Lee Bey: The Urban Observer

(photos by Lee Bey)

I'm desparately trying not to make this blog an ode to the South Side. But it's hard.

Architecture of the South Side is often overlooked by the news media, the city's architectural tourism mechanism, and many other places where you'd ought to able to turn in order to get a full picture of the city's built environment. It could be excused, perhaps, if the South Side contained only a few pieces of good architecture. But that's not the case. Stroll down King Drive between 35th and 55th. Take a look at Beverly/Morgan Park on the far Southwest Side. Examine the lakeside coolness of South Shore or experience the stately homes of Kenwood. The seas don't boil when you travel south of Roosevelt, I swear.

The South Side can throw you a curve, almost at will. You might find yourself on a street that looks and feels predictable, then wham!--a dose of the unexpected. That's the case with Pride Cleaners at 79th and St. Lawrence. Built in 1959, Pride Cleaners disrups a sober run of 1920s stores and apartments along east 79th Street. It's free-standing marquee-like sign, which must have exploded with bright colors and blinking lights when it was new, grabs the eye long enough to make you notice the building behind it: a modernist dry cleaners with an out-of-this-world, concrete hyperbolic paraboloid roof. 

(Above): A touch of Las Vagas on 79th Street. 

Architect Gerald Siegwart designed the cleaners, and I'm trying to unearth more information about him. The modernist designed at least one house in Lake Forest, IL and a few suburban bank buildings and grocery stores in the 1950s and 1960s.

The roof is self-supporting, freeing up interior space for the dry cleaning plant and personnel. The cleaners does brisk business with customers coming in and out so quickly, there's barely time to notice the original teal and aquamarine colors schemes and signage are still in tact.

Want to see more? Back in 2003, when I was Mayor Daley's deputy chief of staff, the mayor allowed me to do architecture segments for the city's municipal cable channel and I got a chance to profile Pride Cleaners. If you can get past my goofy glasses and odd enunciation, there is some pretty cool info on Pride and the Googie architectural vernacular to which the cleaners belongs.