Hilliard Tower Apartments

Opened by the Chicago Housing Authority as Raymond Hilliard Homes, this innovative 12-acre complex features two 16-story cylindrical towers and two 18-story curved towers. This careful composition of buildings in a park-like setting maximizes the amount of open space and weaves together community spaces shared by young and old residents. Unlike architect Bertrand Goldberg’s famed Marina City, which is a core-supported structure, Hilliard Tower Apartments is engineered like an eggshell, which Goldberg described "as more efficient than a tree.” Approaching the commission in the early 1960s, Goldberg made clear his belief that all people regardless of income level deserved good architecture, not the cheap, featureless buildings often used to “warehouse” the poor. It is no coincidence that as other public housing projects were being razed across Chicago in the 2000s, Hilliard was being renovated. It now contains more than 650 units of mixed-income senior housing.