GRAND BOULEVARD — Nothing is the same at the apartment building where Mary Buford raised her family.
The original entrance to her old building inside of the Rosenwald Apartments is gone, replaced by an office. The once-neglected courtyards on the side of the building are flush with grass and a rainbow of florals. In her first visit back in decades, Buford was quietly impressed at what has become of the complex.
Not that Buford was ashamed or embarrassed to have been away so long.
She’ll be the first to tell you that living in the former Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments was one of the high points of her life, and she is forever indebted to the chosen family of neighbors who saw her and her children through weddings, funerals and all of those moments in between.
But that was a lifetime ago. Most of the play aunties and uncles have died, while her chosen cousins have gone on to other parts of the country. Buford moved to the Near South Side, where she has stayed for more than 20 years.
“Sometimes I miss it. I miss the people. We looked out for each other, protected each other. We really had a family,” said Buford, smoothing the wrinkles from her Valentine’s red jumpsuit.
A Grand Opening
To understand how special the Rosenwald was, you have to go back to the construction of the building.
It started as a bold idea from the mind of retail scion Julius Rosenwald to provide safe, affordable housing to the hundreds of Black residents locked out of the American dream by limited economic opportunities, redlining and restrictive housing covenants.
The former Sears, Roebuck & Company owner had long been a champion of equal rights, serving on the city’s race relations commission in the wake of the 1919 Race Riots while building public schools and providing college scholarships for Black students across the country.
Inspired by a tour of city housing projects in Vienna, the philanthropist endeavored to build a courtyard garden-style development with serene communal areas and apartment units bathed in sunlight. Historians speculate Rosenwald also took inspiration from a similar project in New York created by fellow one-percenter John Rockefeller
The result was a cluster of five-story art moderne buildings featuring arts and crafts brickwork designed by award-winning architect Ernest Grunsfeld Jr., Rosenwald’s nephew.
When the Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments opened in 1929 — three years before Rosenwald’s death — the $3 million “city within a city” was roundly praised by residents and the press for its modern design, chic amenities and details like the parquet floors that graced the community room.
The complex spanned an entire city block from 46th to 47th streets between Michigan and Wabash avenues and contained 421 one-, two-, three- and four-bedroom apartments with ground-floor retail.
Elevators were a luxury back then, so residents would have to get used to walking up as many as five flights of stairs, but the rooms were airy, spacious and modern, and the development boasted a garden and fountain.
Rosenwald’s reasons weren’t purely altruistic; the capitalist also wanted to show providing affordable housing to Black people could be profitable, grandson Peter Ascoli notes in his biography, “Julius Rosenwald: The Man Who Built Sears, Roebuck and Advanced the Cause of Black Education in the American South.”
Historian Maribel Morey also challenged the perception of Rosenwald as a compassionate philanthropist, pointing to an excerpt from a 1911 letter in which the retail magnate readily admits that “equality is furthest from his mind.”
Building manager Robert Taylor (yes, that Robert Taylor) penned a 10-part series on housing for the Chicago Defender in 1931 in which he held up the apartment complex as an example of capitalism for the greater good, encouraging the public and private sectors to unite in solving the housing issue as Black families were relegated to substandard living conditions in poorly maintained apartment buildings.
“It is good business as well as good citizenship to replace our many undesirable and potentially dangerous dwellings with houses where tenants can be safe and comfortable and rear their children among beautiful, wholesome surroundings,” Taylor wrote.
In the early days, the Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments were largely occupied by city, state and federal employees, railway workers, business professionals and teachers who underwent a vigorous screening process that included credit checks and home visits to prospective tenants. Only 2,000 individuals and families would make the cut. New arrivals would come each year with families and stories of their own, from boxer Joe Louis to Grammy-winning producer Quincy Jones.
Even the family at the center of the 1951 Cicero race riot, the Clarks, lived there for a time after an angry white mob burned down their home.
The complex features prominently in old Defender society pages, where readers could keep tabs on the comings and goings of residents from well-respected Black Chicago families, from bridge club meetings to wedding announcements.
High And Lows
The next 70 years would be a series of highs and lows for not only the residents, but the massive development itself.
A plan to convert the complex into condominiums in the early ’60s was roundly rejected by residents who pushed to keep the Rosenwald affordable. Residents saw a revolving door of owners and management companies in the decades to follow. The complex fell under CHA control and conditions quickly deteriorated until the city closed it in fall 2000.
Sixteen years would pass before the CHA reopened Rosenwald’s giant gates to welcome residents — some for a second time. The following year, in 2017, Rosenwald Courts became a city landmark.
Efforts are underway to have Julius Rosenwald honored with a national park, The Associated Press reported in July.
What had been a sprawling complex once symbolizing upward mobility for Black families in the early 20th century is a much more quiet place now. The air in and around Rosenwald Courts — renamed upon the building’s reopening in 2016 — is calm. Most of the residents are older people; the rest, families.
Managed by Mercy Housing, the development has 239 one- and two-bedroom apartments. Outside of the occasional gathering in the Rosenwald’s community room, people stay indoors.
Twenty-five years ago, Buford was locked in a bitter battle with city officials to keep the historical building from closing. A lot of the people who fought at her side are gone now.
Among them: Buford’s friend Bobbie Johnson, who never gave up her mission to return, advocating for the Rosenwald’s reopening until her last breath. A plaque bearing Johnson’s name and photo now hangs prominently in the main office foyer.
It was Johnson who mobilized residents as news of the Rosenwald’s closing began to spread. She was a fixture at community meetings, often going toe to toe with former Ald. Dorothy Tillman, who believed the development was no longer habitable because of a gas leak. Tillman told potential developers she wasn’t interested in preserving the complex, according to the Tribune. Most residents, including Johnson, believed that was an exaggeration.
It didn’t matter. The moving trucks eventually came.
Bronzeville Historical Society Founder Sherry Williams told Block Club her friend faced her own housing challenges after she left, as did many of Johnson’s neighbors.
Johnson “certainly did not want to leave Bronzeville. And at the same time this was happening, we’re looking at the demolition [of] public housing along State Street. So imagine that flood of people who needed housing all at the same time. They were mostly women with children,” Williams said.
Johnson would still fight for the Rosenwald and the community, creating cybertech cafes for teens and helping to fund trips for neighborhood kids. Regardless of where she lived, Bronzeville was home, Williams said.
‘I Knew I Wanted To Live There One Day’
Buford, a mom of four, can still remember her early days in Drew, Mississippi, a town in the heart of the Delta best known for being “too dangerous” for Black folks, she said.
Born into a family of sharecroppers, Buford learned how to pick cotton at her grandmother’s side, she said. Her mother died young, and her father — along with his seven siblings — joined the second wave of the Great Migration, chasing the promise of equality northern cities feigned to offer.
Stepping off the train in Chicago as an anxious 9-year-old in 1961, Buford clung to her grandmother’s sleeve, nerves and excitement coursing through her tiny frame. They settled into a building not far from the Rosenwald with other relatives who’d come up before, she said.
“I used to walk by the Rosenwald all the time on the way to [Drake Elementary], and I thought it was so nice. I knew I wanted to live there one day,” Buford said.
The legend of the Rosenwald loomed large for many Black South Siders who saw the development as a way of “moving on up.” It was home to musicians and writers like Nat King Cole and Gwendolyn Brooks. The reputation of the building is what drew Buford in.
She’d get her chance years later as a young newlywed with three new additions to the family, daughters Belinda, Melinda and Bernita. Son Chester would come later.
Buford immediately immersed herself in the scene, often joining other parents on the benches framing the building’s interior courtyard as they kept an eye on the children in the nearby playground, she said. The friends had a system: If one left, the other would stand watch, and if a conflict arose between their children, The Village would work to find a peaceful resolution.
Back then, making friends was easy, especially when you lived in the same building as your classmates, Belinda Buford said. It wasn’t uncommon to see mothers leading lines of preschoolers past the Hall Branch Library en route to Overton Elementary on Indiana Avenue.
“My mom walked us every day until we became old enough to walk ourselves and we’d walk with one another. It would be the same routine when we became teenagers, the same group walking the same route,” Belinda Buford said.
“We’d have different kids who would move in the building over time. You get to know them and their families, they get to know you and yours. You weren’t just ‘first name, last name;’ you were also ‘so-and-so’s daughter’ or daughters.”
That’s how the Bufords met the Pattons.
The Latchkey Crew
Brothers Raylon, Therron, Reggie, Eric and Lenard Patton moved into the Rosenwald in the early ‘70s with their mother, who worked at the post office, said Raylon Patton. He can still see the lush plots of grass that led to the entrance of their fifth-floor walkup.
Tasked with overseeing his younger siblings, Raylon Patton was known for his tall frame and quick wit. He quickly earned a reputation as a protector with a mischievous streak, he said.
He and his crew would venture onto the roof to watch the world below, or hide from one another in one of the underground tunnels while playing “It.” The freedom of being a latchkey kid brought with it endless possibilities, he said.
“We had so much fun back then. Between playing around in the building and taking trips to Great America with the ward precinct captain, there was always something to do,” said Patton.
But as Raylon Patton and his brothers grew older, that feeling of freedom gave way to fear. They’d soon find themselves involved in a turf war they didn’t ask for and couldn’t walk away from, caught between the boys from the nearby Robert Taylor Homes and the gangs who wanted them to pick a side.
Life became about survival, he said.
Patton recently finished writing a memoir chronicling his exploits as a young man. “From A Gangster to God’s Disciple” details the incident at the Rosenwald that changed his life forever:
“I was in eighth grade, and I wanted to play ball with my best friend at the time, Big Chris. Mama told me not to go, but I went anyway.
“Some guys came out of nowhere picking on us, and we’re fighting with them. It was, like, six of them against two of us. We both decided to run because there were too many of them to keep fighting. As we’re running through the back of the building, we cut through all these trees that they cut down in the building. Out of nowhere, Chris pulled one of the three branches and it swung back and hit me dead in the eye. It was so bad, I was scared to go home. I hid at my cousin, Joe Joe’s, house ‘til his mama came and made me go home.”
Raylon Patton underwent two operations to save his eyesight, he said. Doctors constructed a special contact lens that enabled him to see out of his right eye for a time until he lost it, he said.
Patton said his penchant for trouble would put him on a first-name basis with the local beat cops.
A two-year stint downstate for drug possession in the mid-’90s forced Patton to turn his life around, he said. He became active in Bright Star Church, where his cousin Chris Harris leads worship services, and worked several jobs while starting a cleaning company.
In 1999, Johnson reached out to him to help circulate petitions against plans to shut down the Rosenwald, Patton said. Though he didn’t know her as intimately as Buford and others, he said he remembers being “honored” by the gesture.
Four years ago, Patton received clemency from Gov. JB Pritzker, something he had been seeking for years. While the decision to chart a different path was fraught at times, Patton said he’s a better man for it.
“I made it through,” he said. “I’m proof.”
The father of 10 and grandfather of 15 now works maintenance at the University of Chicago in Hyde Park. After a dozen years working at a chemical company and three years at the CTA, it’s a welcome change, he said.
He hopes readers of his memoir will come away knowing that transformation is possible.
“Respect is one of the main things I was taught in the Rosenwald, even when I came back from prison,” he said. “Respect for the elders was important, and if you didn’t respect them you were gonna get checked. If Candy’s mama whooped me, I’m not going back to tell because I know it was for a reason.”
‘It Was The Kids Who Brought The Neighbors Together’
There was so much life at the Rosenwald when Carletha Ousley and her family moved into the complex in the early ’70s, she said.
She and her best friend fell into a group of kids that included Raylon Patton and spent their days adventuring on the roof or in the basement, she said. There were trips to Mr. Prince’s corner store, one of several storefronts in the development, for penny candy and pickles, and to the adjacent hoagie shop that sold scoops of ice cream on perfectly-sized sugar cones.
The echoes of children’s laughter still play in Ousley’s head from time to time, she said. The animated voices of oldheads gossiping on the benches still come in clear, too.
But now, it’s just quiet.
The complex is divided into two sections, with senior residents on one side and families on the other. Neighbors enter the building through one of two main entrances using a keyfob to access the elevators that take them to their units.
The once-dim hallways are now bright with art and photographs adorning the walls. If there have been complaints about the building’s upkeep, Ousley hasn’t heard them. Management is responsive and maintenance issues are addressed right away, she said.
Ousley returned to Rosewald in 2020, nearly 40 years after her family left their four-bedroom apartment for a house in Brainerd. The retired paralegal moved into a well-appointed one-bedroom apartment, hoping to recapture some of the magic from the old days and reconnect with friends after living in Tennessee with her sister for several years, she said.
But residents keep to themselves now, and the benches decorating the courtyard remain empty for the most part, Ousley said. Occasionally she’ll see a neighbor walking their dog across the lawn or a toddler trying to escape from a worried mom.
“It was the kids who brought the neighbors together. That’s how people started getting to know one another, how friendships were built. Everyone’s kinda separated now,” Ousley said as she sat in her living room.
The community events calendar for residents isn’t nearly as packed as it once was, she said. Building management has gotten stricter, too.
“Can’t smoke here anymore. Not even in your unit. They’ve evicted folks for it,” Ousley said. She doesn’t mind that rule. She quit years ago.
“And you can’t be in the courtyard after 10 p.m. They make sure.”
Ousley faithfully attends the Rosenwald reunion in Washington Park every August, where old friends return with new loves and family members and stories. They catch up in the grove until sundown, sipping from red Solo cups as old-school hip-hop plays in the background and the smell of grilled chicken wafts through the air, always promising to see each other next year. And they do, until they don’t.
Ousley’s time at the Rosenwald is featured prominently in the book she’s writing about her life. She said that part of her life is something her four children — now grown and raising children of their own — hadn’t been privy to before.
“People tell me they want to take pictures with me because that means they’ll live,” Ousley said with a laugh. “They said that all the people in the photos by themselves wind up passing away before the next reunion.”
Still, it’s time to go. Whatever magic the grandmother of nine was trying to capture is gone, and Ousley is packing boxes to move to the South Loop. She hopes to find an apartment in the next few weeks.
“I’ve always wanted to live close to Downtown. I think it would be fun,” Ousley said.
As for Mary Buford, she’s happy with where she is now. The building she’s called home for 15 years is quiet and the neighborhood walkable. Most of her children are living their lives in different states with the exception of Chester, who remained close to the city.
Would Buford come back to the Rosenwald to live?
“Nope,” she chuckled. “Absolutely not.”
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