Chicago (for a Masters degree is Social Service Administration) and a listing in The History Makers for my work with victims of Domestic Violence."

Diane McCoy-Lee, Atlanta, GA

Thanksgiving:

"I was a resident of Jane Adams Housing from 1956 to 1971 . The fall was the best time of the year Thanksgiving was when we would all come out after dinner for the annual Thanksgiving Snow ball fight. It never failed to snow on Thanksgiving morning. By late afternoon the snow ball battles were on. I really miss those times because we were all like one big family."

Connie Fitzgerald

Lathrop Homes:

Marge Kelly, Marwen

Childhood Memories:

"Born March 11, 1958 at Cook County Hospital, I would spend ages one through fifteen residing at 835 S. Ada on the first floor of a three-story walk-up in the Jane Adams Public Housing Project. I have fond childhood memories of sledding in the winter, and beautiful multi-colored flowerbeds planted each spring. The custodian and his family lived in the same complex he served. All elementary school students attended the neighborhood public Jacob A. Riis School, one and one half blocks away. The average family was a two-parent household, with one or both parents in low-level government jobs. Through summer time, the community was safe and secure; we children lived daily for the privilege of being able to go outside to play. The two-month summer vacation from school felt like an endless weekend of fun in the neighborhood. In the daytime we went to Vernon Park at the north end of Ada. For some reason we called it "Peanut Park. " We played baseball until lunch, and more after lunch. From there, dinnertime in each household was announced between about 5:30pm to 6:00pm. Every one was called to their family's dinner table, usually by a sibling. After dinner, as the city street lights came on in the evening, it was time for on the block games; "Kick the can", "Catch one catch all", and "It." By nine o'clock, curfew kicked in for the young, and we prepared for ten o'clock bedtime. By teen years we could stay on the block at later times, and the card game bid whist was the nighttime delight.

Our complex's central courtyard was home to a vast array of concrete jungle animal statues and swings and monkey bars. It was also home of the largest neighborhood softball games, played mostly on Saturdays after chores. Players were chosen by two captains, with mixed teams of males and females, young and old, children and parents. Objects as first, second, and third bases would vary, but home base was always the largest concrete statue with several animal figurines carved altogether at the north end. In my youth, the figurines seemed enormous and the stretch around the "bases" long and adventurous. If I made it, there was no greater joy than to finally reach, touch home base!

On January 28, 1967, my mother Helen, who worked for the Internal Revenue Service downtown, died of a massive heart attack at age 46 at 835 South Ada in the midst of great Chicago snow storm. My sister says that she and Daddy had to help paramedics and neighbors carry the stretcher through the snow up Ada to Taylor Street. Ada was impassable. Everyone tried to help, but I understood my mother had passed before the paramedics walked up Ada Street to our apartment. I was eight years old and asleep, and awakened in the wee hours of the morning by my sister Nancy's grief-filled cries. I returned to Riis School, determined to make my mother proud. I graduated class president of 1972.

Much changed in the nineteen seventies. I remember the character of our little community changing a little at a time. I would later find out that in the early 1970's Chicago Housing Authority policies became more stringent, increasing pressures and rents on families who could afford to move up and out. I remember intact, stable families moving out; the Caston's, the Sostand's, the Payton's. In 1974 my oldest sister and elderly father co-mortgaged a five bedroom, two bath house in the Austin Community out west. The Hatch family was gone as well. For the first time in my life I had my own bedroom.

I have been blessed to obtain three post-graduate degrees, teach at the seminary level, fellowship at Harvard University Divinity School, appear in the inaugural edition of Who's Who in Black Chicago, travel extensively and globally, and now serve as senior pastor of a large ministry on Chicago's Westside. In about 2003, when I saw 835 South Ada was being prepared for demolition, I stopped by one afternoon and claimed a piece of a brick. It may only be meaningful to me and families who lived at that address. A couple of years later, when I read in the newspaper that the largest animal statue would be relocated and preserved, I vowed to find the place it will rest. I purposed to take my children to see it, and perhaps even touch it. I'll do my best to explain how it will feel to me at this stage of my life journey, to touch home again."

Dr. Reverend Marshall Hatch, New Mount Pilgrim M.B. Church, Chicago