Doomed Almost From the Start

44-Year-Old Chicago Project Faces the Last Wrecking Ball

CHICAGO The menacing row of concrete apartment towers where four of Katie Sistrunk's children were shot is almost all gone now, replaced by weeds and fields, mud and memories.

The cagelike balconies that looked like prison tiers to Beauty Turner have all but disappeared.

The gangs that peddled crack to Krystal McCraney Moore have found new places to haunt.

One hollow-eyed lookout still paces at the entrance of the last high-rise, watching for police so he can alert drug dealers who lurk in the graffiti-scarred, darkened stairwells.

This is the end of the Robert Taylor Homes, the final days of what once was the nation's largest housing project. Four decades ago, its 28 towers overflowed with thousands of some of the poorest people in America. Now there's just one rotting building and a few dozen holdout tenants.

This month, the stragglers will leave, some reluctantly, a step ahead of the wrecking ball.

The rise and fall of Taylor is the story of a Great Society promise that became a debacle, of intimidating high-rises that became a national symbol of failure, of a community that, at times, became a war zone.

It's also the story of poor people who survived an unforgiving world of roaches and rats, frozen pipes and broken elevators, vicious gangs and drugs -- but still mourn a place they called home.

"It's the end of an era," says Turner, a resident for 16 years who became an activist and chronicler of public housing. "It's the end of a community. You can say the people who made it through these buildings had the courage of a lion and the strength of an elephant. . . . But they had no say, they were voiceless."

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The obituary for the Taylor Homes might read this way:

Born in 1962. Welcomed by politicians with fanfare. Doomed by age 5. Ailing for decades. Dead at age 44. Among the causes: mismanagement, shrinking federal dollars, government blundering, neglect, poor design, drugs and, above all, too many poor people packed in too little space.