Dominic Pacyga goes into quite a bit of detail regarding Mayor Richard J. Daley's coming into Chicago Mayoral offie, and a lot of the political upheaval and controversy involving both issues that arose at this time, and what Daley did (or did not do) to help fix these issues. When Daley entered office, the city was just getting back onto its feet after having been brought down by the Great Depression. The Prudential building was opened in 1955, bringing into the city a slight boom of new business and people. Based on this success, more than thirty-six million square feet of office space was opened up in the loop. This change in structure, population, business, and financial state of the city opened up new doors for changing demographics.
Public housing was a huge deal in Chicago starting in the late 1930s, and merging into the '40s. The Chicago Housing Authority created (ultimately) a three stage housing plan to help combat poverty in the city. The first stage went underway with new houses and three to four story flats, complete with courtyards, walking space, and statues. Following this, the second stage took place, as townhouses were quickly put up for returning war veterans. This mass amount of wartime living relocations, both permanent and temporary, led to whites feeling trapped by this ever expanding black ghetto, and blacks being pushed away by whites who didn't want their neighborhoods to be anywhere near each other. Around this gime, almost a quarter million white people moved out of downtown Chicago to either the outer edges of the city, or into the suburbs. A third stage of public housing was then created. This stage, though Daley fought for low-rise public housing, ended up becoming the largest high rise public housing project in the world. This seemingly "obsession" with building these massive structures, left a few questions unanswered, such as how so many units could be filled by tenants who passed the criminal background and adequate income checks. Ultimately, they could not, and in a haste to fill the buildings, the rules were sort of let go, leading to criminal activity, gangs, and violence that erupted out of some of these housing developments (most notoriously, Cabrini Green). These public housing units were also very much overcrowded, as the old slums had been, and for awhile, they were at a standstill in dealing with these pressing issues.
Around the same time, there was a huge push forward in the United States for a reliance on the automobile. The government funded the building of tollways that connected everywhere with a vehicle-accessible road. Chicago was connected to the east coast through a system of highways, and all of the Chicagoland was able to be accessed by private vehicle. However, as we saw before in New York specifically, the building of these massive freeways through a major metropolis poses some huge issues. Whereas in New York the issues were based on some wealthier neighborhoods fighting to keep a highway from cutting across their neighborhood (though I'm sure the issue was brought up in some not so well-to-do neighborhoods as well), no wealthy communities were bulldozed (or in the original plans to be bulldozed). As I read that Daley had fought for a small community church to be saved from highway demolition, I though "Wow, he's completely not like New York's Moses who cares about nothing but how this plan could best work out for him personally. He actually wants to help these communities." But then I read the part where Daley and his wife had gotten married in that church, and the previous thought very quickly floated away (although, he did question the continued splicing of the city, wondering if it was a good thing for Chicago or not). Even though this one, historic church had been saved, the highway didn't spare other community's churches. The Italian neighborhood relocated their church, only to have it torn down again four years later for more construction. The Polish neighborhood was disrupted by the highways, too. This construction was not based on race or skin color, but on the wealth of the communities: no wealthy communities had to fight to keep their churches or buildings standing.
Following the highway boom, the Civil Rights Act became the main political issue. Daley backed this act, but did not enforce decisions made around it, even when Martin Luther King came to Chicago to help change the city's clear cut borders between white and black. He subsequently then lost support from both the black and white populations. The white communities did not want any integration of the black community into their neighborhoods, and, god forbid, into their schools. This brought about many protests, though mostly peaceful, in Chicago. However, when Martin Luther King was shot and killed, violent riots broke out, complete with arsonists and looters. The city was in upheaval.
This emotion that was wiping over the city was then added to by the arrival of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Protestors staged riots, both peaceful and violent (or turned violent by the use of violence upon them by police) all over the city. It ultimately resulted in the famous riots in Grant Park, as seen in the film Medium Cool. Though this film was part fictional, part documentary, it brought up powerful ideas about the influence of the camera and its use in the public media. Documenting the actual riots, the film crew is not safe from being hit with gas and jostled around. Their footage, though still attempting to continue the scripted storyline, cannot deny the events that occurred: cops beating peaceful protestors and people being dragged down to the ground. It was definitely a wake up call to the world.
This film also has direct relation to issues surrounding photography and media in Chicago now. I can't find the article on it, but I believe it was last summer where Chicago cops had beaten (I believe) a photographer recording an incident between the cops and the bicyclist. There have also been recent arrests of photographers and confiscation of photographic equipment by officers in Chicago, just because a photograph was taken of them or what they were doing while in a public space. These ideas in mind, I am very cautious about what I photograph in public, and seeing this footage of the cameraman standing directly over cops as they beat young adults in 1968 was almost a shocking idea. From what we saw, no officer took a billy club to the cameraman. That would be very different today.
The other article, an excerpt from Richard Cahan's writing on Richard Nickel, did not focus on political or social issues, but that of the actual structures of the city. Nickel, an architectural photographer, was very much focused not on the glorification of these buildings, but their realistic representation. If a building was magnificent for its height, Cahan would emphasize this quality in his image. If the building were crumbling and entering a state of disrepair, which many of his photographs focused on, he would translate these broken beams and dusty bricks into his photographs. More so a documentary photographer than an architectural one, Nickel fought for the restoration of older buildings (rather than their destruction) through his images. He the photographs as symbols of the buildings' stark reality in an attempt to show that these buildings are our history and most public art form of the city. "Nickel wanted to use the camera to teach others to see without a camera", and he used the realistic qualities of the buildings he shot to try to do this.
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| Sullivan's National Farmer's Bank, Richard Nickel |
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| Garrick Theater, Richard Nickel |
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| Destruction of the Garrick Theater, Richard Nickel |
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