effort, forming the South Side Planning Board and working with city officials.

After the broad plan had been drawn up, the New York Life Insurance Company was induced to invest in a large pioneering project in middle income, racially integrated housing. The Lake Meadows enterprise ultimately covered over 100 acres, including ten high-rise buildings with a total of 2,033 residential units. The public contribution consisted of assembling and clearing the site, providing a "write-down" of the land cost to a level which was competitive with outlying areas in inducing development, relocating former occupants, vacating and adjusting streets, rerouting utilities and modifying the zoning. In addition, the school board and the park district

1

## 2. Air View, Northward across Thirty-Fifth Street of the Michael Reese-Lake Meadows-Prairie Shores Redevelopment, Late 1950's

Running along the left of the photograph is South Parkway (Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive). East of it are five twelve-story buildings, and behind them is a luxury apartment building and four twenty-one story buildings, all part of the Lake Meadows project. Beyond them, on King Drive, three of the five apartment buildings which make up Prairie Shores had been completed. Immediately east is the enlarged plant of the Michael Reese Hospital. Many of the buildings in the immediate foreground were subsequently removed to make way for additional renewal projects, and Doolittle School, located in the right foreground, was expanded.

(Photograph, Marti Studios Incorporated, Courtesy Municipal Reference Service.)

2