Creature Comforts
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Lillig remembers seeing the Animal Court back in the 1980s, when he was a student at Saint Ignatius. A few years ago he developed an interest in the artists of the New Deal era and went to investigate the plaza. By that time the Addams Homes were among five developments making up the ABLA Homes, a sprawling complex of 167 buildings, and the high ideals of public housing had been swallowed up by urban blight. The sprinklers and wading pool were long gone, the pavement was cracked and strewn with litter, and Miller’s sculptures were chipped, eroded, and covered with graffiti. Less than a fifth of the units at the Addams Homes were still occupied, and most of the apartments surrounding the plaza had been boarded up.
Lillig believes the occupants of ABLA deserve better housing, but he also thinks they deserve public art, so when school let out in June he began a one-man crusade to save the Animal Court. He hooked up with the midwest chapter of the National New Deal Preservation Association and began doing research on Edgar Miller, who’d died eight years earlier at age 94. Heather Becker, president of the chapter, helped coordinate a letter-writing campaign urging CHA and city officials to keep the sculptures in their original location. Another member sent Lillig a detailed roster of about a dozen WPA stone carvers and stonecutters who’d labored on the project. Lillig contacted CHA representatives, got some press in Chicago Journal and the Sun-Times, and talked to sculpture conservator Andrzej Dajnowski, who said he’d be willing to restore the artworks.
In 1978, after the city council required municipal buildings to reserve a percentage of their construction budgets for public art, the Department of Cultural Affairs established the Chicago Public Art Program to determine how those funds would be spent. Its committee, composed of 13 city officials and four members of the local arts community, meets at least four times a year behind closed doors. But last summer, attorney Scott Hodes threatened to sue the city unless Cultural Affairs opened those doors and notified the public of meetings at least 48 hours in advance, in compliance with the Illinois Open Meetings Act.
