I meet Charlie Barlow under a strange lump of a bronze sculpture standing at the edge of a park in Chicago’s Oakland neighborhood. The plaque on the pedestal reads:

“RESTORATION by Milton Mizenburg, Jr. This sculpture is dedicated to the men and women who remained in the Oakland community during difficult times and worked hard to restore its former beauty.

Charlie finishes his cigarette and takes me to see his home in the orange brick eight-story building whose tinted bay windows remind me of suburban office complexes. We walk through a quiet lobby, decorated with gigantic images of architectural details of Chicago’s landmark buildings — the kinds of pictures that hang in transitory space all over America, their neutrality designed to give less pause to visitors than bare walls.