From Block Club,
A Sociologist Photographed 100 Chicago Buildings Just Before They Were Torn Down. What Happened To The Sites 10 Years Later?David Schalliol found empty lots where South and West side buildings were demolished and developments in place of demolished North Side buildings.CHICAGO — A historical two-flat in North Lawndale is now a vacant lot. So is a former check cashing store in Englewood. Three homes in Lincoln Park have combined into one mansion.
The contrast of then-and-now — and how location plays a leading role — is part of a photo project named “After Demolition,” which shows what became of 100 Chicago buildings 10 years after they were torn down. The project is from David Schalliol, a sociology professor at St. Olaf College in Minnesota.
Schalliol found nearly every demolished North Side building he’d photographed had been replaced within 10 years, while most on the South and West sides were left as vacant lots.
Redevelopment was swift in predominantly white neighborhoods, while it was almost nonexistent in others, Schalliol said. Chicago’s infrastructure “continues to be defined by structural racism,” Schalliol said.
“Divestment, both public and private, have produced these outcomes and vacancies, which hurt neighborhoods of color,” Schalliol said. “On the North Side, we see buildings that were perfectly fine demolished to make way for new ones. On the West and South sides, buildings are demolished when it’s the last resort.”Schalliol was a grad student at University of Chicago in 2012 when he became interested in demolition as the United States grappled with the aftermath of the housing crash. In the mornings, he’d checked the city’s emergency demolition records, hop in his Volvo and “race out to the building before it was too late” to take a photo, Schalliol said.
Most North Side buildings were sold before they were demolished, such as three homes at 1951, 1957 and 1959 N. Orchard St., which became a bigger home at 1951 N. Orchard St., Schalliol said. Many others were torn down to expand neighboring homeowners’ side yards. A former stone church at 834 W. Armitage Ave. was turned into a Walgreens with glass windows from top to bottom.
From After Demolition, a photo essay.
In 2012, I photographed one hundred Chicago buildings destined to be demolished. This summer—ten years later—I returned to document what had changed at each of those building sites. Tragically, the results are as expected. In the past decade, nearly 90% of the buildings located around the Loop and on the North Side of the city have been replaced with another building, while approximately 90% of the buildings on the South and West Sides are now a derelict lot.
The idea behind this project, which was published in real time by the webzine Gapers Block as To be Demolished, was to highlight the literal erasure of the city’s built heritage and provide a framework to understand the consequences of the city’s policy-driven demolitions, the still spiraling effects of the Great Recession’s foreclosure crisis, and the demolition by neglect caused so many landlords. I would do so by drawing from public records, including demolition permits, inspection results, publicized developer plans, 311 call records, and other data. In practice, more than a third of the days in 2012, I would wake up, check the demolition permits, and then race to photograph a former home, church, or business before it was demolished. In the process, I also built relationships that resulted in the film The Area, which documented the intentional dismantling of an Englewood community to make way for the expansion of Norfolk Southern’s 47th Street intermodal terminal. Including the hundreds of families displaced and many homes demolished by the train company would increase this project by dozens. And, of course, there were hundreds more buildings I couldn’t reach in time.
While it was impossible to create a truly random sample because the demolition permits were inconsistently added to the city’s database, an irrefutable pattern quickly emerged: buildings on the North Side were largely being demolished to make way for another structure, while those on the South and West Sides were not. The immediate economic, social, and racial inequities were clear: whiter, wealthier neighborhoods were getting development, while poorer neighborhoods of color were not.
From the beginning, I planned to rephotograph these sites ten years later. After all, it is one thing if the demolition of a building leads to the construction of a family’s new house, high-quality affordable housing, or a community garden, but it is something else altogether if the building becomes just another gap in the city’s physical and social fabric, uninhabitable and unmaintained. Pulling together permits, funding, and more means that it may take a long time to create a new structure where one previously stood. Ten years should be enough time.
Was it?
Inside the Englewood neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago is a small middle-class community surrounded by railroad tracks. “The area” was a destination for many Black Americans arriving from the South during the Great Migration of the mid-20th century. Homes, wealth, and memories have been handed down from generation to generation.
Despite decades of redlining, divestment, and the 2007 foreclosure crisis, nearly half of families own their homes outright—but the expansion of the nearby freight yard threatens the community and all it has built.
When the train company representatives told Deborah Payne that her South Side Chicago neighborhood would be demolished to build a freight yard, she vowed to be “the last house standing.” A thirty-year resident of the Englewood community, she had raised generations of neighborhood children alongside her own, forging deep friendships and traditions in this Black American community surrounded by the tracks.
The Area is the five-year odyssey of her neighborhood, where more than 400 Black American families are being displaced by a multi-billion dollar freight company. As their community is literally being torn apart, residents maintain friendships and traditions while fighting for the respect they deserve. Through their experiences, the film weaves an all-too-real story about the disproportionate harm that structural racism has done to Black communities, while illustrating the hope and promise neighbors find in one another as they fight for their home.
For more information about The Area, please visit theareafilm.com.
