Carl Sandburg Village
Photos by Justin Miller
1355 N. Sandburg Terrace, Chicago
Solomon-Cordwell Associates, 1963
The largest urban renewal project on Chicago’s north side, Carl Sandburg Village was conceived by planner John Cordwell and developer Arthur Rubloff as a way to revitalize the Near North Side neighborhoods of the Gold Coast, Old Town, and Lincoln Park. The development was constructed on four city blocks and displaced approximately 850 families from a neighborhood that was largely Puerto Rican at the time. Using federal slum clearance funding, the City of Chicago purchased the 16-acre site at a cost of $10.5 million, the highest price paid for any urban renewal clearance tract in the city. Sandburg Village’s “city within a city” development contains a mix of high-rise apartment buildings, mid-rise buildings, and several typologies of townhouses and artist’s studios.
