American Pharaoh (32 page)
The businessmen of the CAC found a strong ally in their new mayor. Daley’s rallying cry in the 1955 campaign had been that he would rule not for “State Street” but for “all of Chicago.” But when the election was over, Daley proved all too eager to focus on the problems of State Street. His interest in upgrading the Loop was in part sincere. He shared the CAC’s belief that the well-being of the city depended in large part on the strength of its business district. Daley also viewed downtown as Chicago’s showcase, and was offended to see dilapidated buildings and blight there. James McDonough, the commissioner of streets and sanitation, recalled driving with Daley down State Street years later and ending up in front of a jumble of run-down old buildings. Daley was so upset by the sight that he forgot which commissioner he had with him. “I want those buildings down, they’re a disgrace,” Daley barked at Mc-Donough. Back at his office, McDonough had to call Daley’s commissioner of buildings and admit that, in the face of the mayor’s anger, he had stepped outside his jurisdiction and agreed to tear down the buildings. But Daley also had political reasons for throwing himself behind urban renewal. The business leaders who had come together to form the CAC were the most powerful men in Chicago. They were overwhelmingly Republican, and had given large amounts of money to Kennelly, Merriam, and most other reformers who challenged the machine. Urban renewal was Daley’s opportunity to reach out to these powerful Republicans and win them over to his side before the next election.
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The Democratic mayor and the Republican business community quickly forged a strong alliance around the issue of downtown redevelopment. Daley met with the CAC shortly after it was formed and listened to its pitch that he create a new Department of Planning to bring development squarely under the control of City Hall. The existing bureaucratic structure, which put development in the hands of the thirty-four-member Chicago Plan Commission, struck the businessmen as too unwieldy. Following the CAC’s recommendation, Daley housing adviser James Downs drafted a plan for cutting the Chicago Plan Commission’s membership to fifteen and relegating it to a merely advisory capacity. Daley also drew up plans for a new Department of Planning, just as the CAC suggested. He introduced the proposals to the City Council in March 1956, and they were passed without discussion. Daley also changed the membership of the Chicago Plan Commission. In the past, most had been public officials, but Daley decided that henceforth the majority would be “lay citizens.” The shift to citizen control had a populist ring to it, but the people Daley appointed to the commission were anything but common folk. They were men like Charles Murphy, partner in the leading architectural firm of Naess & Murphy, whom he named as chairman, and Clair Roddewig, president of the Chicago & Eastern Illinois Railroad. The Chicago Plan Commission would be using its diminished authority to speak out forcefully for urban renewal and development. But the real driving force in the city’s redevelopment would be Ira Bach, Daley’s first city planning commissioner. One of his first major assignments would be to work closely with the CAC to draw up a plan for transforming Chicago’s downtown.
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By December of 1955, Daley was well into his preparations for the following year’s elections. Those included the 1956 presidential campaign, as well as races for governor, U.S. senator, and many lower offices. As machine boss, it fell to Daley to assemble the slate-making committee to choose the machine’s candidates. Daley’s approach to selecting committees was simple: he liked to give the appearance of inclusion and democracy, while appointing members who would rubber-stamp the choices he made. Later in his career as mayor, Daley appointed a committee to fill a government position, but at the same time he named the members, he was slipping a note to one of them telling him who should be chosen. To chair the 1956 slate-making committee, Daley named Joe Gill, who had headed up the mayoral slate-making committee a year earlier. Barnet Hodes, another appointee, was also a reliable vote. Daley also named William Dawson, as representative of the black submachine, and 1st Ward alderman John D’Arco, who could speak for the syndicate. Frank Keenan, the county assessor and ward committeeman from the 49th Ward on the Far North Side, would normally have had a slot on the committee by virtue of his powerful political office, but Daley was freezing him out of the machine as punishment for backing Kennelly in the primary. Daley met with his slate-making committee on January 5, 1956, to talk about possible candidates. When he emerged, he told reporters that he favored an open primary, meaning the machine would not make any endorsements. It was an old Daley ruse, trying to play down the importance of the machine, and to hide the strings it attached to the arms and legs of its candidates every year. But no one was fooled. When reporters asked Gill if the machine would endorse candidates in the primary, he responded: “What’s the name of this committee?” It would be choosing a slate — Daley’s slate.
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During slate-making, a parade of candidates filed into the Morrison Hotel to seek Daley’s backing. He was impossible to read during these presentations. “I used to see fellows walk into Daley’s office,” recalled Michael Howlett, who was elected state auditor and Illinois secretary of state with the machine’s backing. “They’d walk out thinking that they had his support, when all he had said to them was something like, ‘You’d be a good candidate and if you were a candidate we could support you. Go out and see what kind of support you can get.’ To the uninitiated, that sounded like Daley was for them, when all he was saying was that if they went out and could show him they could line up a lot of support, why, then he would like to talk with them about getting on the ticket.” This time out, the slate-making committee was deluged with candidates. Cook County Board president Dan Ryan, county treasurer Herbert Paschen, sheriff Joseph Lohman, and state’s attorney John Gutknecht were all seeking the machine’s backing for governor. City treasurer Morris Sachs also showed up to express interest in the position, but he told the committee he intended to run with or without the machine’s endorsement.
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The slate-making committee ended up selecting Paschen for governor. It was a dubious choice, and one that revived the rumors of a year earlier that Daley had made a deal with Stratton to throw the gubernatorial race. Benjamin Adamowski, Daley’s former friend and mayoral opponent, sent out feelers to the slate-making committee seeking its support for state’s attorney. It was a lost cause. After his harsh words about the machine in the last election, there was no chance Daley would entrust him with such a sensitive post, which carried with it the power to investigate and prosecute Chicago politicians. The slate-makers renominated the incumbent state’s attorney, Gutknecht, who had close ties to the machine. Adamowski also approached the Republicans, and ended up getting their endorsement for state’s attorney. His break with the Democratic Party would have profound implications for Cook County politics.
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As the April primary drew near, Daley rallied the troops to the machine slate. At a March 6 meeting of party leaders, the ever-supportive Adlai Stevenson declared the Chicago machine to be “an inspiration to the rest of the country.” On April 5, the machine held its only mass meeting of the primary campaign. Two thousand ward committeemen, precinct captains, ward heelers, and patronage workers crowded into the Morrison Hotel’s Terrace Room to hear speeches from the machine’s endorsed candidates. The speeches shared a common theme: fulsome praise for the machine’s leader. “If I can do as well for Illinois as Mayor Daley has done for Chicago, I’ll go down in history as one of the greatest governors,” Paschen declared. When they were not complimenting Daley, the candidates were ingratiating themselves with the machine’s all-important foot soldiers. The success of the slate, the machine candidate for the Senate told the packed house, “depends on the untiring efforts you precinct captains put in your work.”
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Paschen and most of the machine slate coasted to victory in the statewide primary on April 10, but Daley suffered a setback closer to home. The machine had lost in its drive to unseat Keenan, Kennelly’s former campaign manager, from his position as ward committeeman. Daley had refused to recognize Keenan as ward committeeman in the year since the mayoral election. But now that he had been reelected, Daley announced that Keenan would be “welcomed back in the fold” and invited to the machine’s “formal and informal meetings.” This time, it was Keenan who refused to make peace. He wrote an open letter to Daley on April 23 declaring that he would work to elect Adamowski as state’s attorney. Keenan had good reason to dislike the incumbent, Gutknecht, who lived in his ward and had been active in the machine’s drive to oust him as ward committeeman. But Daley was livid at Keenan’s continuing insurrection. “I’d like to ask if he has submitted this question in a democratic fashion to his organization — the party workers and voters of the 49th Ward,” Daley responded. And why, Daley wanted to know, did Keenan not “make his statement before the April 10 primary”? The rift with Keenan was a real loss to Daley and the machine. As county assessor, Keenan assessed and collected personal property taxes — a power that could be and often was used to reward political supporters and punish opponents. The machine lost this power when Keenan broke away. But the rift with Keenan posed an even greater threat. If he could get a sworn enemy of the machine like Adamowski elected state’s attorney, the damage could be substantial.
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W
hen Daley took office, Chicago had a backlog of public housing waiting to be built. Of the 40,000 units the federal government
had approved for the city, fewer than 15,000 had been built or were under construction. Daley was eager to start reaping the
benefits of federal public housing. He appreciated the fact that it drew millions of dollars of federal money into Chicago,
boosting the economy and creating jobs for Daley’s supporters in organized labor. The federal money also meant more contracts
for Daley and the machine to allocate to political supporters. Daley wanted to build every public housing unit the federal
government was willing to pay for. What he had to decide was how to build the units — and where to place them.
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Daley’s first decision was to continue with several projects already in various stages of construction. Most were high-rises,
and all served to reinforce the city’s existing racial lines. The Near West Side site for Henry Horner Homes, which would
eventually become one of the city’s most infamous projects, had been acquired in 1953; the project itself would open for occupancy
in 1957. Work was already under way on Stateway Gardens, a project with 1,684 apartments, which was being built inside the
South Side Black Belt; it would open for occupancy in 1958. Shortly after Daley’s election, on May 12, 1955, the City Council
approved several new projects. Brooks Homes Extension, with 449 apartments, was to be located in a 98 percent black neighborhood
that already had three massive public housing projects. The Council also approved an addition of 736 apartments to Henry Horner
Homes, located in an area that was already 99 percent black, and Washington Park Homes, 1,445 apartments to be built on scattered
sites in the Black Belt.
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It was a year into his mayoralty, on May 9, 1956, that Daley obtained City Council approval for the first two public housing
projects that were truly his own. Plans for the Robert Taylor Homes and the Clarence Darrow Homes left no doubt that the Daley
era of public housing would be marked by densely packed high-rise towers that vigorously reinforced the city’s racial boundaries.
Robert Taylor was a collection of high-rise towers on a scale that had never been seen in Chicago before — or anywhere else,
for that matter. Its 4,415 apartments would make it the largest public housing development in the world. Robert Taylor was
designed as twenty-eight nearly identical sixteen-story buildings, clustered together in U-shaped groups of three on a ninety-five-acre
strip of land in the heart of the South Side ghetto. The architectural style was classic early-1960s housing project: ugly
red and yellow brick exteriors, and fenced-in external galleries. The project had a sprawling institutional feel that a federal
commission would later compare to “filing cabinets” for the poor. The second project the City Council approved that day, Clarence
Darrow, was smaller but similar in approach. The 479-apartment high-rise was to be located squarely in the middle of the Black
Belt ghetto, built hard up against the 2,303 units of the Ida B. Wells Homes and the Ida B. Wells Extension.
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It was no secret that Daley’s new projects would be almost entirely black. The year before Robert Taylor opened, the
Chicago Daily News
explained in a headline that its “Location Assures It’ll Be Segregated.” It was also clear that the living environment would
be a detrimental one for children. “Except for a few churches, virtually every existing institution, every line of familiar
and personal stability, and every semblance of formal and informal organization was cleared out and had to be started again,”
a Chicago Urban League report found. “It was like going into the wilderness. Those pioneers chosen to go had little means,
came in large numbers, and were treated like outcasts.” The project’s problems were exacerbated by an almost total lack of
social planning. The CHA spent years on the engineering details, but gave little thought to the human problems that would
come from concentrating thousands of impoverished families in such an unnatural environment. In fact, Robert Taylor’s demographics
were a formula for disaster. The CHA planned to cram almost 1,000 poor people into each of the project’s twenty-eight high-rises.
The CHA had also expressly planned to make Robert Taylor a destination for many of the city’s largest poor families. Almost
80 percent of the units were built with three or four rooms and most included an extra-large room that could sleep three or
four children. Since many of the poor black families who would be moving in were headed by single mothers, it was almost inevitable
that Robert Taylor would become a child-dominated world. If fact, when it opened 20,000 of its initial 27,000 tenants were
under twenty-one. Making matters worse, the CHA all but abandoned Elizabeth Wood’s practice of investigating the backgrounds
and qualifications of prospective tenants. By the time the last Robert Taylor buildings were filled, there was almost no screening
at all. The buildings that had the least tenant screening, at the southern extreme of the project, ended up having some of
the worst problems with delinquency and crime.
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