Theaster Gates: Artist as Catalyst for Community Development

Dorchester Projects

Dorchester Projects are a collection of four buildings centered around the 6900 block of South Dorchester Avenue. They include:

• The Listening House—a former candy store that now houses 8,000 vinyl records from Dr. Wax, a nearby record store that went out of business in 2010.
• Archive House—a former multi-family home that now houses 60,000 de-accessioned glass lantern slides from the University of Chicago’s Art History Department and the Prairie Avenue Bookstore collection—14,000 books on art and architecture obtained from a local bookstore that closed its doors in 2009.
• Black Cinema House—a former multi-family home that offers free bi-monthly public screenings of movies by and featuring African American artists to audiences of approximately 30 people.
• Stony Island Arts Bank—a former bank that at the time of this case was being renovated to house the 18,000 book Johnson Publishing Library. When completed, the building may also house an exhibition hall, performance space, offices for arts-related organizations, and a restaurant.

Rebuild Foundation

In 2009, the Rebuild Foundation began as a community advocacy organization in St. Louis, Missouri. Today in St. Louis, Rebuild manages programs such as art workshops and community gatherings out of two buildings. A public charity that received its ruling from the IRS in 2011, Rebuild took responsibility for managing the collections, designing and implementing programming for Dorchester Projects in Chicago. Regular offerings include bi-monthly film screenings, visiting hours for the collections, youth arts classes, and food-centered community gatherings such as potlucks and block parties. In addition to its operations in St. Louis and Chicago, Rebuild has an independent arm in Omaha, Nebraska that does similar programming. To date, Rebuild has received $375 K in funding from ArtPlace America and $150 K from the Joyce Foundation.

Dorchester Art +Housing Collaborative (DAHC): In 2013, Rebuild Foundation partnered with Brinshore Development to redevelop a former Chicago Housing Authority housing project located at 1450 E. 70th Street. DAHC will consist of 32 mixed-income rental units centered around a cultural facility. One third of the units will be allocated first-come-first-served to individuals on the Chicago Housing Authority waitlist; the other two thirds will be reserved for artists (one-third market rate units and one-third reserved for tenants earning less than 60 percent of the area median income). Rebuild Foundation has been conducting regular focus groups to update community members on the project and engage them around potential uses for the cultural space. Construction began in Fall 2013 and is expected to be completed by Fall 2014.

University of Chicago Arts Incubator

The University of Chicago Arts Incubator was initiated in January 2012 and opened in March 2013. Located at 301 East Garfield Boulevard in a University-owned building that had been vacant for decades, it was born out of the desire to foster better relations between the University of Chicago and its surrounding community. The Incubator’s primary public programming consists of visual art exhibitions, jazz performances, jam sessions, knitting circles, family art workshops, yoga, and talks. Attendees include a mix of community members, University of Chicago students, Chicago-based artists, and art lovers from around the city. In addition, the Incubator helps youth build carpentry skills through the Design Apprenticeship Program, and hosts artists-in-residence providing studio space, access to University facilities, and the opportunity to exhibit their work to the public. At the time of this case, the University of Chicago planned to expand its presence on the 300 East block of Garfield Boulevard to include a café and art spaces. The Theaster Gates Group LLC has leased a nearby vacant lot from the city upon which a public pavilion is to be erected.

Theaster Gates Studio

Theaster Gates Studio, a 24,375 square foot former Anheuser Busch distribution facility located at 7200 South Kimbark Avenue, is the home of Gates’ creative practice. A staff of five assists Gates with art production and management. In addition, 10 contractors handle project-based work, including the ongoing renovation of the building.

95th Street/Dan Ryan Red Line Station Commission: As part of the Chicago Transit Authority’s $240 million renovation of the 95th Street/Dan Ryan train station, Theaster Gates Studio LLC was commissioned to design and install a $1.3MM public art project: $1 million for design, fabrication, and installation; $250,000 for the artist fee; $50,000 for community engagement. Construction of the station is slated to begin in 2014 and last until 2016. The art project is anticipated to employ 10 people and include an apprenticeship program for local students.

Black Artists Retreat: In August 2013, Gates gathered more than 100 African American artists to facilitate inter-generational dialogue about the African American arts landscape, collaboration, and impact within the African American community. Hosted at The Listening House and Theaster Gates Studio, artists included MacArthur “genius grant” winners Carrie Mae Weems and Deborah Willis.

Source: Theaster Gates Studio; various.

Washington Park

Washington Park, the location of the University of Chicago Arts Incubator, covers the one-and-a-half square miles from Cottage Grove to the Dan Ryan Expressway between 51st Street and 63rd Street. 1 A 372-acre park adjacent to the University of Chicago in the neighborhood’s northeast section is the neighborhood’s namesake.

The 2010 U.S. Census recorded population of 11,717, a 79 percent decline from Washington Park’s 1950 population of 56,856. The neighborhood is primarily residential and was once the site of approximately one-third of the Robert Taylor Homes, which at 4,400 units was the largest public housing project in the world. 2 The city of Chicago currently owns 545 vacant lots within the neighborhood; there are an additional 228 vacant or abandoned properties. 3

Greater Grand Crossing

Greater Grand Crossing, the location of the Dorchester Projects, the Stony Island Arts Bank and Theaster Gates Studio, covers three and one-half square miles from Wallace Street to Kenwood Avenue between 61st Street to 79th street. 4 Located just south of Washington Park, Greater Grand Crossing is also a predominantly residential area. The neighborhood includes the 183-acre Oak Woods Cemetery. In 2010, the neighborhood population was 32,602, a 47 percent decline from its 1950 peak of 61,753. 5 The City owns 359 vacant lots in Greater Grand Crossing; there are an additional 1,028 vacant or abandoned properties in the area. 6

History

During the American Civil War, Chicago emerged as an industrial hub due to its rivals’ (St. Louis and Cincinnati) initial proximity to the front lines and trade stoppages along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. Chicago became the North’s meatpacking and wheat distribution center. Heavy industry soon followed in the form of steel, manufacturing, and railroads. From 1861 to 1870, the number of factories tripled and the city’s population increased threefold as available jobs attracted an influx of Irish and German immigrants. 7 Chicago was also a terminus on the Underground Railroad during the 1800s, and home for a growing African American population.

When Chicago’s elevated railway lines expanded public transportation to South 63rd Street in the 1893, Washington Park and Grand Boulevard, its northern neighbor, became desirable residential areas for Irish and German families. African Americans moved into the westernmost corridor of both neighborhoods where proximity to the Rock Island railroad tracks depressed housing prices.

World War I triggered a substantial increase in Chicago’s African American population as immigration halted, existing laborers enlisted, and heavy industry turned to women and African Americans as replacement labor sources. Southern African Americans moved north seeking industrial employment. As the African American population expanded, so did its real estate footprint, creating racial tension that led to the Race Riot of July 1919.

Predominantly Irish street gangs burned down African American-occupied homes west of Wentworth Avenue and created a boundary for the African American population that coincides with Washington Park’s current western border. 8 Three months later, nearly 1,200 white residents of Grand Boulevard gathered to protest the increasing number of African Americans in their neighborhood. 9 Their slogan, “They Shall Not Pass” referred to passing beyond Grand Boulevard (now Martin Luther King Jr. Drive), one of the most expensive streets in the area and what soon emerged as the African American community’s eastern boundary.

The hostility both east and west pushed the African American population southward and led to what became known as the “Black Belt.” An area originally bounded by 22nd Street, Wentworth Avenue, 31st Street and Grand Boulevard that eventually pushed southward to 95th street and eastward to Cottage Grove. 10 No official policy or plan created the African American Belt. It reflected the African American population’s response to rapid growth, racial tensions which limited movement eastward or westward, and real estate prices which limited expansion northward into a predominantly commercial area.

By the 1930s, the Black Belt contained over 60 percent of Chicago’s 250,000 African American residents, or approximately 150,000 people. 11 That figure grew to nearly 175,000 by 1950, a very high density for an area with only two-story dwellings. 12 The combination of overcrowding and a growing number of African Americans who could afford to purchase homes spawned an exodus. Those who could afford to moved southward to neighborhoods like Greater Grand Crossing, which had been occupied mostly by Irish and Jewish communities. From 1930 to 1950, Greater Grand Crossing saw an increase of African American residents to 86 percent from six percent. 13

The Black Belt was about to experience more changes in the 1960s due to two major developments: the Dan Ryan Expressway and the Robert Taylor Homes. The Dan Ryan Expressway was built along Wentworth Avenue in 1961-62. “Residents were effectively sealed off from jobs, facilities, and the white residents on the other side of the 10-lane highway.” 14 The Dan Ryan solidified the Black Belt’s western boundary, isolating and segregating the community.

In 1962, the city’s effort to combat overcrowding in the Black Belt led to the Robert Taylor Homes, which became the largest public housing project in the world with 28 buildings, each 16-stories tall, spanning from 39th street to 54th street. Now known as one of the Chicago Housing Authority’s greatest failures, over 80 percent of its 4,400 units had three to five bedrooms and “placing enormous numbers of children and relatively few adults in high-rise buildings resulted in widespread social disorder.” 15

Security became a primary concern in the projects and, by extension, Washington Park. During the 1960s, increased handgun ownership, a greater proportion of baby boomer teenagers, and de-industrialization led to a nationwide increase in crime. This crime wave hit Chicago hard as the number of annual homicides per 100,000 residents more than doubled to 24 from 10.3 over the course of the decade. The situation grew worse within Chicago’s housing projects as street gangs took control of high-rise buildings and began to sell narcotics in the 1970s.

By the 1980s, “inoperable elevators, erratic heat, leaky roofs, uncollected garbage, infested apartments, darkened hallways, and unrepaired playground equipment were norms, not aberrations” within the city’s public housing. 16 Ten percent of families in public housing reported employment and 73 percent relied on public aid. 17 Ninety-five percent of public housing residents were African American and only seven percent of resident families contained two parents. 18

City spending on antidrug and security initiatives within housing projects grew to $80 million in 1995 from $7 million in 1986. 19 By then it was clear that the projects needed to be replaced with a better solution to the city’s housing problems. Since the 1990s, 18 of Chicago’s 27 public housing projects have been demolished and all but one of the remaining nine have been significantly renovated.

Recent Statistics

Population within Washington Park and Greater Grand Crossing fell steadily from the 1950s through 2010 until each neighborhood housed 21 percent and 53 percent of its former number of residents, respectively. 20 Families moved out to avoid the crime, poverty, and substandard living conditions that were anchored by the more than 2,500 public housing units within the two neighborhoods. Public housing residents were displaced by demolition and renovation processes, and the Section 8 voucher program, a subsidy intended to help low-income families afford market-rate housing in response to the decreased supply of publicly owned units, didn’t help stabilize the local population because Washington Park and Greater Grand Crossing lacked the multi-family housing stock to keep these residents in the neighborhoods.

In the wake of the 2008 housing bubble, Washington Park and Greater Grand Crossing are the site of 773 and 1,387 vacant or abandoned properties, respectively. 21 That is a combined 12 percent of the city’s estimated 18,000 vacant or abandoned properties despite only accounting for 2 percent of the city’s footprint by square mileage.

Respectively, four and sixteen homicides occurred in each neighborhood during 2013, more than two and three times the Chicago average per 10,000 residents of 1.6 homicides. 22 Statistics for other violent crimes were similar with Washington Park and Greater Grand Crossing respectively having 414 and 850 incidents during 2013, 2.8 and 3.8 times the city average per 1,000 residents of 9.2 incidents. 23

Per capita income is $13,087 and $17,213 respectively while the Chicago average is $27,148. 24 Thirty-nine percent and 26 percent of residents live below the poverty line, and local unemployment rates are 23 percent and 19 percent, respectively. 25 In comparison, 19 percent of the city’s households live below the poverty level and Chicago’s unemployment rate is 11 percent. 26

ArtPlace Vibrancy Indicators