19 S. Wabash/Jeweler’s Building

 by: chicago designslinger

 [19 S. Wabash/Jeweler’s Building (1882) Dankmar Adler & Co., Louis Sullivan, architects /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

If a building is over 100 years old it’s not uncommon for it to have gone through some changes. Often those changes include a series of names, and the structure located at 19 S. Wabash is now often referred to by its address. On the other hand, the building is also commonly known by a former name, the Jeweler’s Building, having once housed jewelry wholesalers and workshops since it is located in the city’s jewelry district. The only problem is that there is another prominent piece of architecture that appeared on the Chicago skyline in the 1920s which uses the Jeweler’s Building moniker. Some call the Wabash Avenue address the Iwan Ries Building, its current owner and occupant for over 60 years. Whichever name you use, what makes the building truly unique is that not only was it designed by a young Louis Sullivan for his then boss Dankmar Adler and is an example of the type of work the pair were turning out in the early years of their partnership, but it is the oldest surviving Adler & Sullivan building still standing – anywhere.

  [19 S. Wabash/Jeweler’s Building, National Register of Historic Places, Chicago /Images & Artwork: chicago designlinger]

If you’re at all familiar with the decorative laciness of Sullivan’s organic designs, you’d never guess that the facade of this building was typical of the architect’s work in the early 1880s. Built by Martin Ryerson as a speculative commercial structure, the building was leased to the S.A. Maxwell Company, a stationery, book and wallpaper retailer. The Maxwell retail store occupied the ground floor space and used the upper, open-loft floors for storage and office space. The interior plan was pretty straight forward, but the young architect designed a facade that stood out from its neighbors, a streetscape full of Italianate columns, capitals, arches with some quoining thrown in here and there.

  [19 S. Wabash/Jeweler’s Building, Jeweler’s Row Historic District, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Sullivan’s name was not on the door of the offices of Dankmar Adler & Co. when Ryerson came to call in 1881. The young architect was still a few years away from joining Adler as a full partner in their so-to-be legendary firm, but he was already making his mark on the Chicago landscape. Together, and alone, the pair built over 100 structures in the city of which, shamefully, only 21 remain. Thankfully the Levi family, 5th generation owners of Iwan Ries and the nation’s oldest family owned tobacconists, have done their best in preserving Sullivan’s facade. Although the ground floor has been substantially altered since its original appearance in 1882, the upper stories are the oldest preserved remains of Louis Sullivan’s career.

Champlain Building

 by: chicago designslinger

 [Champlain Building (1902) Holabird & Roche, architects (2010) facade restoration, Brush Architects, Holabird & Root, architects /Images & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Holabird & Roche have the distinction of designing two buildings in Chicago that eventually bore the same name, the Champlain. This version started life in 1903 as the New Powers Building and bore all the hallmarks of an H&R high-rise commercial structure. The team had come up with a formula of taking a skeletal metal frame, covering it with a minimal amount of fireproofing masonry while leaving room for large expansive Chicago windows, and completing the entire project quickly and economically, making them a popular choice with commercial real estate developers. Although they’ve been often marginalized as designers who compromised decorative details to lower per square foot costs, their buildings are quite masterfully detailed.

  [Champlain Building, 37 S. Wabash Avenue, Chicago /Images & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

The building was built by a consortium of investors on a piece of property that already had a building standing on it. The architectural firm was so good at what they did that their 13-story tower opened for occupancy in December of 1902, just 8 months after demolition had begun on the old building. The new structure was named for Orville M. Powers, president and founder of the Metropolitan Business College, which offered a range of classes from bookkeeping, steno, dictation, Spanish and German, to law. The school took over floors 8 through 12, with an option to expand as needed, and occupied the building until the 1930s when the Gregg shorthand school took over the space and the building was renamed the Champlain. Ironically one of Holabird & Roche’s early, groundbreaking designs was also called the Champlain Building which stood at the corner of State and Madison for a very brief 22 years, from 1894 until its demolition in 1916.

  [Champlain Building, Jewelers Row Historic District, Chicago /Images & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

In 1938 after the Powers name change, the building underwent a “modernization” which stripped   the first two floors of their original facades. The corner at Wabash and Monroe was changed again in 1945 when TWA moved in and Skidmore, Ownings & Merrill gave the airline a very sleek, and what we would now call “mid-century modern,” design. It was also in this year that the Illinois Institute of Technology architecture department moved their classes out of the Art Institute and into the Champlain. Department head Mies van der Rohe also set-up set up his private practice in the building at the same time, which must have made for a very convenient commute from the school to the office where Mies was working on his plans for the future architectural marvel, the IIT campus at 35th & State.
By 1988 the School of the Art Institute itself was outgrowing their studio building at the museum and purchased the nearby Champlain for additional class and office space. The building recently had its lower levels returned back to the original H&R design, replicating the ornate terra-cotta decoration surround at the Wabash Avenue entry and duplicating the original ground floor window openings, as well as rewrapping the structural steel in brick which was recreated to match the existing masonry. The building was renamed for donors John and Alice Sharp, so although there are no more Holabird & Roche Champlains left in Chicago, there are still a number of very sharp looking H&R designs still around.