Housing and libraries: Chicago’s recipe for a better neighbourhood

Chicago's Independence Library and Apartments, designed by John Ronan Architects, has combined public libraries and social housing in three buildings.James Florio/Handout

You can’t miss it. The six-storey building is the tallest thing on its north-side Chicago block, and it grabs your eye with colour: dashes of purple, blue, red, turquoise, orange and a limey green run across its aluminum façade.

The architecture is proud, and also public. The building’s base holds the Independence Branch of the city’s public library, and the residences upstairs are run by the Chicago Housing Authority. That mix is unusual in North America, and the structure makes an argument for thoughtful and beautiful public architecture.

“Many public buildings don’t have dignity,” said the lead architect, John Ronan, as we walked through the library recently. “Here, the finishes aren’t fancy, but the space is grand. You feel important when you walk in.”

The library is one open room, two storeys tall and the windows onto the street allow visibility and gentle north light.James Florio/Handout

That noble idea is actually borne out in the design. The work of Ronan, a decorated local architect, and his firm, it is coherent, subtle, friendly and beautifully detailed. The library is largely one open room, two storeys tall and (as advertised) grand. Windows onto the street allow visibility and gentle north light. A few pieces of expensive furniture in the children’s area contribute to the sense of quality. A set of bleacher stairs, accented with rainbow cushions, climbs up to the main stacks area on the second level.

The materials are indeed cheap, but well handled. The poured concrete that makes up the structure is imprinted with a pattern of small vertical stripes that feel great under the fingers. And upstairs, the stacks are interspersed with tables where you can do your homework or, if you are retired, find a good read.

There are a lot of people who do just that, including the people who live upstairs. The 44 apartments, which are a mix of subsidized and market-rate, include residents who have a variety of needs, but treat the library as their living room.

Such a social mix is known as co-location. It makes a lot of sense: Programming for older people is a standby for public libraries, including the Chicago Public Library, and retired people can fill a library with life during the school day. On my visit, I saw both caregivers with little kids and elders hanging out alongside each other.

The building is designed to bring caregivers, children, elders and others together, lead architect John Ronan says.James Florio

The architecture of the building is designed to bring them together, Ronan said. A back terrace on the second floor – next to the library – is available for use by the residents, and the librarians can open its doors for the odd story time or public event. “This is a way to bring together people who might not encounter each other otherwise,” Ronan explained.

Meanwhile, upstairs, the apartments are simple but attractive. A mix of one and two bedrooms are each generously sized, designed for full physical accessibility and filled with light. Each has a balcony, whose walls and doors are painted with a single bright colour that shows up on the street façade. Its internal door is also the same colour. This makes it easy to find your way home, even if your eyesight or your memory isn’t what it used to be. It also personalizes the place. “People can look up and say, ‘the red one - that’s my home,'” Ronan said. “These are homes and not housing.”

That suggests some of the political significance of this building. In a city whose massive public-housing projects were notorious – and also targets of anti-government and racist rhetoric – making something nice, and public, is a statement in itself.

This owes something to former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel. Emanuel became a deeply controversial figure on the left, and last year he declined to run for re-election. But he did make a public commitment to design, and the Independence library is one of three housing/library blends that he leaves behind. They are “Rahm’s pet projects,” as Ronan acknowledged to me, and were built with friendly co-operation from city officials.

Each apartment balcony, whose walls and doors are painted with a single bright colour that shows up on the street façade, has an internal door of the same colour.James Florio/Handout

So they may not be easily reproduced. Certainly in Canada, the real estate deal that helped build the Independence project, involving private developer Evergreen and various public funding sources that don’t have Canadian equivalents, wouldn’t be possible right now. “We had many tools in our toolkit, and we used all of them,” David Block of Evergreen explained. (A unit of CIBC was an investor in the project, too.)

But this sort of thinking outside the box – bridging public agencies and public objectives to make good places – is incredibly valuable. One city in Canada has recently done a similar job with its Strathcona Library, opened in 2017, which combines housing run by the YWCA with a new library designed by DIALOG.

We need more urban places such as these, not only for what they do, but what they symbolize. “Affordable housing now, in expensive cities, is going to be for all of us,” Ronan said. “If you can create a good example of affordable housing, that’s the job of architects – to change people’s perception of what affordable housing is.”

Such design can make the world better, and show us what a better world could look like.