(photos by Lee Bey)

I drove past 37th and Vincennes twice this week, just to check on our old friend, the former Sixth Presbyterian Church. The edifice--shuttered for years--is one of a few buildings standing where the old Madden/Wells/Darrow public housing complexes once were.

The church is disintegrating. The stone face above the rose window is falling, revealing the underside of the roof. There are holes in the steeple and metal bracing holding the front entry. A canopy has been erected to protect passerby from falling pieces. What a difference a year makes, Here's the church in March 2008, looking almost salvagable:

At any rate, here are more images from June 30 and July 1.

(photos by Lee Bey)

The planned razing of Michael Reese Hospital took a quiet, but significant, step forward today as the city's Public Building Commission asked contractors to submit qualifications to demolish the 37-acre medical campus.

In the announcement, the PBC said it seeks prime contractors to tear down the entire 29-building complex, including Main Reese--a six-story Prairie School structure from 1907 that lies at the core of the campus--and a cluster of modernist buildings on the south end of the once-great medical institution that bear the stamp of Bauhaus great Walter Gropius, according to preservationist Grahm Balkany.

The RFQ comes three days after members of International Olympic Committee visited the city--and the site--in their assessment of Chicago's 2016 Olympic Bid. The city seeks to build an Olympic Village on the former hospital campus. 

Among the lost would be:

Levinson Building (1953) 503 E. 31st

Wexler Pavilion (1962) 2960 S. Lake Park

Seigel Pavilion (1970)  3033 S. Cottage Grove

Main Reese (1907) 2839 S. Ellis

(L-R) Klein Woman's Hospital & Kunstader Children's Hospital (1970) 539 E. 29th; Florsheim Memorial Library (1935) 3033 S. Cottage Grove; Dreyfuss Research Lab (1965) 504 E. 29th.

Rothchild Center (1928) 2816 S. Ellis

Laz Chapman Pathology Institute (1965) 505 E. 29th

Max Straus Tumor Clinic (date unknown [to me]) 29th and Lake Park

And even, perhaps, this marble marker on Lake Park south of 29th Street, honoring the site where the game of softball was invented:

A quarter-mile of underground tunnels built in 1952 that run the length of the former hospital site are also part of the demolition. The winning contractor is expected to being work in July and have the site clearance "substantially completed" by October 1, 2010, according to the PBC.

The RFQ is pretty good reading, with maps and other info of interest.

(photos by Lee Bey)

The Urban Observer has devoted a lot of space to abandoned and half-dead houses of worship. With Easter upon us, I figured it was time to give some praise to place that is very much alive: Liberty Baptist Church at 49th and King Drive.

Built in 1954 for $500,000, imagine the splash this modernist beauty must have made back then.  With that paraboloid roof and acres of glass panes smiling beneath, the church joyfully disrupts the sober line of graystones and other early 20th century buildings along King Drive; a big fast Coupe DeVille, flashing its way to the front of a pack of Model Ts.

The church is the work of architect William Alderman.

I like the script here. Especially how the "L" in "Liberty" pays homage to the curve of the roof:

Here's a shot showing the church's great color scheme:

Liberty was built by black people for a black congregation--worth noting because many of the city's fine religious edifices were built by white congregations who moved out. At a time when black folk were still often deprived of basic rights, here is a 1,600 church as modern as Peyton Place--complete with nursery, kitchen, terrazzo floors, acoustical ceiling tiles...the works. The architect, Alderman, was white.

A 90ft bell tower was also planned, but was never built. Too bad. That would have been fun to see (and hear) on Easter.

(photos by Lee Bey)

At the Urban Observer, we like midcentury moderism. So much so that I stood up on my brakes while traveling down Ogden Avenue in Brookfield recently, just to pull over and get a better look at this beauty.

I wish I could tell you more about it, other than it's an active Citibank branch at 9009 Ogden in the westerm suburb. I'm going to take a wild wild guess and say it was built in 1965. The circular pavilion is held aloft by these stainless steel-clad buttresses. The building is in mighty fine condition. Peep through the glass: the bank looks as if it has retained a lot of Googie goodness on the interior:

If I discover anything about the building's history, I'll pass it on.

(photos by Lee Bey)

The shuttered former Sixth Presbyterian Church near 37th and Vincennes was always on borrowed time. As I photographed the church over the weekend, I was fairly convinced that its time just might be up. 

It looks as if a relatively recent fire has damaged the building. It sits alone and isolated; a relic of  keeping watch as the community around it is bulldozed and rebuilt for the second time in the church's 130 year history. And...perhaps...awaiting a judgment day of its own.

(photos by Lee Bey)

(photos by Lee Bey)

Above: A Ford Galaxie 500---if that isn't the coolest name for a car, I don't know what is---is on the receiving end of an earthly parking ticket in the Beverly neighborhood.

And below: A 1957 Chevy Bel-Air two door at a gas station near Flossmoor. The car is red in real life:

 And here--A mirror sits on the curb in front of a Victorian office building (I wonder if it was originally a house?) in Homewood, IL. In retrospect, I should have taken the mirror with me. But if I broke it, I have something like 770 years of bad luck, as big as that thing is:

(photo by Lee Bey)

But there's only one thing wrong with the new show. Okay, maybe two: Neither Piven nor the original cast will be in the remade series when it airs in March 2009. And as this trailer shows, the new Cupid will fly in New York, rather in Chicago.

Boo! The old series, which premiered in 1998 and lasted a season on ABC, was filmed in Chicago and had such a great eye for the city and its architecture. Characters turned turned up in Wicker Park, Bucktown, Hyde Park..one episode had an impressive shot of Piven's character, Trevor Hale, perched atop the dome of 35 E. Wacker.

(photo by Lee Bey)

Taken from the 31st floor of the 70 W. Madison Building.

(photos courtesy of Life Magazine)

Over the years, I've read about the long-gone Mecca apartments in Bronzeville. I interviewed the old timers who remember it---I even heard the blues song about it. But I'd never actually seen the building until now.

And here it is above. One of three arcade apartments built in Chicago. The Yale and the Brewster are still with us. The Mecca (demolished shortly after this photograph was taken in 1951) was sacrificed to build Crown Hall at IIT, a stellar piece of architecture in its own right, but I do wish we could have had them both today.

This photo and the ones below come courtesy of Life magazine. The digitized archives of the once world-famous photo magazine are now only a Google away. See the archive here. And there's more to come. The Google people are going to add 10 million photos over the next few months.

Naturally I was drawn to the Chicago stuff.

Look here! Architect Harry Weese, sitting outside one of his designs in 1958:

The cores of Marina City going up:

The TIME magazine reading room at the Chicago 1933 World's Fair.

Himself, 1960:

Paul Newman and Arthur Miller (with the cigarette) at the 1968 DNC:

The Rev. Jesse Jackson and Jesse Jackson Jr, 1968 at Operation Breadbasket:

 And we end where we began:

(photos by Lee Bey)

The crumbling building complex behind the barbed-wire fence looks like a remnant from a past civilization. And in some respects, it is.

Grab a look---while you can---of the former Sinclair Research Laboratory at the corner of Sibley Blvd and Wallace in the suburb of Harvey Illinois. Built in 1949 by the Sinclair Oil Company, the 40-acre campus was created to unlock the secrets of petroleum. Teaming with 500 scientists and support staff during its heyday, the research lab experimented with getting oil from shale; producing high-octane fuels, and developing petroleum by products such as plastics, rubber, synthetics--even medicine. Experiments like these became commonplace in the late 20th century. But much of that groundbreaking work began here.

Today the complex is being razed. The great entrance still stands, for now. Proud, modern, and ultimately doomed.

What an amazing place this must have been. Another feather in the cap of Harvey, a model town planned in the early 20th century that strengthened itself in the postwar years with major facilities and, by 1966, the Dixie Square Mall. In 1969, Sinclair expanded the facility, adding office space and an auditorium. Times were good.

Atlantic Richfield Company bought Sinclair Co in the late 1960 and the facility had new owners. But in a nationwide consolidation in the mid-1980s, Arco closed the research lab. The buildings had a brief life as a business incubator, then nothing.

I drove through Harvey with my 13-year-old daughter on Saturday when we stumbled across the former laboratory. We stopped to take a look (mindful of the danger sign) and I took the above photos. The fate of the complex was another chapter in the generation-long story Harvey as a hard-luck town, well-known for its spectacularly dead shopping mall, crime, alleged municipal mismanagement and corrupt police. The FBI executed search warrants at the Harvey Police HQ just a few days ago.

The bulldozers are the only thing breaking new ground at Sibley Blvd and Wallace now. The scientists and their research are long gone. And next--the building.

(photos by Lee Bey)

When I was a kid in the 1970s, a gas station at 80th and Anthony closed up. My father used to get gas there. We drove by a few months later, the gas station reopened as small church.

The services were loud, raucous. Tambourines banging. Maybe an organ? And yes, the singing. I never went in. You could hear everything from the street, if you had a mind to. For generations, these small dotted the landscape in Chicago and other areas with sizable black populations. The term ascribed to them---"storefront churches"---became a bit of a slur, conjuring up stereotypes of shady preacher/pimps with processed hair and new Cadillacs parked in the rear.

Whatever the term, storefront churches are a disappearing breed now. The rise of religiously charismatic mega-churches has played a role. So did stricter practice of zoning laws (storefront churches are often a non-conforming use.) Years of increasing real estate values along commercial areas of black Chicago have driven out many of these churches. Why rent for pennies to a small church when you've got CVS, Walgreens and others offering you a tidy bundle to demolish your building?

The churches are worth noting and documenting while they're still around. They are a step in the black American religious experience in the post-Great Migration north. Architecturally, they have their own vernacular and represent often ingenious examples of adaptive reuse. Amen? Amen.

(photos by Lee Bey)

I found myself with a little free time over the weekend, so I trekked down to the Michael Reese Hospital campus. I've been documenting the decline and fade-out of this once-venerable institution for more than a year now. If Chicago gets the 2016 Olympics, the old hospital will likely be razed for a new Olympic Village.

Building details grabbed me during this visit. In the photo above, look at the line and symmetry of former Main Reese Building entrance, now closed. I like the typeface of the letters, too.

Here is a detail of the closed Hulda Rothschild Nurses Residence:

An elevation of the Rothschild Nurses Residence:

The tracery and the air conditioners in this window at the Meyer House resembles a sad, abstract human figure--moving boxes under each arm, consigned to fate:

The modernist Florsheim Professional Building. Now vacant:

 An exterior stair with railings as elegant as a musical staff:

The Laz Chapman pathology building, also closed. The building sits on a raised plaza.

A boarded up door:

Michael Reese is scheduled to close sometime early next year. I'm not the only one documenting the last days of this institution. The exterior and interior photos here are both compelling and chilling. And the stellar site Forgotten Chicago has a well-written and detailed history and vintage photos of Reese's construction. Then there's Carey Primeau's achingly beautiful photos of the possibly-doomed buildings.

Look at this great video from the online version of the Encyclopedia of Chicago, showing Mayor Richard J. Daley speaking at the opening of Robert Taylor Homes in 1962.

The project looks good in the video. Brimming with promise. But in the construction photo above, taken in 1961, the development looks a little sinister.

Then I found the below photos I took of one of the remaining Robert Taylor buildings being demolished in early 2007.