Lee Bey: The Urban Observer

(photos courtesy of Life Magazine)

Over the years, I've read about the long-gone Mecca apartments in Bronzeville. I interviewed the old timers who remember it---I even heard the blues song about it. But I'd never actually seen the building until now.

And here it is above. One of three arcade apartments built in Chicago. The Yale and the Brewster are still with us. The Mecca (demolished shortly after this photograph was taken in 1951) was sacrificed to build Crown Hall at IIT, a stellar piece of architecture in its own right, but I do wish we could have had them both today.

This photo and the ones below come courtesy of Life magazine. The digitized archives of the once world-famous photo magazine are now only a Google away. See the archive here. And there's more to come. The Google people are going to add 10 million photos over the next few months.

Naturally I was drawn to the Chicago stuff.

Look here! Architect Harry Weese, sitting outside one of his designs in 1958:

The cores of Marina City going up:

The TIME magazine reading room at the Chicago 1933 World's Fair.

Himself, 1960:

Paul Newman and Arthur Miller (with the cigarette) at the 1968 DNC:

The Rev. Jesse Jackson and Jesse Jackson Jr, 1968 at Operation Breadbasket:

 And we end where we began: