Mecca Flats was an apartment complex in Chicago completed in 1892 and originally built as a hotel for visitors to the World's Columbian Exposition.[1] The building was designed by Willoughby J. Edbrooke and Franklin Pierce Burnham. Franklin Pierce Burnham was not related to Daniel Burnham. The 96-unit Mecca Flats became an apartment complex after the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and is also known as the Mecca Apartments to some.[2]
After the Exposition when the building was converted to apartments, rooms were leased only to white tenants at first. This policy was later reversed and the building became home to mostly middle-class black families.[3] IIT razed the building in 1952 after a decade-long fight with tenants who aimed to prevent its destruction.[4] S.R. Crown Hall, designed by Mies van der Rohe, replaced the building. Portions of the building's basement floor were unearthed in 2018 and subsequently displayed by IIT's architectural school, which is located in S.R. Crown Hall.
The building inspired a song by Jimmy Blythe titled "Mecca Flats Blues" and a poem, "In the Mecca", by poet Gwendolyn Brooks.[1]
^ abAltshuler, Joseph (20 July 2018). "Historic Mecca Flats apartment building unearthed in Chicago". The Architect's Newspaper. Retrieved 8 August 2018.
^"Building History | The Mecca Apartments". buildinghistory.iit.edu. Retrieved 2018-11-21.
^Olumhense, Ese (6 August 2018). "Long-demolished World's Fair building unearthed at IIT, tells story of Chicago's racial divide". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 8 August 2018.
^Bluestone, Daniel (1 December 1998). "Chicago's Mecca Flat Blues". Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. 57 (4). Society of Architectural Historians: 382–403. doi:10.2307/991458. JSTOR 991458.
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