A section of the Congress Expressway on Nov. 25, 1961. The construction of the highway contributed to tearing apart ethnic communities on the West Side, including parts of what were Jewish, Italian, Greek and Black neighborhoods.
Sun-Times file
WASHINGTON — When I was growing up, my dad, Jason, would lament how he could not take my sister Neesa and myself to see one of his childhood homes, an apartment on Chicago’s West Side. That’s because the building was torn down in the 1950s to make way for the Congress Expressway, renamed the Eisenhower Expressway, nicknamed “The Ike” and also known as I-290.
It was something that came up because my dad ended his career as a pharmacist with the old Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America at their Sidney Hillman Health Centre, 333 S. Ashland Ave. The clinic is just a stroll from the expressway and close to my dad’s evaporated once-vibrant Jewish neighborhood where his immigrant parents — who came surnamed Swislowsky before it was changed to Sweet because of antisemitism — took root.
The construction of the Eisenhower contributed to tearing apart ethnic communities on the West Side, including parts of what were Jewish, Italian, Greek and Black neighborhoods. The expressway, giving fast access to the suburbs, spurred white flight, fueled by the thousands of residents dislocated by the roadway.
I’m writing this column because the Biden administration this month awarded the city of Chicago a $2 million planning grant to figure out ways to mitigate the harm construction of the Eisenhower did in breaking up communities. In the case of the Eisenhower, the expressway formed a canyon in the city heading west from downtown.
The Congress Expressway, now the Eisenhower, is 400 feet wide. More than 13,000 residences, 400 businesses and nine acres of a historic park were demolished to make way for the highway. Federal officials hope new funding will knit divided communities together.
Sun-Times file
President Joe Biden created, through the Department of Transportation, something new — the “Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods Program.” As the White House said when the program was launched, “the Biden-Harris Administration will help rectify the damage done by past transportation projects and drive economic growth in communities in every corner of the country. This program is a key component of the Administration’s commitment to advancing racial equity and support for underserved communities.”
The goal is to “reconnect communities that have been left behind and divided by transportation infrastructure,” the White House said. Because of decisions by federal planners, “Highways and rail lines have disproportionately torn through Black and other communities of color and low-income communities, displacing residents and businesses, stifling economic development, and cutting communities off from essentials such as groceries, jobs, transportation, and health care.”
The city’s grant application, titled “”Reconnecting Chicago’s West Side Communities” sums it up this way: The Eisenhower Expressway “has divided neighborhoods on Chicago’s West Side since its construction in the 1950s. More than 13,000 residences, 400 businesses and nine acres of a historic park were demolished,” a reference to Columbus Park in Austin.
Designed by the noted landscape architect Jens Jensen, nine acres of the park were taken for the expressway at its south boundary in 1952. Considered a Jensen masterpiece, the park was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1991 and named a National Historic Landmark in 2003.
Construction work creates a traffic jam on the Congress Expressway looking east from Morgan Street on Oct. 30, 1959. Federal funding could pay for new pedestrian bridges across the expressway, parks, bike lanes.
Sun-Times file
The grant proposal notes the Ike bisects the “disinvested” communities of Austin, East and West Garfield Park, the near West Side with spillover impact in the North Lawndale area — all mostly Black with median incomes below the median of the city as a whole.
The expressway, named for President Dwight Eisenhower, is 400 feet wide, with four lanes in each direction and the CTA Blue Line tracks and station in the middle. “I-290 is a physical barrier and a source of harmful environmental and health effects for local residents,” the grant application said.
The Biden program, funded by both the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, aims to “rectify the damage done by past transportation projects.”
The city is meeting with stakeholders to figure out how to do this.
City Hall said in a statement, “The grant funding will allow the City to support upcoming IDOT and CTA reconstruction efforts by focusing on options such as improvements for people walking and bicycling on existing streets and paths surrounding and crossing the corridor, adding or enhancing pedestrian bridges and bicycle facilities, incorporating landscaping and other elements to enhance user comfort with new and renewed infrastructure, and making traffic safety and access improvements to nearby streets and intersections.”
As Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., whose West Side district sweeps in the Eisenhower corridor, wrote in a letter to support the grant, “While recognizing that wrongs committed to those impacted almost a century ago cannot be righted, the City of Chicago hopes to set a new course by improving community safety, cohesion, and quality of life through enhanced connectivity over and around I-290.”
RECOMMENDED READING:
From the Sun-Times: “How Chicago’s expressways were born — and furthered segregation“
From WBEZ: “Displaced. When the Eisenhower Expressway Moved in, Who Was Forced Out?”