(photos by Lee Bey)
The Urban Observer has previously discussed the above mural by William Walker. The news here is that the Chicago Public Art Group, led by Jon Pounds, has mounted an effort to save this fantastic work near Cabrini Green. Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich writes about the effort in today's paper.
(photos by Lee Bey)
Jansen's Furniture on Michigan Avenue in the Roseland neighborhood.
(photos courtesy of the Charles W. Cushman Collection at Indiana University)
One of the most astounding photo collections on the web is the Charles W. Cushman Collection at Indiana University. Cushman, who died in 1969, was a traveling businessman who worked for a variety of companies in Chicago. He was not famous; he was probably unknown outside of friends, family and associates. Yet Cushman did one thing in life that has now given him a bit of notoriety nearly 40 years after his death: As he traveled the city--and the country and world, for that matter---he took his camera with him and took lots of photos.
What's so amazing is Cushman shot with color slides as early as the late 1930s and 1940s. His digitized archives reveal a Chicago normally rendered in the romantic tones of black-and-white. It is a city rediscovered. The photo above, one of my favorites from the collection, shows a black family in May 1942 huddled on the porch of a ramshackle Second Empire house at 95th and State. The family--and you can't quite make them out--appear relaxed and comfortable in their poses, almost undercutting the squalid nature of the home in which they live.
(Above) The castle-like home of Potter Palmer in 1944. The home looks abandoned here and by 1950 it would be demolished. Palmer's legacy in Chicago is unmistakable. His name graces the Palmer House hotel and his dry goods store later became Marshall Field's. And the uber-rich of gaslight-era Chicago lived on Prairie Avenue south of Loop until Palmer built this castle at 1350 N. Lake Shore Drive in 1882. After that the rich relocated to that area, creating what became the Gold Coast. Those towers, by the way, were 80ft high.
(Above) St. Xavier Academy, a Catholic girl's school at 29th and Wabash, photographed by Cushman in July, 1946. The school closed in the 1950s, and was later demolished. My Chicago Archdiocese readers: help me out with this one...I think this school ultimately split up when this campus was closed and one branch of St. Xavier became Mother McAuley HS?
(Above) Here, in September 1948, Cushman photographed the then new State Street bridge over the Chicago River. Look at how empty the surroundings are as compared to today! Wrigley Building stands prominently with the Tribune Tower hiding behind the clocktower while the Medinah Building sits to the left.
And here: a nightmarish photo--an image almost Dali-like---from January 1949 showing the aftermath of a fire at 46th and Paulina:
And finally: Cushman spent a lot of time photographing Jackson Park and Promontory Point in Hyde Park. He also dug taking pictures of bathing beauties who frequented the beachfront there. Below is a "a brunette and a tanned blonde" at Promontory Point in July, 1941:
And then there was Annette from June 1942, described by Cushman as "an athletic girl with a generous bosom":
And this heartbreaker---in tennis shoes!--Maria Grygier, from September 1949
Check out the rest of the vast Cushman archive and read the man's story here.
(photos by Lee Bey)
Historian Tim Samuelson years ago told me about the Snowflake Motel, a bit of early 1960s whimsy near St. Joseph, MI that was designed by Taliesin fellow and Frank Lloyd Wright son-in-law William Wesley Peters. I didnt actually see the place until 2005 when I snapped these hasty photos, noting its saw-tooth roofline, domed entry court and siteplan were reminscent of snowflakes. The motel was clearly down on its heels, but operational. I figured I'd come back and take some better pix. Looks like I'll have to make do with these. The Snowflake was demolished earlier this year.
Read more about the motel's history in this great piece by Sandy McLendon in Chicagoan Joe Kunkel's addictive online magazine Jetset Modern. This 2002 story in The Believer magazine ain't bad either. Wish I had better photos, is all.
(photo by Lee Bey)
The eye-catching Patio Restaurant in Orland Park, IL. Architect James Papoutsis has designed a handful of these little neo-modernist gems around the city's southwest suburbs, including ones in Bolingbrook and Bridgeview. Who says suburban retail architecture has to be mediocre?
(photos by Lee Bey)
I hopped the state line over the weekend to take a look at Gary, Indiana, that famously-depressed steel town that has long been a symbol of urban decay and disinvestment.
That Gary--and for that matter Detroit and a few other cities--has floundered and sunk over the past 40 years is no less than an American tragedy. But driving through the deserted downtown is eerie. But when a city has sunk this low, there is nowhere to go but up.
(Above): Vacant shell of the Gary Memorial Auditorium
(Above) A pair of vacant buildings on Broadway. Murals are painted on these structures and many others to give the illusion of life on the barren street.
(Above:) New housing in Gary. Suburban in feel, but still a good start.
(Above) Elegant and vacant Gothic Revival Church near 6th and Broadway.
I'll be visiting Gary again from time to time and maybe some reporting from there as well. The city is worth watching.
(photos by Lee Bey)
About 10 years ago, I wound up at dinner--if you could call it that--with gaggle of wannabe Buppie snoots when the subject of high schools came up. Everybody went around the table, giving forth on the high school they attended. Most of the snoots reported they had gone to the city's prestigious magnet schools. My turn came:
"Chicago Vocational."
The table got so silent, I thought I'd lost my hearing. "I-I-I didn't know you went to CVS," one of the group said, trying to fill the void. She could have very well added, "...you poor Dear" afterward. "Yep," I said proudly. "Cavalier. Blue and Gold. Class of 1983."
Going to CVS, now Chicago Vocational Career Academy, turned out to be one of the best things to happen to me in life. I majored in Print Shop and learned to operate printing presses at 17. For a guy who was a bit of a screw up then, this was a mighty accomplishment that did a lot to get my head on straight again. My senior year English teacher, a guy named Thomas Doyle (I need to track him down because I owe him a debt of thanks) told me I was a pretty good writer and that I should think about journalism as a career. The scales fell from my eyes. I majored in journalism at Columbia College Chicago and had a 13-year print journalism career before joining the mayor's office, followed by a spell at Skidmore Owings & Merrill and now my current position. But it all began at CVS.
Pardon the walk down memory lane. A confluence of things caused it. My 25th year high school reunion is next year; my oldest daughter starts high school next year and over the weekend, I happened to find myself back in the old neighborhood and I stopped off at CVS, 2100 E. 87th Street, to take a few pix.
Built for $3.1 million and completed in 1940 (it says 1938 over the main entrance, but the school was completed w-a-y behind schedule due to a strike on the site), CVS is one of the most architecturally imposing edifices in the city. The wing-shaped complex takes up 23 acres and boasted 400ft-long corridors. The school has 57 two-story shop classroom when it opened; its lunchroom could hold 1,500 students.
CVS was planned as a "great industrial school" and billed as the most modern and best-equipped trade school in the US," as the Tribune reported in 1939. It was designed to train young men--the school didn't go co-ed until 1946--for the Factory Age of the mid 20th century. Students majored in auto shop, woodworking, air conditioning repair, radio technology. Students would be no younger than 16 and rather than getting high school diplomas, graduates would get certificates that would make them eligible to work in their industry. The school's size is a nod to the belief then that there would be an insatiable need for these workers as the decades rolled on. Architects made room for 500 teachers and 6,000 students attending day and evening classes. The US Navy took over the school from June 1942 until April 1946 to train aviation mechanics for the war.
I've always liked the design of CVS exterior: limestone, square-jawed and modern, even down to the abstracted columns that frame the entry and the streamlined columns that line the face of the auditorium in the top photo. The funky modern "Chicago" typeface chiseled into the limestone is a great touch, as are the various medallions and insets showcasing the school's offerings. The federal Public Works Administration paid almost half the cost of the construction and the PWA's modern design aesthetic is evident here.
The school has a smaller student body than it did when I attended, but instruction is still going on. And check out this promotional video of the schoo's offerings. If you headed down the Skyway to Indiana, the massive school unspools itself out of your right-side car window. But don't be satisfied with that drive-by glimpse. Get up close and see.
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(photo by Lee Bey)
We seldom venture indoors at the Urban Observer, but today I thought I'd make an exception. This is a detail of a mural inside the Wabash YMCA at 38th and Wabash in the city's Bronzeville community. Once known as the "Colored Man's Y", the building was an important stop for African Americans who arrived in Chicago from the South during the Great Migration of the early to mid 20th century. There were sports, classes and other activities designed to ease the transition from farm to city--all celebrated in this triumphant 1936 mural by African American artist William Edouard Scott. The old Y sat vacant for years until it was rescued by a consortium of local churches in the 1990s. Today, the restored building--is the Renaissance Apartments. And the once battered mural shines again.
(photos by Lee Bey)
This vacant house on the northwest corner of 45th and Michigan has fascinated me for years.
The blond, Renaissance Revival-styled house is largely overshadowed by the architectural bombast of the landmark Swift Mansion on the southwest side of the intersection. But its story is as dramatic as that of its neighbors. Maybe more...
The house was built by John R. Hoxie, a prominent Chicagoan and Social Register-type who help found the Chicago Stockyard and the Stockyards Bank. He owned the world's largest hog ranch--1,500 acres--is Texas. The town of Hoxie, Texas and a street on Chicago's Southeast side are named for him. When Hoxie died in 1896, the funeral was in the home's parlor. Hoxie left his wife, Mary, $6 million, a sum that roughly equals $132 million today. Hoxie family's luck would go downhill afterward.
In 1903. a burglar slipped into the house and stole $3500 in jewels while the family was in the house. According to the Chicago Tribune's account, the criminal scaled the front columns and second-story balustrade and entered a window, all "in the glare of electric light."
In 1908, Mary Hoxie, a son and her daughter Anna Good were driving through Buffalo NY in the rain. When the chauffeur pulled over and jacked up the car to put chains on the tires for better traction, the auto slipped the jack and tumbled down an embankment, killing Anna Good. At the Michigan Avenue house, Mary's other son, Gilbert received a telegram saying all had survived. He didn't know the truth until he read the next day's newspaper.
(Above) An ornate window--mangled a bit with glass block--gives a sense of the home's majesty.
In 1909, Mary Hoxie was sued by the University of Boston Press for refusing to pay $83,000, as promised, for a set of Charles Dickens novels that had been valued at $1 million. Mrs Hoxie found herself in court once again in 1910 when she sued her former son-in-law, Harry Good, for custody of her granddaughter, Katherine, 7. The Goods were divorced at the time of the car accident that killed Katherine's mother; after the accident, Mary Hoxie denied Good permission to his daughter, claiming his real interest was not the girl but her $5,000 a year allowance.
In 1913 Gilbert Hoxie died of heart disease at age 35. He operated a company that created the Hoxie Bullet, a piece of rifle ammunition that was a nasty bit of business. The bullet had a small steel ball embedded in the tip that would spread like a star on impact, tearing gaping holes in whatever---and whoever--it hit. Gilbert left his wife and son $110,000, or about $2 million today.
By 1915, the Hoxies seem to fall from public prominence. Katherine Hoxie surfaced in 1920 at age 17 and was dubbed "Poor Little Rich Girl" by the Chicago Tribune when she asked Cook County Probate Court Judge Henry Horner (the man who'd become governor in 1933) for permission to by a $4,000 car.
"You may have the car," Horner ruled.
"Goody," she replied. She could afford it. Her allowance had grown to $15,000 a year.
(Above) Imagine the glass that was once here.
By 1930, the Hoxies had moved from Michigan Avenue and the house became the Martha Washington Home for Crippled Children. The Martha Washington operations moved in 1943 and the home briefly became the Clarance Cameron White School of Music, named for the noted black composer and violinist. By the 1950a, Bethel AME Church owned the property---and still does. The church itself is one door north.
The church keeps watch over the house. Though barely boarded up, there seems to be no signs of squatters or break ins. Grass is cut. Its future awaits.
(photos by Lee Bey)
The old Guaranty Bank & Trust building hasn't housed a commercial transaction--not a legal one, anyway--since it closed a quarter century ago. The vacant building occupies a prime corner on the edge of Jackson Park and yet has eluded demolition and reuse.
Located at 6760 S. Stony Island, the old bank is a fantastic urban ruin--part of a dying breed of neo-classical neighborhood banks that were half-scale versions of their prestigious downtown counterparts. Guaranty greets Stony Island with a quartet of 30-foot tall Doric columns capted with an impressively detailed entablature. Swag elements around the windows and cornice remain intact.
(Above) A look at the bank's richly detailed column...in remarkably good condition.
The bank was built in 1923 as Stony Island Trust & Savings. The original plan was for an eight-story building with two floors of banking and six levels of furnished apartments, but the design was pared down. During its life, the bank nearly closed a half-dozen times and took on new names at every turn, becoming Stony Island State Savings in 1930, Southmoor Bank & Trust in 1948 (look closely and you can still see the "Southmoor" name above the columns) then becoming Guaranty Bank in 1950. The Nation of Islam bought the bank in 1973, but operations shut down in 1982. The gracious old building became just another abandoned structure in the Woodlawn community.
But for how much longer, I wonder? Money is flowing in the Woodlawn again. There are new homes and Stony Island seems to be slowly reawakening. Now is the time to investigate preserving this building. Perhaps it won't be a bank again, but the building might have a future as residences, as originally planned. A new scheme could include a well-designed parking structure with ground-floor retail that would be built on the vacant parcel to the north of the building. The facility would providing a place for residents' cars while giving a commercial boost to the street.
(Above) No deposit, no return: the bank's old depository slot
The neighborhood and the city would do well to at least consider preservation. With Woodlawn on the upswing, something is bound to happen to the building. Will it be a new beginning, or a bitter end?
A Jack-in-the-Box restaurant on Dixie Highway in the Chicago suburb of Harvey, IL. The "Box" and its munchkin-like tv pitchman Rodney Allen Rippy haven't been seen around the Chicago area since at least 1980, so it was surprising to see this reasonably intact, if vacant, former franchise still standing. (photo by Lee Bey)