A question about Chicago

[kool maudit]

I was watching this video of Chicago in 1951 recently, and was wondering about a certain shot and the buildings within it.

• Video Link

At 1:40, you see these buildings:



It struck me that while Chicago is a city that has preserved much of its prewar housing, from plexes to large apartment buildings, this scale is not so common anymore.

It almost seems as though demolitions struck that kind of old school, 4+ storey density harder than other types. I have seen older photos of I believe the South Loop where you almost saw Manhattan-esque dense residential typologies (tenements), and that seems hard to find now.

Do any Chicagoans have any info. on this, and any intuition on where the buildings from the video might have been?

[Centropolis]

For reference purposes - below is an aerial photograph sort of centered on River North around 1938-9 from University of Illinois archives. This is the kind of housing that midwestern cities freaked out about and demolished en masse. I would imagine that a lot of that kind of housing was directly north of the loop. There's still is some walkup stuff scattered everywhere (assuming you mainly mean the far left typology), especially along main streets. But, ass-to-elbow walkups Alphabet City style neighborhoods not so much.

https://clearinghouse.isgs.illinois....ty/j_cook.html

[Crawford]

If that's River North, then yeah, there isn't much left today. Just bits here and there. And almost nothing in adjacent Streeterville.

I do know the South Loop, esp. around State Street, was a major skid row through the 1980's or so, and had lots of intact fabric. The area around the (since built) central library was a real sleazy corridor, with lots of flophouse hotels, wino bars and the like. You see a few remaining structures today still.

[Steely Dan]

My hunch is near north side.

But it coulda been near west side.

Or near south side.

Or further out along one of the main arterials like Milwaukee Ave.

Impossible for me to know without more info.

[Centropolis]

Around the five minute mark the video suddenly flips to scenes from presumably mid-century California (maybe Los Angeles), then suddenly back to Chicago like a weird, brief life chapter that was swept under the rug and forgotten.

[The North One]

Pretty sure River North used to be entirely these type of Manhattan-sort-of-looking buildings. The city went crazy demolishing almost all of it.

[JManc]

That is probably the some of the best restoration and colorization of (likely 8mm) footage from that era, I think I've ever seen.

[Busy Bee]

That Admiral sign across from the s-curve was fantastic.

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I do know the South Loop, esp. around State Street, was a major skid row through the 1980's or so, and had lots of intact fabric. The area around the (since built) central library was a real sleazy corridor, with lots of flophouse hotels, wino bars and the like. You see a few remaining structures today still.

I was recently reading Iceberg Slim's books about being a pimp in Chicago in the 1930s and I think these took place in that area.

Surprisingly modern drug use and vice patterns described in there that did not hit the wider society until the 1970s. Lot of coke.

[kool maudit]

So it seems that River North was the area with the biggest swath of this sort of density. Makes sense, as it was CBD-adjacent when a lot of those functions would have been contained within the Loop.

Bit of a shame to have lost it all.

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

For reference purposes - below is an aerial photograph sort of centered on River North around 1938-9 from University of Illinois archives. This is the kind of housing that midwestern cities freaked out about and demolished en masse. I would imagine that a lot of that kind of housing was directly north of the loop. There's still is some walkup stuff scattered everywhere (assuming you mainly mean the far left typology), especially along main streets. But, ass-to-elbow walkups Alphabet City style neighborhoods not so much.

You can see these chonkier buildings from their wider roof outlines, there are a lot near the river.

The below photo is from that area, but it looks like Toronto or something around there now in street view.



Whereas this surviving block seems to be the largest intact area of South Loop sleaze: