Demolition reveals Cabrini Green (…red, orange and blue, too)

Demolition reveals Cabrini Green (…red, orange and blue, too)

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(photo by Lee Bey)

The Cabrini Green public housing building at 660 W. Division is coming down.‚  As demolition workers pound the 15-story concrete slab into oblivion, take note of something beside the spectacle of crumbling concrete and the hair-like strands of‚  exposed rebar:

There is color.

Look closely the photo above. Demolition unmasks the building’s drab grid-like face, revealing apartments that were painted in bright orange, reds, blues and greens; a Mondrian large-scale and in 3D. I hadn’t noticed this until Lisa Lenoir, who was a fashion editor at the Sun-Times during my time at the paper, mentioned it to me a few days ago.

Lisa drew a nice parallel between the predominantly-black Cabrini Green’s vividly painted units and the simple and brightly colored homes in Africa and the Caribbean. “We are a diaspora,” she said. I think she’s on to something:

(photo by Lee Bey)

(photo by Lee Bey)