Kitchenette apartment living

CTL-E-1271 · Practice · other · 1915–1969

PROVISIONAL evidence grade of this record

Single-room furnished rentals, often subdivided from larger flats, that housed Black Chicagoans during the Great Migration era. Families cooked (when facilities existed) on hot plates, shared bathrooms, and doubled up in one room.

Notes

Merged into canonical KG 2026-10-03 from LIFE-001; source entity IDs: CTL-DR-LIFE-001:CTL-LIFE-E-001; source research type(s): practice.

Sources

St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (University of Chicago Press, 1945), via eScholarship dissertation
Facing History & Ourselves, 'Goin' to Chicago' (oral histories); YouTube documentary citing Chicago Commission on Race Relations (1922) and Arnold Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto (1983)
Chicago Commission on Race Relations, The Negro in Chicago (1922), via secondary video
Georgetown University College of Arts & Sciences news story

Record CTL-E-1271 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · evidence grade: PROVISIONAL · 4 sources · CTL research: LIFE-001.
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Cite as: CultureTechLens, “Kitchenette apartment living (CTL-E-1271),” CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph, October 2026. https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-e-1271/

Chicago: CultureTechLens. “Kitchenette apartment living (CTL-E-1271).” CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph. Chicago, IL: CultureTechLens, 2026. https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-e-1271/
APA: CultureTechLens. (2026). Kitchenette apartment living (CTL-E-1271) [Entity record]. CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph. https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-e-1271/
MLA: CultureTechLens. “Kitchenette apartment living (CTL-E-1271).” CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph, 2026, https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-e-1271/

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From the Archive

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Children at a meal, Chicago, 1941Photo: Russell Lee, FSA-OWI, Public Domain, via Library of Congress

Children playing in vacant lot in Negro section of Chicago, Illinois, Chicago, 1941Photo: Lee, Russell, 1903-1986, FSA-OWI, Public Domain, via Library of Congress

Hallway of a kitchenette apartment building, Chicago, 1941Photo: Russell Lee, FSA-OWI, Public Domain, via Library of Congress

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