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(((The mostly demolished, Cabrini Green Projects of Chicago. A triumph of modernism. A majestically failed public works project. An attempt to do good. A hellhole. A Civic Wart. Vertically-developed, dense urban blight.
Where are you now, my Prairie School? Was Frank Lloyd Wright alive to see these things? What about Ezra Pound? Eliot? Dreiser?
I bet Carl Sandburg probably wrote some poem about them on their inauguration in the 1950's that went like this:
"My Cabrini-Green"
by Carl Sandburg
Bilious balustrades of clanking, steam-driven modernism.
The longshoremen in his shirtsleeves.
Oh, you topplers of the beefshares!
Busking and destroying--you
Broggerbankbuock the Abelard!
Wherein the nubile prairie scapegrace tough spits glances at
Huckleberry dames on Halsted who
offer him their ((beefshares)).
Rubberbuckbanktruck! The Stark lad, lo!
Utilitarian majesties and T.S. Eliot
Cackle in their beefshares and the coral cock,
In the walled arch city of the breadbasket
On the wonderful flowing waters
Of the turgid Mississippi.
Gurgleledurd ra ammalagog! Bertrand, the Samovar!
My Cabrini-Green,
My sweet, blonde tit
My most excellent beefshares.
My most excellent modernism imitation.
Omfug.
2 comments:
I'm a former resident of Cabrini Green (714 W. Division) and Just to inform you people that think that it was a "hellhole" as you put it. Cabrini wasn't always a bad place. It's not the community it's some of the people that lived in the community. I lived there with my family since 1986. I seen things growing up just as any other child as seen any other place in Chicago or any place in the world. Crime is everywhere. Things happen everywhere. Cabrini was home for some. A place where we can called our own. It was like a little town in it self.There were some very good people that made the neighborhood better besides the rumors or news coverage. We did community things just as any other poor community. Growing up we had afterschool programs and church involvement with our children. People had the impression that Cabrini Green was a place that all the people were crimials and all they did was kill each other. Yeah, we've lost some people that we cared for but who hasn't. All you can do is try to make the best of it all. Still to this day I explain to my own children; just because the people around you choose a certain life doesn't mean that you have to follow. All I have to say in closing is that I myself enjoyed my childhood in my neighborhood and Thank God that noone can take that away. I will miss the Building that we called 14kt Gold becuase of the good memories it will forever hold in my heart.
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