Holsman’s low-rise forays into the Hyde Park and South Shore neighborhoods were successful enough that he moved on to taller buildings: an eight-story building containing fourteen apartments at 5617 Dorchester (1928),[i] and a fourteen-story tower with twelve apartments, each taking up a whole floor, around the corner at 1321 E. 56th Street (1929-30).[ii] The taller structure on 56th was planned with “sky playgrounds” for children on the upper floors, and what was becoming a trademark for Holsman’s developments, an “English basement,” or split-level first floor that provided privacy for the first story of residences and easy access from the street for boilers and service rooms below. Holsman argued for higher quality in these buildings—neither was a “shirtfront affair,” according to contemporary press accounts, meaning that they were designed with face brick and stone ornament on all four sides, not just the street fronts. Because residents had financial stakes in the buildings, he suggested, they were willing to see such improvements as investments. Developers of traditional rentals had no such incentives; as commodity housing, their projects emphasized cost over value. Co-ops, or “Mutual Ownership,” in Holsman’s words, not only democratized equity; they also encouraged better building.
That distinction in terms proved important when the Depression hit. Traditional co-ops had no out clauses; if a shareholder went bankrupt, the remaining co-operative was on the hook for their annual rent. Holsman’s arrangements were subtly different. His real estate firm, Parker, Holsman, Leigh, Inc., actively managed these buildings, and non-payment of the monthly rents terminated a shareholder’s rights to their unit. Other owners were spared both the cost of absorbing the obligations of bankrupted residents and the awkward, fraught legal process of ejecting a one-time neighbor from their homes. After the 1929 crash, co-ops throughout the city suffered huge defections and failures. The eight Mutual Ownership projects that Holsman had built by then, however, remained solvent. “Not one person in these eight buildings in eight years has taken a loss on account of such investment,” Holsman told the Tribune in November 1931.[iii]
By that point, though, his market had been fairly safe. All of these developments were in the relatively stable environs of the University of Chicago, within a mile or two of campus and—if not immune to the financial crisis enveloping Chicago and the world, at least not as volatile as other parts of town more directly impacted by the stock market or the Depression’s crushing losses in manufacturing. Holsman’s focus gradually shifted; he and his design and development companies sought ways to use the technical innovation he brought from his automotive experience to address the growing housing crisis in Chicago.
He had a bully pulpit that allowed him to publicize the cause of good housing. As former president of the Illinois AIA, he was a familiar name to the profession, and he lectured widely on the need for modern developments to house not only Chicago’s population—which grew explosively as the Great Migration brought refugees from the Jim Crow South north—but residents throughout the nation. He authored a 1933 report, sponsored by the national AIA, that decried conditions in Chicago’s expanding Black belt, where absentee, largely white landlords charged exorbitant rents for sub-standard rentals—often carved into small “kitchenette” apartments that proved vulnerable to fire. Speaking to the Tribune in the wake of the report’s release, he argued that
“Modern building methods and financial organization…can provide good fireproof homes in this region for from three to six times the present population and leave one-half the land for open air gardens and playgrounds at a cost to tenants of about what they now have to pay.”[iv]
While Holsman was best known at the time for the Mutual Ownership scheme, the “modern building methods” he spoke of soon came to define his operation. In 1934, he was commissioned to design a model farm house for Chicago’s Century of Progress Exhibition. His effort didn’t gain the attention of the Keck Brothers’ two “houses of tomorrow,” but he was nonetheless able to experiment with—and to show off—new techniques that would become part of his palette in the coming decade. The house was supported and enclosed by precast concrete panels clad in face brick, which allowed rapid construction by modestly skilled workers. The end result, though, was a house that appeared to be of finished masonry.[v] Those precast panels supported floors of poured-in-place concrete, formed by v-shaped steel pans left in place to create ceiling surfaces for the spaces below. The house’s windows were double-paned glass—an early effort at insulated glazing that predated the introduction of commercially available “Thermopane” by five years.[vi]
“Re-inforced Brick Panels Used in World’s Fair House.” American Builder and Building Age, vol. 56, no. 7. July 1, 1934. 41.
Such efforts won Holsman leadership roles on early Chicago Housing Authority projects, in particular the Frances Cabrini Rowhouses (1942). He led a team of architects designing 586 units for the sixteen-acre site, bringing with him ideas about economic massing and construction.[vii] Stacking two-story family apartments above English basement one-bedroom units intended for elderly residents saved on stairs and height. Holsman pioneered new concrete finishes for interior floors and developed precast stairs that could be quickly installed, saving time and labor.[viii] These rowhouses would be overshadowed by the later high rises that transformed their tightly organized townscape into Cabrini-Green. But in their early years, they proved remarkably successful; originally intended to replace slum housing in a largely Italian-American neighborhood, the development was quickly converted into wartime worker housing. Black and white residents alike were housed there, and while not without incident, it proved to be a relatively harmonious development. Holsman led one other major wartime housing project: Princeton Park, at Wentworth and 95th, which was completed in 1944. It featured 256 two-story townhomes, initially laid out along winding streets and eventually expanded to more than 1,000 units across 80 acres. Privately funded but supported by Reconstruction Finance Corporation funds and FHA mortgage insurance, Princeton Park was, at the time, the “largest privately owned housing project” for Black residents in the U.S.[ix]
Holsman’s attitudes toward race were progressive; he saw housing for Black Chicagoans as a particularly important problem and aimed much of his effort at addressing the unique socio-economic challenges faced by those coming north as part of the Great Migration. In his office, he hired and mentored at least two Black engineers—Lemuel G. McDougal, who went on to become Chief Superintendent for the CHA’s Associated Housing Architects, and George M. Jones, a University of Michigan graduate who was part of the consortium designing the Cabrini rowhouses.[x]
The next phase of Holsman’s career—also the most productive—would see his firms accelerate development in both construction technology and financing to address the demographic boom accompanying the postwar era. He would be credited with designing “the only modern things in Chicago,” and would play a crucial role in another protégé’s career, one that changed the city’s skyline and lakefront.
[cont.]
[i] “Plans Unique Building For Harlem-North.” Chicago Daily Tribune, Feb 20, 1927. B3.
[ii] Al Chase, “Fourteen Story Co-operative Apartments for Hyde Park.” Chicago Daily Tribune, Feb 17, 1929. B1
[iii] “Here’s Group Of 8 Co-Ops That Are 100% Full: All Designed By Henry K. Holsman.” Chicago Daily Tribune, Nov 1, 1931. 24.
[iv] “Houses Better Than Weapons…” New York Herald Tribune, May 21, 1933. C2
[v] “Re-inforced Brick Panels Used in World’s Fair House.” American Builder and Building Age,vol. 56, no. 7. Jul 1, 1934. 41.
[vi] The Country Home Model Farm House (New York: Cromwell Publishing Co., 1934). 8-9.
[vii] D. Bowly & D.J. Bowly, D. J. The Poorhouse : Subsidized Housing In Chicago. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978). 31-32.
[viii] Al Chase, “New Construction Methods Save Time and Materials in CHA Housing.” Chicago Daily Tribune, Aug 23, 1942. B10
[ix] Al Chase, “War Workers Move into Big Home Project: Section of Princeton Park Completed.” Chicago Daily Tribune. Jun 11, 1944. A7.
[x] “Race Architect to Work On $7,000,000 Project,” The Chicago Defender, Dec 9, 1939. 2; and “McDougal Named Chief Of Housing Architects.” The Chicago Defender, Nov 14, 1942. 24