The Shop Building at Altgeld Gardens

“As a self-contained community of approximately 7,000 people, Altgeld Gardens was an ideal setting for a co-operative, and by 1947 the Altgeld Gardens Consumer Co-operative was the largest store of its kind in the country.”

“Between 1945 and 1951, the building was home to the Altgeld Consumer Co-operative, the largest Black -owned co-operative store in the country. In the late twentieth century, the Shop Building housed the offices of the People for Community Recovery (PCR), a grassroots organization founded by Altgeld resident Hazel Johnson to combat environmental injustice at Altgeld Gardens.”

“Each member contributed $1 for an educational fund, and in subsequent meetings the group established a constitution and by-laws, incorporating the cooperative as a non-profit. With the support of Elizabeth Wood and CHA, the Altgeld Cooperative opened in one of the complex's unfinished residential buildings on September 30, 1944, ready to serve the first 100 families moving into the complex.”

“Provisions were also made for centrally located commercial buildings, which would house community essentials including a grocery store, drug store, beauty parlor, and laundromat. A handbook for Altgeld residents published by CHA in 1944 proclaimed that the project would be “a city within itself.” Altgeld Gardens was developed by CHA in conjunction with the National Housing Agency and the Federal Public Housing Authority.”

“In 2022, the Altgeld Gardens-Philip Murray Homes Historic District was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE AT ALTGELD GARDENS: HAZEL JOHNSON AND PEOPLE FOR COMMUNITY RECOVERY Although the Altgeld Gardens Consumer Co-operative left the Shop Building in 1951, in the last decades of the twentieth century the building became home to another, equally important community organization.”

“Constructed in a dense industrial area to house African American defense workers and their families, Altgeld Gardens was one of the largest and most comprehensive public housing projects built in Chicago in the first half of the twentieth century.”

“Naess and Murphy's design for the residential buildings at Altgeld was typical of the CHA prototype during the period, constructed of common brick with little ornamentation but well built.”

“One of the earliest such grassroots organizations to form in the Midwest was People for Community recovery, founded in 1979 and led for over 30 years by Altgeld resident and activist Hazel Johnson.”

“Educationd WILMOTH BOWEN MGR. Dept. LENORE DAVIS The first major tenant in the Shop Building was the Altgeld Gardens Consumer Cooperative, a nonprofit co-operative grocery store jointly owned and operated by Altgeld residents.”

“ALTGELD GARDENS, A DEVELOPMENT OF WAR WORKER HOUSING The modern-day concept of public housing in the United States originated in the 1930s during the Great Depression, first funded by the federal government under the New Deal economic recovery program initiated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.”