Less than a mile west of Chicago’s Gold Coast, the 70 acres that became Cabrini-Green began as a swampy 1850s immigrant district nicknamed Little Hell, after a gas refinery that shot flames into the air day and night, and later known as Little Sicily. The Frances Cabrini Homes opened in 1942 as 54 two-story row houses, followed by the red brick Cabrini Extension in 1957 and the concrete William Green Homes in 1962. Built on Le Corbusier’s towers in the park idea, the project started with a 75 percent white, 25 percent Black occupancy rule and was predominantly African American by 1962. As factories closed and white flight shrank the tax base, the city paved over lawns, left lights broken and wrapped the open galleries in chain link fencing.

At its peak about 15,000 people lived in the complex, and gangs took control of dark stairwells and broken elevators. Officers Anthony Rizzato and James Severin were killed by sniper fire in 1970, seven-year-old Dantrell Davis was shot walking to school in 1992, and in 1997 a nine-year-old known as Girl X was assaulted in a stairwell, a case in which a judge later found the housing authority negligent. Residents organized throughout: Marion Stamps led rent strikes, and Dorothy Gautreaux’s 1966 lawsuit proved the Chicago Housing Authority segregated Black residents and won at the Supreme Court. As River North boomed, the 1999 Plan for Transformation demolished the towers between 1995 and 2011, leaving about 150 renovated row houses.

• Mayor Jane Byrne moved into a fourth-floor apartment in 1981 for three weeks, surrounded by police and cameras.
• Cabrini-Green was the uncredited backdrop for Good Times and the setting of the 1992 horror film Candyman.
• The janitor who found Girl X resigned the same day.
• Fifth graders in Room 405 at Richard E. Byrd Community Academy, wearing coats indoors, campaigned in 2003 and 2004 for a working school.
• The Wallace lawsuit argued demolition outpaced new construction, pushing displaced families into segregated neighborhoods elsewhere.