--- title: Chicago Confronts Urban Blight, 1954: A Great City at a Crossroads description: LIFE.com remembers a series of photographs made in Chicago in 1954 and featured in LIFE in the spring of 1955, focusing on what the magazine called the "encroaching menace" of the city's slums. canonical: https://time.com/3876778/city-at-a-crossroads-chicago-confronts-urban-blight-1954/ author: Liz Ronk article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2013-04-23T00:37:55.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:03:53.046Z og:title: Chicago Confronts Urban Blight, 1954: A Great City at a Crossroads og:description: LIFE.com remembers a series of photographs made in Chicago in 1954 and featured in LIFE in the spring of 1955, focusing on what the magazine called the "encroaching menace" of the city's slums. og:url: https://time.com/3876778/city-at-a-crossroads-chicago-confronts-urban-blight-1954/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1b901c97363dec97/698849dae53aba4de54dd04b/01_00977430.jpg?branch=production&width=862&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 862 og:image:height: 485 og:image:alt: Chicago 1954 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Chicago Confronts Urban Blight, 1954: A Great City at a Crossroads twitter:description: LIFE.com remembers a series of photographs made in Chicago in 1954 and featured in LIFE in the spring of 1955, focusing on what the magazine called the "encroaching menace" of the city's slums. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1b901c97363dec97/698849dae53aba4de54dd04b/01_00977430.jpg?branch=production&width=862&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # City at a Crossroads: Chicago Confronts Urban Blight, 1954 > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. by [Liz Ronk](https://time.com/author/liz-ronk/) ## Liz Ronk Apr 23, 2013 12:37 AM UTC  Caption from LIFE. "Two slum buildings, soon to be razed and replaced by vast housing project, bracket the Palmolive Building \[later the Playboy Building\] a few blocks east in Chicago." Caption from LIFE. "Two slum buildings, soon to be razed and replaced by vast housing project, bracket the Palmolive Building \[later the Playboy Building\] a few blocks east in Chicago."Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images by [Liz Ronk](https://time.com/author/liz-ronk/) ## Liz Ronk Apr 23, 2013 12:37 AM UTC Chicago is one of the world’s great cities — and most of the clichés that have long stuck to the Windy City (a nickname with origins that even Chicagoans argue about) remain anchored in truth today. It’s a sprawling, tough place; neither East nor West, but proudly anchored between; filled with people passionate about sports, food and the sometimes ugly, always entertaining rough-and-tumble of politics. The range and depth of its cultural life, meanwhile — the stellar Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Goodman Theater, the Field Museum, the Joffrey Ballet, its unmatched live comedy and on and on — are world-class. [**\[See all of TIME.com’s coverage of Chicago.\]**](http://topics.time.com/chicago/) Over the past few years, however, Chicago has seen its share of trouble. In 2012, for example, 506 Chicagoans were murdered — the majority of the victims, and their killers, from its poorest neighborhoods. New York City, by contrast, saw just over 400 murders in 2012 — a four-decade low for a city roughly three times the size of Chicago. Other large cities, like Los Angeles, have also seen their homicide rates drop, in some cases dramatically, in recent years. (Note: Thus far in 2013, Chicago’s murder rate has dropped to far below that of 2012.) Here, in recognition of the Second City’s hard times — and with confidence that it will, as it has in the past, pull itself out of this grim downward spiral — LIFE.com points to a series of photographs made in Chicago in 1954, focusing on what the magazine called the “encroaching menace” of the city’s slums. While the language used in the article might sound, for lack of a better term, rather un-P.C. today (describing Chicago’s slums, for example, as “23 festering, proliferating square miles aswarm with 800,000 human beings …”), the focus of the piece was, in fact, the question of how a great, growing American city can transform itself into a liveable place for _all_ of its citizens: a question that cities everywhere have always faced — and likely always will. [**\[See all of TIME.com’s coverage of poverty in America.\]**](http://topics.time.com/poverty-in-america/) The photographs in this gallery, meanwhile — many of which never ran in LIFE — are remarkable not only for the intensity and the intimacy found in so many of the images, but because they were made by a German-born photographer named Fritz Goro who was widely regarded as one of the most accomplished science photographers who ever lived. That a man so comfortable capturing the wonders of 20th-century science and technology could also convey the deeply human, immediate problems of urban poverty and despair speaks volumes not only about Goro’s talent, but about LIFE magazine’s often risky choices when assigning photographers to stories.  Caption from LIFE. "Two slum buildings, soon to be razed and replaced by vast housing project, bracket the Palmolive Building \[later the Playboy Building\] a few blocks east in Chicago." Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. "Extremes in housing mark a Chicago landscape. A once-fine mansion ends as a slum hovel, while beyond rises New York Life's relatively high rent (from $74 to $133 a month) housing projects." Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Children play near tenements, Chicago, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  People walk past newly built housing projects, Chicago, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Street scene, Chicago, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Little boy, Chicago, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Children play near tenements, Chicago, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Street scene, Chicago, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Police investigate a report of a crime, Chicago, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Teenagers fighting in the streets, Chicago, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Police called to a crime scene, Chicago, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Children in a city office, Chicago, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Members of the nonprofit, American Council to Improve Our Neighborhoods (ACTION), look at the inside of a gutted Chicago building they've been trying for a year to raze in order to make way for new housing, Chicago 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Interior of a house in the Chicago slums, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Interior of a house in the Chicago slums, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Family living situation in Chicago slums, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Family living situation in Chicago slums, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. "In their old home in a dark basement, Mornice Garrett and her seven children eat dinner, chicken necks boiled with spaghetti. Their two rooms lack space for either a dining table or any chairs. Newspapers help cover a floor often damp from faulty drains. At night, the six Garret daughters sleep in one double bed." Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Intern and nurses from Chicago Maternity Center deliver a child in a squalid home, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Intern and nurses from Chicago Maternity Center deliver a child in a squalid home, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Intern and nurses from Chicago Maternity Center deliver a child in a squalid home, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Family living situation in Chicago slums, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Family living situation in Chicago slums, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Family living situation in Chicago slums, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Family watches TV, Chicago, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  A girl plays jump rope in a Chicago tenement, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  A man sleeps (or is passed out) in a Chicago alley, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Street scene, Chicago, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Street scene, Chicago, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  A car passes through a Chicago neighborhood, trying to get residents to join a clean-up effort, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Women cleaning in front of a tenement house, Chicago, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Neighborhood clean-up campaign organized by Rev. Ray Day (left), Chicago, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. "A family ... moving into the new apartment buildings put up by Chicago Housing Authority to replace slums." Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. "A family living in the new apartment buildings put up by Chicago Housing Authority to replace slums." Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Child in a new apartment building put up by Chicago Housing Authority in hopes of replacing city's slums, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  A Chicago family in its new apartment, built by the Chicago Housing Authority, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Family looks out of windows of new apartment, Chicago, 1954. Fritz Goro—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Chicago, 1954. 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