O’block

Parkway Gardens Apartment Homes, commonly also known as O'Block, is a gated private apartment complex in the Greater Grand Crossing community area on the border of Woodlawn and Washington Park, on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois.^[2] The complex was built from 1950 to 1955; architect Henry K. Holsman, who planned several of Chicago's affordable housing developments, designed the Modernist buildings.

The complex is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and has become one of Chicago's most violent blocks, being the epicenter for crime, gang, and drug activity, and serving as a hub for the Black Disciplesand the Gangster Disciples.^[3][4]

Parkway Gardens Apartment Homes, built from 1950 to 1955, was the last of Henry K. Holsman's many housing development designs in Chicago. Holsman began designing low-income housing in Chicago in the 1910s when an urban housing shortage developed after World War I. He worked on several of the Chicago Housing Authority's major housing projects in the 1910s; later in the decade, he began developing his projects with funding from the Federal Housing Authority. From the 1940s onward, Holsman focused on designing residences for Chicago's African-Americancitizens, such as his Princeton Parkcommunity.^[5][6]

While Chicago's African-American population boomed from 1920 to 1970 due to the Great Migrations, discriminatory housing policies forced African-Americans to live in the "Black Belt" section of the city's South Side, which did not have enough housing to meet demands. After completing the Winchester-Hood and Lunt-Lake Apartments on the North Side, Holsman began work on the similarly designed Parkway Gardens as a return to the South Side African-American community. The complex replaced the White City Amusement Park, which had operated at the site since 1905. Holsman's firm went bankrupt before the complex opened due to unsound financial decisions, one of which resulted in Holsman's conviction for mail fraud.^[7]