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Savannah, Georgia, circa 1939. "Fahm Street, west side. Row houses built about 1850. Torn down 1940 for Yamacraw Village housing." You can't stop progress. 8x10 inch acetate negative by Frances Benjamin Johnston. View full size.
I used to work with a woman who grew up on the South Side of Chicago in a neighborhood that was later razed for the notorious (to say the least) Stateway Gardens and Robert Taylor Homes, and she would say that, bad as those places were (and they too have since been razed), you should have seen what used to be there -- wooden shacks, buildings falling over, unpaved streets in the middle of Chicago in the middle of the 20th century. Charles Cushman's incredible photos give a good idea. The lady I worked with was more than happy with the upgrade and her father lived in one of those high-rises for the rest of his life with no thought of moving.
I was expecting some concrete nightmare, but it doesn't look that bad - and the new buildings echo the style of the old:
These "shacks" lasted 89 years before they were razed to make way for progress. I wonder how their successors have fared after a mere 70 years.
I bet there are many who would gladly trade in their apartment in a crime-ridden "project" for a more personal "shack." Those houses were old and creaky, but they were little houses and they could be fixed up rather nicely.
Nowadays we tend to think of public housing projects as the modern equivalent of tenement housing. Think of what an improvement a housing project would have been to the folks living in these shacks.
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