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Rockwell Gardens

Demolished buildings and structures in ChicagoEmporis template using complex IDFormer buildings and structures in ChicagoNeighborhoods in ChicagoPopulated places established in 1959
Public housing in ChicagoUrban decay in the United States
Demolition of Rockwell Gardens
Demolition of Rockwell Gardens

Rockwell Gardens was a Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) public housing project located in the East Garfield Park neighborhood on the Near West Side of Chicago, Illinois, United States. It was the first public housing development in the United States to be constructed using both federal and state funds. The original structures were designed by Nicol & Nicol and covered 17 acres (6.9 ha). 1,126 units were built, located approximately 2.5 miles (4.0 km) west of the Chicago Loop, bordered by Madison Street, Van Buren Street, Western Avenue, and Rockwell Street.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Rockwell Gardens (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Rockwell Gardens
South Maplewood Avenue, Chicago Near West Side

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Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 41.876713 ° E -87.6894 °
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Address

South Maplewood Avenue 329
60612 Chicago, Near West Side
Illinois, United States
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Demolition of Rockwell Gardens
Demolition of Rockwell Gardens
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Assassination of Fred Hampton
Assassination of Fred Hampton

On December 4, 1969, Fred Hampton, a Marxist-Leninist African American activist, chairman of the Black Panther Party's Illinois chapter, and founder of the Rainbow Coalition, was shot and killed in his sleep during a predawn police raid at his apartment in Chicago, Illinois. He was 21 years old. Also killed was fellow Panther Mark Clark, who was on security duty. The raid was conducted by a team of 14 officers from the Chicago Police Department and the Cook County State's Attorney's office, organized by State's Attorney Edward Hanrahan, and orchestrated with the assistance of the FBI as part of its COINTELPRO program to neutralize the Black Panther Party and Rainbow Coalition. The police claimed they had been attacked by the Panthers and defended themselves accordingly, this claim was later disproven. An internal investigation was undertaken, and the police claimed that their colleagues on the assault team were exonerated of any wrongdoing, concluding that they "used lawful means to overcome the assault." A coroner's jury ruled the deaths justifiable homicide, but a subsequent federal grand jury criticized the police action as "ill-conceived". A 1982 civil lawsuit brought by the survivors and the families of Hampton and Clark resulted in a $1.85 million settlement from the City of Chicago, Cook County, and the federal government. No one was ever criminally convicted for the killings. The assassination came less than a year after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, and less than a year before the police shootings of students at Kent State University in 1970.