C.B. Bouton House

 by: chicago designslinger

[C. B. Bouton House (1873) /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

The C.B. Bouton house is often identified as the C.S. Bouton house. But the person who built the Italianate style dwelling in 1873 - and lived there for the next 42 years - was Christopher Bell Bouton, son of Nathaniel and Mary A.P. Bell Bouton. Christopher, or C.B. as he was often referred to in contemporary publications, had an older brother Nathaniel Sherman Bouton, and may be the source of the misplaced middle initial. The two were also partners in a Chicago foundry business which may have added to the intializing error.

   [C.B. Bouton House, 4812 S. Woodlawn Avenue, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Their Union Foundry Works had gone through several name changes and partnership arrangements before Nathaniel incorporated the business in the early part of 1871 and was named president. His younger brother C.B. became the Secretary Treasurer. If you're familiar with Chicago history you probably know that something major happened in 1871 besides the Bouton brothers incorporating their business. The Union Works plant survived the Great Fire that October, but just barely. The inferno burned a few blocks from the foundry's location at 15th and Clark Streets, just beyond the southern edge of the burn district. The brothers lucked-out in more ways than one. When the rebuilding of the city began barely before the embers had cooled, wood was out and metal was in. Anything that could be done to prevent another catastrophic event like the one that had just happened from occurring again meant that the fire resistant cast iron that the Boutons produced would be an ideal building material in "fireproof" construction.

  [C.B. Bouton House, Hyde Park - Kenwood National Historic District, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

With business booming C.B. Bouton decided to build a house for he and his young family far outside the city limits in Hyde Park township, in an Arcadian area called Kenwood. He purchased a large piece of land, and in 1873 built a home in the very popular Italianate Style - the preferred style of men of means. Bouton's wife Ellenore Hoyt Bouton was the foundryman's third, his previous two marriages had ended with his other wives deaths. He met Ellenore through his brother Samuel who had married Ellenore's sister Mary Ann Hoyt in 1860, and in 1869, C.B. and Ellenore exchanged vows. In 1870 their son Sherman was born. Bertha was born in the Woodlawn Avenue house in 1874, followed by Mary in 1876, and Nathaniel on June 1, 1879, who died two months later.

  [C.B. Bouton House, Kenwood Historic District, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Union Foundry continued to expand, not only providing architectural cast iron to a growing city, but the wheels and castings for the Pullman Palace Car Company and the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad. In 1886, at the relatively young age of 45, Bouton retired from the foundry business. Nathaniel was several years older than his younger brother and decided he'd had enough. Christopher and Ellenore purchased a winter home in Dunedin, Florida, and over time, the Bouton girls would each be married in the house on Woodlawn Avenue. In 1901, four years after his own marriage, young Sherman Bouton's funeral was held in the home. C.B. died in his large, Italianate-bracketed dwelling in 1915, forty-two years after moving in, at the age of 76.

South Water Market - University Commons

 by: chicago designslinger

 [South Water Market - University Commons (1925/2007) Fugard & Knapp/Pappageorge Haymes, architects /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

There was a time not all that long ago, when "locally grown" and "locally sourced" was the norm and not the exception. Back before our food was chemically mass produced for corporate consumption, fruits and vegetables were usually sent to a central distribution point where wholesalers could sell seasonal produce grown by nearby farmers to grocers and restauranteurs located within a non-spoilage distance. Chicago, a major distribution center for all manner of products, became the center point of a produce wheel whose spokes stretched out to Cleveland, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and points in between.

  [South Water Market - University Commons, West 14th and West 15th Place between Morgan and Racine Streets, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

It's hard to imagine today, but the bustling produce trade was centered along the south bank of the main branch of the Chicago River from Michigan Avenue to Wells Street. The classically landscaped Wacker Drive that you stroll along today offering great views along the riverbank didn't exist 85 years ago. Warehouses lined river's edge, and a street that no longer exists South Water Market, was packed with horses, wagons, wholesalers, and their fresh fruits and vegetables. The street was messy, noisy and bursting at the seams, and served its purpose for nearly 60 years. Then in the early 1920s, the city decided to start implementing a plan that would transform the market along with Chicago's urban landscape. Proposed by Daniel Burnham and his cohort Edward Bennett in 1909, the Chicago Plan became the blueprint to finally pull the city out-of-the-mud and into a beautiful, classically inspired garden town. The dirty cacophonic produce market, so close to the central business district, didn't fit into the panoramic pristine plan.

  [South Water Market - University Commons, National Register of Historic Places, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

The challenge was getting over 200 merchant/vendors to agree to move. After several attempts things finally got rolling in 1922 when the city condemned all the property as unsafe and unsanitary, and offered buy-outs. An idea was put forward to build a brand-spanking new, state-of-the-art facility as an alternative, and many of the produce wholesalers signed-on. Land for the massive project was secured as 1924 was drawing to a close, and by August 30, 1925, the last produce dealers of the old South Water Market were moving their wares over to the new South Water Market on 14th and 15th Place, between Morgan and Racine Streets, just west of Halsted.

  [South Water Market - University Commons /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

One-hundred and sixty-five uniform 25 foot by 80 foot storefronts, or stalls, were    lined-up party wall to party wall in 6 buildings that varied in length from 450 feet, to over 800 feet. Architects Fugard & Knapp wrapped the 3-story structures in decoratively embellished, glistening glazed, terra-cotta tiles and replaced the old canvas awnings that hovered over crumbling sidewalks, with sturdy, crisp, clean iron and glass canopies that provided cover over wide loading docks. The streets were 90 feet wide, nearly double the width of the street along the river, and the entire complex was cooled by pipes running underground and linked to individual stalls by the Chicago Cold Storage Company, keeping the fruits and vegetables chilled. This was big business, generating over $800 million in trade. Yet amazingly, for all the great planning, the market wasn't linked to the adjacent rail line that ran along the southern edge of the property. So it was left to horses and wagons, and at the time small trucks, to move goods in and out of the facility. By the 1930s as truck grew ever larger in size, maneuvering the 90 feet between buildings became harder and harder, and by the 1980s, Chicago was no longer the Midwest's dominant produce trading force.
Like the old market street before it, by 1996 the "new" South Water Market was outdated and losing more and more of its market share. In 2003, 59 of the remaining 62 owners sold their stalls and a few of them moved to a new state-of the-art facility. The new/old Water Market buildings were then converted into 800+ residential loft condominiums under the supervision of architects Pappageorge Haymes. The market's replacement no longer carried the South Water name, and the new Chicago International Produce Market on South Wolcott Street is currently home to 19 produce wholesalers including the oldest in the city, Strube Celery & Vegetable founded on South Water Market - next to the river - in 1913.

M. Houlberg Company Building

 by: chicago designslinger

 [M. Houlberg Company Building (1903) Charles F. Sorenson, architect /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

In 1893 Chicago hosted the World's Columbian Exposition. Dubbed the White City due to the fact that almost every structure at the Fair was painted white, the event was a big hit. Although the white, frosting-like decorated structures had all the appearances of real buildings, in reality, they weren't made to last. The steel frames of the exhibition buildings were covered in staff, a mixture of plaster of Paris and hemp fiber, which kept a small army of plasterers and painters very busy. Danish immigrant M. Houlberg was among them.

[M. Houlberg Company Building, 1629 N. Milwaukee, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Danes had been immigrating to Chicago since the 1840s, but after Otto von Bismark took away a piece of the Danish state following the death of King Frederick VII in 1863, Chicago saw an influx of Danish nationals arrive and settle in an emerging Scandinavian community along North Milwaukee Avenue. Houlberg was one among thousands who fled Denmark in the hopes that he'd find a better life in the new world. He made his way to Chicago, worked at the Fair, and in 1900 opened a decorating and painting business in the heart of the Swedish, Norwegian and Danish community. By 1903 he was doing well enough to be able to hire architect Charles F. Sorensen, a fellow Scandinavian, to design a building to house M. Houlberg Co. Painters & Decorators as well as the Houlberg family in an apartment above the store. Sorenson was one of the community's go-to guys when it came to designing 2-flats, commercial structures and churches, and his work was scattered throughout an area that stretched from Wicker Park to Humboldt Park, all the way to Logan Square, encompassing almost the entire settlement.

  [M. Houlberg Company Building, Wicker Park National Historic District, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Houlberg sold paints, varnishes, wallpapers, and even provided decorating services to boot. He earned a whopping $10.00 in 1904 painting the tile ceiling of the Linne School building, and he soon became an officer of the Dania Society which helped with business connections, and which conveniently met around the corner on North Avenue in Wicker Hall. The Houlberg Company was out of its orginal home at 1629 N. Milwaukee Avenue by the mid-1920s when the family relocated a mile to the north in the 3300-block of Milwaukee. The old store and apartment went through several owners, one of whom, Norbert Prehler used the Houlberg property to store additional inventory of his Prehler & Associates industrial supply company which was headquartered in the building next door.
Prehler sold his company and his properties in 1987, and today Sorenson's fanciful ornamental tin cap - still bearing Houlberg's name - has been highlighted once again in a recent restoration of the building's facade.

Joseph Regenstein - Joe & Rika Mansueto Library Buildings

 by: chicago designslinger

 [Joseph Regenstein Library Building (1970) Walter A. Netsch, Skidmore Owings & Merrill. architects /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

In the mid-1950s the folks who ran things at the University of Chicago decided that it was time to ditch the historic Gothic Revival style that the school had embraced since 1892 for its campus buildings, and move into the modern age. And to that end the trustees began raising money to implement a expansive building plan sans a historical revival style. By the early 60s when the decision was made to build a new library the family of Chicago industrialist Joseph Regenstein stepped-up to the plate with a cool $10 million to help finance the construction. It was the largest donation to date.

[Joseph Regenstein Library Building, 1100 E. 57th Street, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Regenstein had taken his father's paper company and turned it into a major supplier of all manner of paper products. With that, and his venture into plastics manufacturing, he became a wealthy man. He died in 1957, and his wife Helen who oversaw the family foundation decided to make a donation to the school in 1965 in honor of her husband and to the city where his family had made its fortune. Chicago's powerhouse architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill was brought in to design the new facility under the supervision of lead partner Walter Netsch.

    [Joseph Regenstein Library Building, University of Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Netsch had come to know Helen socially, and according to an oral history he did with Chicago's Art Institute in 1995, she was instrumental in securing a number of commissions for Netsch and his firm. He had recently completed the master plan and building design for the University of Illinois' Chicago Circle Campus, and translated the architecturally Brutalist notions from that project into another form of Brutalism for the exterior of the Regenstein Library. The stark, heavy, rough-surfaced, monumental concrete forms had begun to show-up on the architectural scene in the early 1960s. Architect Paul Rudolph built a quintessential expression of Brutalism in 1958 at Yale University, and yet another fine example on the U of I campus at Urbana in 1967. Netsch on the other hand decided against using concrete for the large 4 x 8 foot exterior panels that wrapped the Regenstein project, and switched to limestone for the comb-cut, incised surface. And when the building opened in October, 1970 it was the largest structure on campus in terms of square footage.

  [Joe & Rika Mansueto Library Building (2011) Helmut Jahn, Murphy/Jahn, architects/Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

In an era when the traditional bookstore seems to be disappearing from the planet, the Regenstein was actually running out of book space by the turn of the 21st century. Unlike many of the major universities in the country, the librarians and trustees at U of C decided not to move the massive book and manuscript collection to an off-site location, and made the commitment to somehow expand the storage space in or near Netsch's 35-year-old building. Chicago's über-architect Helmut Jahn proposed a state-of-the-art storage and book retrieval facility capped by a glass-enclosed reading room. It was going to cost money, around $80 million to be exact, but the trustees gave the okay, and two U of C alumni Morningstar, Inc. millionaires Joe and Rika Mansueto stepped-up to the plate with a $25 million donation. Below the low-slung domed structure dedicated in 2011, three levels of below-ground, climate controlled chambers hold 3 million books - with room for more.

Edward Bankes House

 by: chicago designslinger

 [Edward Bankes House (ca. 1900) Henry Worthmann, architect /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

In the early 1840s New York City real estate investor Thomas Suffern put some of his money into a piece of land located on the outskirts of a ten-year-old city called Chicago. He purchased the 160-acre section far out beyond the city limits, right next to a large piece of open prairie owned by the government. When the canal connecting Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River got underway, the Feds stacked-out large swaths of acreage far from the canal itself to provide future returns on their canal investment. Suffern himself began to invest the income he earned from his tobacco business into Manhattan real estate in the 1820's, developed the northern edge of Washington Square in the 1830s, and got out of the tobacco business as his real estate ventures began to bring in a much better return than the sale of dried nicotiana leaves.

  [Edward Bankes House, 1036 N. Hoyne Avenue, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

His Chicago investment was far out-of-town, outlined today by Division Street, Chicago, Western, and Damen Avenues. Chicago Avenue, the only street plotted-out that far west in the mid-1840s, ended at a stone quarry located at the southwest corner of Suffern's acreage, at what today would be the intersection of Western and Chicago. The section made it into Chicago's corporate borders in 1851 when the city annexed a chunk of land west of town, which ended, appropriately, at the newly named Western Avenue. By 1862, seven years before Thomas Suffern's death, the 160-acre square had been evenly subdivided into smaller sections with streets named after his daughters Mary, Agnes, Janet, which eventually became Hoyne, Oakley and Augusta. There was a Suffern Street, now Leavitt, and Thomas, which still goes by that name. Suffern's family was still reaping the benefits of his 1840-era investment 60 years later when a 5-acre parcel bounded by Leavitt, Haddon, Thomas and Oakley Streets was sold by his estate to the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth in 1900 - now the site of St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital. And it wasn't long after that sale that a Mr. Edward Bankes set his sights on a small piece of Thomas Suffern's remaining acreage.

  [Edward Bankes House, Ukrainian Village Historic District, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

As the 19th century drew to a close the Suffern subdivision finally started to fill-up. Housing had first been constructed in the northwestern quadrant in the 1880s and the march of dwellings and commercial buildings moved in a southwesterly direction over the next 20 years. By the time Edward Bankes started buying-up property in the area, another street had been cut-through the area named Cortez. Bankes bought land along Cortez, centered on Hoyne Avenue, extending eastward to Damen and west to Leavitt. Between 1906 and 1907 he sold 5 of his vacant Cortez fronting lots for a tidy $7600, at a time when the average wage was $300/year.

  [Edward Bankes House, Ukrainian Village /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

In 1905 Mr. & Mrs. Edward Bankes had moved into a large two-and-a-half story limestone fronted, pressed-brick-sided, 4,000 square foot house on the northwest corner of Cortez and Hoyne. It was one of the largest in the neighborhood and conveniently bordered by his Cortez Street investment. Largely populated by German-American immigrants, the area would undergo a major ethnic transformation just before and after the First World War. By the mid-1920s the community was an enclave of Slavic speaking peoples from Poland, Russia and the Ukraine. By the 1950s the Bankes' large single family dwelling had been divided into two apartments, and in 2002 the corner was included in the borders of the city's Ukrainian Village Landmark District - which fits snugly inside the original outline of Suffern's 160-acres.

St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church & School Buildings, Chicago

 by: chicago designslinger

 [St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church & School Buildings, Chicago (1905-06) Worthmann & Steinbach, architects /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

In 1517 an Augustinian monk named Martin Luther nailed his theses to a church door in a city located in what was then the massive Holy Roman Empire, now located in a part of Germany. In 1905 a group of German immigrants, built a Lutheran church in a Chicago neighborhood on the outskirts of the city's West Side, now known as Ukrainian Village.

  [St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church & School Buildings, 925 N. Hoyne Avenue, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Although the country we know today as Germany today didn't come into being until 1871, the people who immigrated from the land of Luther to Chicago in the middle of the 19th century were known as Germans. Like most immigrants they brought their native language, culture and religion with them, and as more and more native Saxons, Hessians, and Württembergians flooded into the city, they established German-speaking communities on the city's north and west sides. When a colony developed in and around Chicago Avenue and Noble Street in the mid-1860s, a group of Germanic Protestants established a parish under the auspices of St. Paul's Church, the city's first German Lutheran place of worship, founded in 1846.

  [St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church & School Buildings, Ukrainian Village Historic District, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Evangelische Lutherische St. Johannis Kirche held its first service in a brand new frame church building at the northwest corner of Superior Street and Bickerdike (today's Bishop Street) on October 13, 1867. Much like the migration from the old country to the new, as the community became more established they moved from the old neighborhood to a newly developing neighborhood further west. In 1905 parishioners purchased seven city lots on Hoyne Avenue at the southwest corner of Cornelia (Walton Street), hired architects Worthmann & Steinbach, and built a much larger, and more prominent, brick church and school building. The school opened its doors in September, while the Reverend Henry H. Succop had to wait a few months for the church to be ready for its first sermon on February 11, 1906.

  [St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church & School Buildings, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Architect Henry Worthmann was a congregation member, and as such may have had the inside track on designing the buildings. At the time Gothic Revival was still a style of choice when it came to ecclesiastical decor and the architects incorporated Gothic-inspired flourishes in the brickwork and limestone, and the broad corner tower was topped by a steeple that climbed to 150 feet into the air. Unfortunately it was destroyed by lighting during a summer storm that came rumbling through the city in the wee hours of the morning on August 10, 1935 that also burned down Herman Cohrs barn in Homewood, and zapped the Town Hall police station's radio tower. The old-to-new migration continued, and by the mid-1920s the original German-speaking settlers were being replaced by immigrants who spoke Polish, Russian and Ukrainian. But St. John's Lutherans held on until 1974 when they finally closed-up shop, dissolved the congregation, and sold their buildings to the Seventh Day Adventist Church. The Adventist's Central Hispanic Church was itself out of operation by 2002 as the Spanish-speaking community's numbers dwindled when a wave of new, young, urban dwellers moved into the old neighborhood.
Vacant and vandalized, the St. John Church & School buildings were awarded landmark designation by the Chicago City Council on March 13, 2013 and added into the expanding boundaries of the Ukrainian Village Historic District, first established in 2002. The Adventist's still own the property, and with the help of the city's Landmarks Department, Landmark Illinois, and Preservation Chicago, perhaps a buyer can be found with the deep pockets required to preserve and adaptively reuse this piece of the city's historical ecclesiastical heritage.

Hans D. Runge - John F. Smulski House

 by: chicago designslinger

 [Hans D. Runge - John F. Smulski House (1884) Frommann & Jebsen, architects /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

In the later part of the 19th century lumber was big business in Chicago. Along with meatpacking and grain trading, the lumber industry made Chicago an economic powerhouse, and the largest lumber market in the world. Hans, aka John, Runge was one of thousands of German immigrants who came to Chicago and found work in wood. The surname - one of the oldest in Germany - means stick or staff, and eventually found its way into becoming the "rung" of a ladder. In 1884, after rising through the ranks to become the treasurer of the Wolf Brothers Milling Company on West Erie Street, he built himself a showy, wood-trimmed extravaganza on the city's northwest side.

  [Hans D. Runge - John F. Smulski House, 2138 W. Pierce Avenue, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

The Wolf Brothers company produced everyday milled products like planed wood for doors, window sashes and blinds. So architects Frommann & Jebsen's turned, carved, bracketed, and perforated wood was a panoply of woodworking artistry that went a step further than the Wolf mill catalog. Plus by combining three city lots and placing the structure smack in the middle, Runge's Swiss Alps-like cottage was hard to miss.

  [Hans D. Runge - John F. Smulski House, Wicker Park National Historic District, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

On nearby Columbia Street, now known as Caton, John F. Smulski was making a name for himself in the world of politics. His father William was a Polish immigrant who came to Chicago in the late 1860s, founded the nation's first Polish language newspaper, and sent for his wife and son to join him and his newfound riches in 1881. John was 14 years old at the time, and after completing high school he went to Northwestern University and got a law degree. By the late 1890s Smulski was representing his northwest side community on the Chicago City Council before moving on to become City Attorney, then heading-off to become the Illinois State Treasurer. He left politics in 1907 to concentrate on running the bank he'd founded in 1905. Northwestern Trust & Savings Bank, at Milwaukee & Ashland Avenues and Divsion Street, was in the heart of the city's largest Polish enclave. It was the first financial institution in the city run by a Pole for Poles. Many banks took advantage of an immigrant's lack of English and understanding of the way the system worked to fleece the customer of their savings. So most people kept their extra cash hidden in storage spaces at home - like the proverbial mattress - to protect their hard earned dollars. But at Northwestern, not only was the bank president of Polish origin but the entire staff spoke Polish and the bank was able to earn the trust of the community. It became the Polish bank.

  [Hans D. Runge - John F. Smulski House, Wicker Park Historic District, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

In 1909 the Chicago Blue Book listed the Smulski's address at 46 Columbia Street, and in 1910 at 2138 Ewing Place, which become Pierce Avenue shortly thereafter. The Runges had left the house they'd built with Hans' wood earnings in 1903, and the Smulskis would live at 2138 W. Pierce Avenue until 1917, not long after this country's entry into the First World War. Smulski had raised millions of dollars for his stricken homeland at the outset of the conflict which was not only losing population to war injuries but to devasting starvation. Through his efforts he became close friends with Polish concert pianist Igance Paderewski who became Poland's post-war Prime Minister in 1919, and who often visited the Pierce Avenue home. Smulski's life did not have a good end. In pain, and suffering from cancer, he shot himself in the head and died in his apartment at the Seneca Hotel on March 18, 1928.

Gustavus F. Swift House

 by: chicago designslinger

 [Gustavus F. Swift House (1898) Flanders & Zimmerman, architects /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

There once was a time when the name Swift meant meat and not a boat that derailed a presidential campaign. Over 100 years ago Gustavus Swift financed a venture that provided fresh-cut meat to America - and the world - via refrigerated railroad cars which in turn made the Swift name synonomous with everything from bacon to lamb chops, and pork roasts to lunchmeat.

  [Gustavus F. Swift House, 4848 S. Ellis Avenue, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Gustavus Swift was not a Chicago native, but he was one of the men who made the city famous - or infamous - as the largest meat production center on the planet. He came to the city in 1875 to check-out the cattle buying market. Swift had started his career as a butcher outside Boston in 1853 at the ripe old age of 14. He was nothing if not tenacious, and by 1875 had built-up a nice little business operation for himself purchasing cattle, pigs and sheep, and selling his dressed meat across Cape Cod. Dressing is basically the slaughtering, carving and finishing of an animal carcass for human consumption. Chicago was emerging a central distribution point for the vast number of cattle and pigs being raised across the Midwest and Swift was interested in getting closer to the source. So he moved his family out west and set-up his business.

  [Gustavus F. Swift House, Hyde Park - Kenwood National Historic District, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

The Swift clan moved into a house at the northwest corner of 45th Street and Emerald Avenue. The home was big enough to hold a family that included Swift, his wife Ann, and their six children. By 1882 the house was bursting at the seams since by that time Gustavus and Ann had added five more children to the brood. The massive Chicago stockyards were located just a block away, so Swift had an easy commute. The short distance worked-out well for the butcher from Massachusetts, a man consumed with work who had no time for play. In 1885 when Swift & Co. became a corporation it was capitalized at $300,000 (around $8 million today) - by 1887 it would be recapitalized at $3 million. Swift & Co. not only processed millions of cattle, pigs and sheep a year, but the entrprenuerial dresser revolutionized the meat industry when he helped develop and pay for the first successful refrigerated railroad car. But although the delivery system, processed meats and their by-products like glue and brush bristles had made Swift a wealthy man, he stayed put in his house on Emerald Avenue. He certainly had the resources to join other Chicago movers and shakers in much fancier neighborhoods, and in a substantially larger house, but he liked living close to work - and his workers. At the time, the Town of Lake Directory listed twenty Swift & Co. employees - from clerks to carvers - living on Emerald Avenue within a block of the Swifts. And on the next street over, Winter (now Union), fifteen Swift employees lived just north and south of 45th Street.

  [Gustavus F. Swift House - Garage, Stable & Servants Quarters, Kenwood Historic District, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Then as the year 1897 drew to a close, at age 59, Gustavus Swift made a surprise announcement to his family - he was ready to move. In 1897 male life expentency in the U.S. was 45.7 years, Swift had been working since he was 14, and he was beginning to slow down. He was also beginning to turn over the day-to-day operations of the business to his sons. He purchased one of the largest residential lots in the very chic Kenwood neighborhood, and built a house befitting his standing in the world of business and finance. The home, designed by architects Flanders & Zimmerman, was substantial. So was the garage/stable/servants quarters built at the rear of the property. But just four years after the house was completed in 1898, the Swift's overworked body gave out. He died in his home due to complications after having had gall bladder surgery. By the time Ann Swift died at home in 1922, the Swift boys had turned their father's company into a multi-billion dollar operation. The stock yards are now gone, the enormous Swift packing house complex is dust, the Emerald Avenue dwelling has been replaced by a park, Swift & Co. is owned by a Brazilian conglomerate, but the house that Swift built on Ellis Avenue still stands.

North Avenue Baths Building

 by: chicago designslinger

 [North Avenue Baths Building (1921) Levy & Klein, architects /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

If you labor outside on a hot day you sweat. If you go to the bathhouse steam room you schvitz. Schvitz, sweat, your body is doing the same thing but under very different circumstances. You purposefully go to take a schvitz, sweating is another matter altogether. And you never go to the baths "to schvitz," you go "take" a schvitz "at" the schvitz.

  [North Avenue Baths Building, 2039 W. North Avenue, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

The schvitzing bathhouse was different than say a bathhouse owned and operated by the city. The privately run bathhouse usually catered to immigrant Jewish men and women from Eastern European - a holdover from the old country. Harry Kaplan's North Avenue Turkish and Russian Baths wasn't the first schvitzer on Chicago's near northwest side, there was a bathhouse around the corner on Milwaukee Avenue, and one about a mile away on Division Street. But the Wicker Park community in around the intersection of Damen, North and Milwaukee had a large immigrant Polish population and Kaplan's business venture was popular and profitable. Take a schvitz, get a massage, relax, talk business, have some borscht and rye bread with a hard boiled egg in the dining room, and make an afternoon or evening of it. In the 1970s the Chicago Police Department had undercover cops working at the North Avenue Baths which were often frequented by gentlemen supposedly associated with organized crime who used the facility as a meeting place.

  [North Avenue Baths Building, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

The Russian and Turkish experiences were different in temperature and humidity. The Russian schvitz was wetter and not as warm as the Turkish. In the Turkish style you schvitzed in a warm room and cooled down by dumping a bucket of water over yourself.  In the Russian style you sat in a hotter room and poured cold water over incredibly hot rocks, creating steam, and causing intense schvitzing. Both included a plunge in a cold water pool which either ended your experience, or cooled you down enough to go back in for another round. In either situation a massage, or rubdown, on your warm mushy muscles added to the overall experience.

  [North Avenue Baths /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

The North Avenue Baths held on until the late 1980s. By then the younger generation sweated in a sauna at the gym as part of a work-out routine - no one seemed interested in just schvitzing anymore. The baths sat empty, were almost torn down, went-up for auction, and were purchased by Steve Soble and Howard Natinsky in 1994. They spent over a million dollars converting the upper floors into apartments and the ground floor into a restaurant.

North American Building, Chicago

 by: chicago designslinger

 [North American Building (1912) Holabird & Roche, architects /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

On a December day in 1910 it was announced that change was coming once again to Chicago's main retail thoroughfare, State Street. The Chicago Tribune published an article letting its readers know that the old North American Building on the northwest corner of State and Monroe was going to be replaced by a new taller, sleeker and more modern North American Building. Since Potter Palmer had almost single handedly began to shift the city's retail focus from Lake Street to State Street nearly 50 years before, State had been through several building transformations as the demand for space along that Great Street grew in value - and in height.

  [North American Building, 36 S. State Street, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Developers Stumer, Rosenthal and Eckstein hired one of Chicago's busiest, and best, tall building architectural firms Holabird & Roche for the project. William Holabird and Martin Roche, along with a team of talented designers and engineers, had developed a commercial building system that was not only pleasing to the eye, but more importantly for an investor could be built quickly, efficiently, and ready for rent-paying tenants on schedule. They were instrumental in helping make what came to be known as the Chicago School world famous.

  [North American Building, Loop Retail National Historic District, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Their office was humming when the North American commission came their way in 1911. On the drafting tables and under construction at the time were Chicago projects that included buildings like the Otis at La Salle and Madison Street, the Monroe on Michigan Avenue, plus two more State Street projects the Mandel Bros. store building and the massive block long retail emporium for Rothschilds. There was the Rand-McNally at Clark and Harrison, an addition to their McCormick Building on Michigan Avenue at Van Buren, along with another addition being added on to their telephone company building on Washington near today's Wells Street. Holabird and Roche had developed an integrated system that worked, and it worked well.

  [North American Building - Metropolis Condominiums /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

The building sat on a prominent base. The street level retail space was capped by two floors of tall, wide open window spans which could potentially provide prominent display space. The upper stories would provided income producing flexible floor plans tailored to a clients needs. The architects capped it all off with a pinnacle of elaborate Gothic Revival details - and an owl or two - which carried the bands of white glazed terra-cotta into the sky. Like a lot of buildings, the North American went through several changes over the years. The original design contained a sweeping marble lined staircase centered on the ground floor corner at State & Monroe which led to a restaurant below. There was another very eye catching, customer attention grabbing staircase at the back of the ground floor leading-up to the second floor. All of that is gone now, including the row of spiky Gothic pinnacles that once crowned the top, while the flexible office space has been converted into condominium apartments. 

Albin Greiner House

 by: chicago designslinger

[Albin Greiner House (1876) /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Albin Greiner was one of thousands of German immigrants who came to Chicago in the middle of the 19th century and made his mark by manufacturing a product that was in great demand in his day, and by building a house that happened to survive into the 21st century.

  [Albin Greiner House, 1559 N. Hoyne Avenue, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Greiner was a malter. Malting is a process that involves taking a grain, mainly barley but sometimes wheat or rye, and soaking it in water for a few days. Then the wet mush is spread out on the floor of a warm room so it can germinate, then left to dry in a series of increasingly warmer room temperatures, before ending-up as the base product used to make any and all beers and ales. Greiner had started-out in the business in the mid-1860s with fellow German native Charles Streng. After dissolving their partnership in 1872, Greiner hooked-up with Anton Schuerle and opened a malt house in 1876 at what was then 316 Milwaukee Avenue near Erie Street. It was also in that year that Greiner built himself a house not far from the malt business, in a part of the city that was so sparsely populated it still had very much of the open prairie look to it.

  [Albin Greiner House, Wicker Park National Historic District, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Wicker Park was located on the outskirts of the city's northwestern border and because of its distance from the center of town had been spared in the fire of 1871. After the great conflagration a lot of people started to think that the farther they lived from the central city the better their chances were of surviving another massive flame consuming catastrophe and remote areas like Wicker Park became an attractive housing option. Grenier built his house out of brick even though it was outside the city's fire zone, and chose the popular Italianate style to decoratively trim-out the exterior. It wasn't much longer before other beer industry types began moving into the neighborhood - especially along the Greiner's Hoyne Avenue - building much larger and more substantial single family dwellings.

  [Albin Greiner House, Wicker Park Historic District, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Although Greiner's fortunes increased as the years went on, even resulting in his taking a seat at the Chicago Board of trade and opening a brewery in 1889, he never left his modest two-story dwelling. After his death in 1893, Greiner's wife and daughters continued to live in the home for several more years and the house was purchased by Dr. and Mrs. Albert Martin. The green-painted brick cottage with its original wood side porch and original street number artfully encased in the original stained glass transom window, is now the oldest surviving dwelling in the Wicker Park/ Bucktown neighborhood, and has kept Albin Greiner's name alive and well long after his malt houses have been lost to history.

Holy Family Church, Chicago

 by: chicago designslinger

 [Holy Family Church (1857-1878) Dillenberg & Zucker, John M. Van Osdel, and John P. Huber, architects; (1990-on) John Vinci, supervising restoration architect /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

In March, 1857 the United States Supreme Court by a vote of 7 to 2 declared that African Americans, both free and slave, had no legal rights in the United States since they were not, and could never be, citizens of the United States. The justices also invalidated the 1820 Missouri Compromise saying that Congress had no authority to stop the spread of slavery into the territories. In June of that year Springfield, IL. lawyer Abraham Lincoln made a speech outlining point by point where the Court had erred in their "reasoning," kick-starting his march to the White House. That same year the last remaining sections of Chicago's old Fort Dearborn complex were demolished, where it had stood, in one form or another, since 1803. On April 20, 1857 Mary Shays sold 25 lots to Mr. John Drayts who in turn held the mortgage on the property acquired by the city's Roman Catholic bishop, and construction began on a church 3 miles southwest of the Fort in what had been open prairie just a decade before, but was swiftly filling-up with houses and the people who live in them.

  [Holy Family Church, 1080 W. Roosevelt Road, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

When the Bishop of Chicago sent out a call for a Jesuit to come to Chicago and establish a presence in the city, Father Arnold Damen of St. Louis answered. Damen was offered the pastorship of the already up-and-running Holy Name congregation located on the city's north side, but decided to establish his own parish on the south side. So the archdiocese turned over their recently acquired plot of land on 12th Street (Today's Roosevelt Road) near the diagonal run of Hoosier Street (Blue Island) to the Jesuits. Irish immigrants were moving into the area to work in the city's expanding industrial belt along the south branch of the river, and the old neighborhood clustered around St. Patrick's Church at Des Plaines and Adams street was quite a walk - or even a long horse ride if you were lucky enough to have one - from the area around 12th and Hoosier. Damen collected parishioner's pennies, nickels and dimes, and raised enough money to begin construction on Holy Family Church in August, 1857.

  [Holy Family Church, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

The growth of the Irish immigrant community and the spread of the "Roman" religion made a certain segment of the city uncomfortable. Joseph Medill the publisher and owner of the Chicago Tribune, an ardent anti-slavery abolitionist and rabid anti-Catholic, added a few buzz words to signal his true feelings about the growth of papism in Chicago on June 27, 1859 in an article titled, The Progress of Romanism. "In order to acquaint our readers with the operations of the Catholic propaganda in this city, we now present the doings of that of the Holy Family under control of the Jesuits." Yet when the church opened for business on a hot summer day in 1860, the paper covered the story without mentioning the spread of papist "propaganda" under anyones "control."

  [Holy Family Church /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

As the congregation grew in size, so did the building itself. Transepts were added creating a cross in the plan, the front was pushed out 40 feet closer to the street, and by the mid-1870s the tower finally grew to its finished size. Chicago's first official architect John Van Osdel had been involved in the project from its inception in 1857, along with a pair of designers named Dillenberg & Zucker. But it was architect John Huber who put the final touches on the tower - which became the tallest structure in the city when it was completed. The building missed-out on the fire eating flames of the 1871 inferno - which had started just a few blocks to the east - but barley survived into the 21st century. By 1984, a congregation that had once number in the tens of thousands, had dwindled to a few hundred. The fate of the immense structure was still in the hands of the Jesuits who decided that the $1 million it would take to make the building safe and habitable was too high a price tag and were talking demolition. As word spread that the massive structure was going to become landfill fodder, a committed group of volunteers was able to raise money to not only save the building but undertake an extensive restoration project - which continues to this day.

Martin Ryerson Mausoleum

 by: chicago designslinger

 [Martin Ryerson Mausoleum (1887-90) Louis Sullivan, architect /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Martin Ryerson died suddenly while on a trip to Boston in 1887. The Chicago lumber merchant and real estate mogul hadn't been feeling well, but his death took everyone by surprise. His wife accompanied the body back home, and his funeral was attended by a who's who of prominent people from the governor of Illinois to pallbearer Marshall Field. He was laid to rest in Graceland Cemetery, the burial place of choice for the city's elite.

  [Martin Ryerson Mausoleum, Graceland Cemetery, 4001 N. Clark Street, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

In his will Ryerson had bequeathed $8,000 to the Graceland Company and stipulated that the interest income be used to pay for the family resting place's ornamentation and perpetual care. After his father's September burial Martin Antoine Ryerson went to see architect Louis Sullivan. The firm of Adler and Sullivan had designed a number of buildings for Ryerson, and Martin A. asked Sullivan to design a new mausoleum more befitting of his father's achievements. Sixteen-year-old Martin Ryerson had left his parent's home in New Jersey in 1834, walked to Muskegan, Michigan, became a fur trader, married a Native American woman, had a daughter, got into the lumber business, and by the time he turned thirty-three, was a millionaire.

  [Martin Ryerson Mausoleum, National Register of Historic Places, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

The architectural monuments that you see clustered around Graceland's millionaires row today didn't exist when Sullivan's monument for Martin Ryerson began to be assembled in 1890. The tomb was indicative of Sullivan's search for new forms and massing in architecture. He had been incorporating stylized Egyptian motifs into some of his early decorative motifs and the Ryerson mausoleum elevated that interest to a new level. He let the structure speak for itself. He stripped the surface clean, polished the granite to a sheen, and kept the minimal amount of decorative detail simple. The place that the Ryerson family called their final home was an elegantly refined and sophisticated expression of architectural achievement.

  [Martin Ryerson Mausoleum, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

When Ryerson's body was moved to its new resting place, the remains of his daughter Mary went with him. She'd died in 1888 at the age of 45, and was followed by her step-mother, and Martin A.'s mother Mary, in 1907. Martin Antoine joined his parents in Sullivan's masterpiece in 1932, and his wife Carrie Hutchinson Ryerson completed the family unit in 1937. Upon her death, the massive Ryerson art collection went to the Art Institute of Chicago, including works of Impressionist art by Cassatt, Cezanne, Degas, Gauguin, Monet, Renoir, and a Rembrandt.