Parkway Garden Homes

Parkway Garden Homes is a fifteen-acre apartment complex on Chicago's South Side, built between 1950 and 1955 on the site of the former White City Amusement Park. It holds 694 cooperatively owned apartments in eleven eight-story elevator buildings and twenty-four three-story walk-ups, all of reinforced brick, with canted window bays, corner windows and streamlined concrete entrance canopies. The project began in 1945 when officers of the Dining Car Workers Union sought better housing for their members, and it was developed by the Community Development Trust. It was among the country's largest privately financed developments planned for and led by African Americans, and housing and civil rights advocates praised it as a model for affordable urban housing. Architect Henry K. Holsman designed it as his last large housing project, joining low-rise and high-rise forms in one mutual-ownership development. The complex still serves as housing and retains a high degree of integrity.