29/11/2021
Robert Rochon Taylor (April 12, 1899 – March 1, 1957) was an American housing activist and banker. A founder of the Illinois Federal Savings and Loan, a mortgager for black residents of Chicago's South Side, Taylor was the first black member of the Chicago Housing Authority and later its chairman. The Robert Taylor Homes, a public housing project completed in 1962, was named for Taylor.
Taylor was born in 1899 in Tuskegee, Alabama. Taylor was the son of Robert Robinson Taylor, an architect and professor at the Tuskegee Institute, and Beatrice Francis Taylor. He studied architecture at Howard University, then completed his bachelor's degree in business at the University of Illinois in 1925.[1]
First practicing as an architect in Chicago, Taylor began financing real estate projects.[2] In addition to building many single family homes on the South Side, Taylor managed the Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments, among the first subsidized rental apartments meant to house black residents.[3] The project was financially backed by Sears Roebuck president Julius Rosenwald. In 1934, Taylor became general manager of the Illinois Federal Savings and Loan to support mortgage lending to black Chicagoans.[2][3]
