Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments

Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments / Rosenwald Apartment Building

A 2012 photograph viewed from 47th Street and Wabash Avenue
Location 47th Street and Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois
Coordinates 41°48′36.780″N 87°37′25.836″W / 41.81021667°N 87.62384333°W / 41.81021667; -87.62384333Coordinates: 41°48′36.780″N 87°37′25.836″W / 41.81021667°N 87.62384333°W / 41.81021667; -87.62384333
Area 4 acres (1.6 ha)
Built 1929[1]
NRHP Reference # 81000218[2]
Added to NRHP August 13, 1981
Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments

A 2012 photograph viewed from 47th Street and Michigan Avenue.
Location Bounded by 46th and 47th Street and Michigan and Wabash Avenues
Chicago, Illinois,
 United States
Status Undergoing renovation
Constructed 1929-1930
Gwendolyn Brooks
Nat King Cole
Joe Louis
Quincy Jones[3]

Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments (also known as the Rosenwald Apartments) is a large apartment building located in the Bronzeville neighborhood of the South Side of Chicago, Illinois. It is located at East 47th Street and South Michigan Avenue, just one block east of the former Chicago Housing Authority's Robert Taylor Homes site. In total, the building is made up of 421 apartments and it was originally built as non-governmental subsidized housing.

History

The building was constructed in 1929 by philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, then president of Sears, Roebuck & Company. The housing project was modeled after the Dunbar Apartments built by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in 1926 in Harlem, New York City.[4] Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments received National Register of Historic Places designation in 1981.[5]

Building Uses

In 2010, filming for the 2011 film Transformers: Dark of the Moon was done on site. In the movie, the apartments doubled as part of the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine.[6]

In 2015, a complete renovation of the building, which had been added to the National Register of Historic Places, began. The last residents had moved out 15 years earlier. When complete, the building will hold a mixture of senior citizen apartments and affordable housing for families.[7][8]

See also

References

  1. Gilbert J. Cataldo. "Rosenwald Apartment Building - Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments Nomination Form". Retrieved 2013-10-30.
  2. National Park Service (2009-03-13). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.
  3. PRESERVATION CHICAGO Chicago’s Seven Most Threatened Buildings
  4. Devereux Bowly, Jr. "Subsidized Housing". The Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago. Retrieved 23 September 2009.
  5. "Rosenwald(Michigan Boulevard Garden) Apartments". Chicago’s Seven Most Threatened Buildings. Preservation Chicago. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 September 2009. Retrieved 24 September 2009.
  6. "'Transformers' Back in Chicago". ABC 7 Local. ABC 7 Local. 26 July 2010. Retrieved 2 August 2011.
  7. "ROSENWALD APARTMENTS RENOVATION BEGINS IN BRONZEVILLE". ABC 7. February 18, 2015. Retrieved 9 April 2015.
  8. Work set to start on $109-million rehab of Rosenwald apartments, Sam Cholke, DNAInfo, January 7, 2015
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