The singer Nat “King” Colelived there, as did the poet Gwendolyn Brooks and the music producer Quincy Jones.
But the blocklong hulk with the boarded-up windows at Michigan Avenue and 47th Street is more than the former home of legendary African-Americans. Gaze beyond its surface wear and tear, you’d see a monument to an enlightened era, long before the words “subsidized housing” became synonymous with such warehouses for the poor as Cabrini-Green.
Completed in 1929, the complex of connected five-story buildings was endowed by philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck & Co. Its designer was Rosenwald’s nephew, Ernest Grunsfeld Jr., architect of the Adler Planetarium.
Grunsfeld fashioned an austere but inviting block of cream-colored brick, relieved by bands of red brick and Art Moderne terra-cotta door frames, which drew inspiration from acclaimed worker housing in Vienna. At the complex’s core he inserted a spacious inner courtyard of gardens and playgrounds, where residents strolled and the architecture helped build a sense of belonging.
“Everybody watched out for each other’s kids,” onetime resident Douglas Johnson, 59, recalled Monday as he stood on the sidewalk outside, drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette.
On July 10, the city’s Community Development Commission is expected to consider a developer’s request for up to $25 million in tax-increment financing to back a planned $110 million renovation of the complex. It was originally called the Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments and was later renamed the Rosenwald Apartments in honor of its benefactor.
The proposal calls for an exterior renovation and gut rehab of the complex, which once had more than 450 units. It would emerge with 331 rental apartments. In addition, the developer says, he is open to pursuing city landmark status, which would make the project eligible for millions of dollars in federal historic preservation tax credits. The project is already listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
“It’s got a lot of history,” said the developer, David Roos, executive vice president of Landwhite Developers LLC, which is based in New York and Granger, Ind.
To be sure, the city’s tax-increment financing deals have been criticized for benefiting fat-cat Loop developers rather than revitalizing blighted areas as the legislation authorizing them envisioned. But that charge seems unlikely to be leveled at this plan.
Across Michigan from the Rosenwald Apartments, an old graystone is flanked on each side by vacant lots, making it resemble a lone stub in a missing row off teeth. Along 47th, the complex’s ground-level storefronts, once home to a barbershop and other establishments, are boarded up.
“The project has been a vacant eyesore for more than 10 years. It has the potential to revitalize the entire neighborhood,” said Judy Levey, chief executive officer of the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, which plans to extend a small, no-interest loan to the developer.
The son of German-Jewish immigrants, Rosenwald also built the Museum of Science and Industry. His complex at 47th and Michigan met the housing needs of African-Americans, including those in the middle and working classes, who remained confined to the city’s “black belt.”
When the Washington-based National Trust for Historic Preservation named the Rosenwald Apartments to its list of the nation’s 11 most endangered historic sites in 2003, it called the complex “one of the nation’s foremost examples of visionary workforce housing.”
As the neighborhood around the complex went downhill and housing choices for blacks expanded, however, many residents left. The secluded courtyard became a haven for drug deals. By 2000, city officials shuttered Rosenwald Apartments, and it has remained vacant ever since.
In a telephone interview, Roos said he hopes to purchase the complex by the end of the year from an Evanston investment group. He plans a mix of one-, two- and three-bedroom units and wants to install elevators in the walk-up, as well as new mechanical, plumbing and electrical systems. It would be a mixed-income development, with 95 percent of the units priced to attract working and lower-income families, he said. And he’s seeking to buy nearby city-owned vacant lots for a nominal fee in order to provide space for parking.
Construction would begin early next year and take about two years to complete, the developer said. The Chicago firm of Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture has been retained to lead the redesign.
While Roos appears to have the support of city officials and Ald. Pat Dowell, 3rd,, in whose ward the Rosenwald Apartments are located, he acknowledged that he has raised just “a little over 50 percent” of the project’s $110 million budget.
“We’re working with the developer on a viable redevelopment plan for the complex,” said Peter Strazzabosco, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Housing and Economic Development.
Douglas Johnson hopes the redevelopment proves to be more than a pipe dream. As he stood on the sidewalk, he imagined a revitalized Rosenwald Apartments — and what it would mean for other former residents. “A lot of people who want to live around here would come back,” he said.
