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14 flagships · 25 briefs staged (weekly from Oct 13) · 9 dossiers · 25 guides · 2,822 entities — record updated October 6, 2026

The Mecca (Mecca Flats)

CTL-E-2640 · Address · building · 1891-1952

PROVISIONAL evidence grade of this record

The Mecca Flats apartment building at 3334-3360 S. State Street (34th & State), Chicago - at its 1891-92 construction the largest apartment building in the United States. All-white until 1911, then a center of Black middle-class life; immortalized in Jimmy Blythe's 'Mecca Flats Blues' (1924) and Gwendolyn Brooks's 'In the Mecca' (1968). Acquired by Illinois Institute of Technology and demolished January 1952 for Mies van der Rohe's S.R. Crown Hall.

The record

Notes

RELP62 new entity (2026-10-06). The batch queue labeled it 'The Mecca (38th & State)'; every located source places it at 3334 S. State (34th & State). Address-label conflict recorded as CTL-CFL-001813; documented address adopted.

Relationships

Sources

Record CTL-E-2640 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · evidence grade: PROVISIONAL · 1 source · 2 mapped relationships · CTL research: RELP-001.
Directory: all entity records · the knowledge graph

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Cite as: CultureTechLens, “The Mecca (Mecca Flats) (CTL-E-2640),” CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph, October 2026. https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-e-2640/

Chicago: CultureTechLens. “The Mecca (Mecca Flats) (CTL-E-2640).” CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph. Chicago, IL: CultureTechLens, 2026. https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-e-2640/
APA: CultureTechLens. (2026). The Mecca (Mecca Flats) (CTL-E-2640) [Entity record]. CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph. https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-e-2640/
MLA: CultureTechLens. “The Mecca (Mecca Flats) (CTL-E-2640).” CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph, 2026, https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-e-2640/

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From the Archive

The archive in pictures

The people, places, and institutions this work documents. Photographs from the CultureTechLens research record — rights-cleared, credited, and cited like everything else here.

The Wabash Avenue YMCA, Chicago
The Wabash Avenue YMCA, ChicagoPhoto: Andrew Jameson, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Chicago Blues All-Stars performing live at Buddy Guy’s Legends, Chicago
Chicago Blues All-Stars performing live at Buddy Guy’s Legends, ChicagoPhoto: BluesAllstars, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Overton Hygienic Building, 3619–6227 S. State St., Chicago — Anthony Overton’s Black Metropolis business headquarters
The Overton Hygienic Building, 3619–6227 S. State St., Chicago — Anthony Overton’s Black Metropolis business headquartersPhoto: Andrew Jameson, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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