Chicago's Gap
Chicago's Gap is not a retailer but a neighborhood. A neighborhood that barely survived
the wholesale demolition of the city's near south side in the 1950s and 60s. Once home to an all white, upper-income bracket group at the turn of the 19th century, the Gap today is home to a range of incomes and racial goups.
This tiny community comprises just 3 city blocks between 31st and 35th Streets, and
contains a housing stockthat once filled the streets of the surrounding community. Calumet, Giles and Prairie Avenues are the "gap" streets between newer, large scale, developments on either side.
The Gap is also all that is remains of a thriving African American community which settled
into the area just to the south, known as Bronzeville. Once the hub of Chicago's Black cultural life, the neighborhood was home to an internationally renowned jazz scene in the 1920s and 30s.
In 1941, the Chicago Housing Authority constructed the Ida B. Wells public housing
project south of 35th Street, which was the first CHA project built specifically for black residents. Back in those days public housing was officially segregated by racial covenants. Several square miles of late 19th and early 20th century small scale, residential housing were demolished to make way for huge, low-income and market-rate, high-rise developments all around Calumet, Giles and Prairie Avenues. The Gap also saw its fare share of wrecking ball destruction. You can see where the Italianate row house was under going demolition, was halted, and the broken common wall facade still stands.
Many of Chicago's famous architects designed houses in the Gap. One, at 3141 S. Calumet,
is the only survivor of the more than two dozen houses completed by Adler & Sullivan in the area. The row houses at 3213-19 S. Calumet, built in 1894, are from Frank Lloyd Wright, who left the Sullivan office in 1893. They are the only row houses Wright ever designed.
Sullivan's most obvious influence on Wright is evident in the window bay panels. The row
houses were renovated in 1980, long before the recent wave of renovation and new construction swept over the neighborhood. It remains to be seen what will happen to this remnant of an area once packed with majestic 19th century architectural wonders. Given the current state of the economy, these little 12 square blocks on Chicago's near south side may sit quiet for a while, but they still fill in a historical gap.
Posted by designslinger at 7/27/2009 4:10 AM 
Categories: Architecture, History, Architects, Preservation
Tags: Ida B. Wells Housing Project Louis Sullivan Chicago neighborhoods Frank Lloyd Wright
Categories: Architecture, History, Architects, Preservation
Tags: Ida B. Wells Housing Project Louis Sullivan Chicago neighborhoods Frank Lloyd Wright
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