Ida B. Wells Homes

Ida B. Wells Homes
Building within the Ida B. Wells Homes seen from East Oakwood Boulevard and South Cottage Grove Avenue, 1978.
Map
General information
LocationBounded by 35th Street, Pershing Road, King Drive, and Cottage Grove Avenue
Chicago, Illinois
 United States
StatusDemolished
Construction
Constructed1939–41; Ida B. Wells Homes
1961; Darrow Homes
1970; Madden Park Homes
Demolished2002–11
Other information
Governing
body
Chicago Housing Authority (CHA)

The Ida B. Wells Homes, which also comprised the Clarence Darrow Homes and Madden Park Homes, was a Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) public housing project located in the heart of the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois. It was bordered by 35th Street to the north, Pershing Road (39th Street) to the south, Cottage Grove Avenue to the east, and Martin Luther King Drive to the west. The Ida B. Wells Homes consisted of rowhouses, mid-rises, and high-rise apartment buildings, first constructed 1939 to 1941 to house African American tenants. They were closed and demolished beginning in 2002 and ending in 2011.

Ida B. Wells (1862-1931), the civil rights advocate and investigative journalist, had lived nearby in the decades before the Homes were built, and The Light of Truth Ida B. Wells National Monument was dedicated in the neighborhood in 2022.