McCormick Building

 by: chicago designslinger

 [McCormick Building (1910/1912) Holabird & Roche, architects /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

McCormick. It's a name that's familiar to generations of Chicagoans, and because of the vast halls of McCormick Place, to millions of visiting conventioneers. The McCormicks were rich, powerful and provided the city with a number of buildings that bore their name over the years, including the 20-story brick block at the corner of Van Buren Street and Michigan Avenue. Built in two phases, the building housed the offices of one branch of a McCormick family fortune, a trust set up by Leander McCormick in the 1890s, which grew in size and provided his heirs with a steady and generous stream of income for decades.

  [McCormick Building, 330-332 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

The McCormick name had been attached to a number of other buildings around town before Leander's son Robert Hall McCormick decided to build another familial titled structure. He hired the prominent Chicago architectural firm of Holabird & Roche, who had designed a cluster of buildings for the McCormicks on Michigan Avenue near Monroe Street in 1890. Today those three, historically significant structures, known as the Gage Group, were originally called the McCormick Buildings. A little further south down Michigan at Van Buren, stood the 1880s-era Victoria Hotel which had started life as the Beaurivage Bachelor Apartments, one of the city's earliest and chicest apartment hotels for sophisticated gentlemen. R. Hall bought the old hotel and tore it down in 1909 to make way for his latest real estate investment. The design was atypical for an architectural firm that had helped create the now famous Chicago School, with its broad wide window openings filling the open spaces of the underlying structural steel frame, but it worked perfectly for McCormick. So much so that the architects were called back in 1911 to design an addition to the recently completed structure, when McCormick got hold of the property just to the north of his building and constructed a seamless extension that doubled the size of the original.

  [McCormick Building, Historic Michigan Boulevard District, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Robert Hall McCormick, Jr. took over the reigns of his father's and grandfather's real estate empire in 1917 and continued to oversee the trust from the family offices at the top of the building. Robert, Jr. liked the building so much that he lived in a penthouse suite on the 20th floor where he introduced his third wife to Chicago society in 1945. Before his death in 1963, McCormick, Jr. invested in an apartment building venture that involved developer Herb Greenwald and architect Mies van der Rohe. McCormick was so enamored with Mies' open floor plans and glass to ceiling windows that he moved from his Michigan Avenue penthouse and into an apartment with a stellar lake view at 860-880 Lake Shore Drive.
Today there are people living in the top 6 floors of the building Robert, Jr. once called home. And even though a family member hasn't had a financial interest in the building for decades, it's still called The McCormick.

Horatio N. May House

 by: chicago designslinger

 [Horatio N. May House (1891) Joseph L. Silsbee, architect /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Architect Joseph Lyman Silsbee was a busy man in 1890. Residential commissions were piling in, and he and his team were hard at work on a few projects for the big World's Columbian Exposition which was going to open in Chicago in a couple of years. The year before, his client Jenkin Lloyd Jone's nephew Frank Wright, whom Silsbee had brought to Chicago and into his office from the young man's Wisconsin home, had left the firm for the much larger offices of Adler & Sullivan. But that was several years before Frank Wright became the Frank Lloyd Wright we know today.

  [Horatio N. May House, 1443 N. Astor Street, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

One residential commission on Silsbee's drafting table at the time was the home of Horatio  and Anna May. May had made a lot of money in the wholesale grocery business as well as by investing his ever growing income in real estate. He purchased a large double lot on a sparsely populated but expanding Astor Street in the late 1880s and decided to build a house on one of them at No. 147 Astor. He hired J.L. Silsbee as his architect.

  [Horatio N.  May House, Gold Coast National Historic District, Chicago/Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

While overseeing work on the May house and the designs on a couple of buildings for the World's Fair, Silsbee was also busy working with engineer Max E. Schmidt on what would become one of the Fair's more popular and well traveled attractions, the Movable Sidewalk. Looping its way through the Fair grounds, the "Multiple Dispatch Railway of Endless Moving Platforms" was made-up of a stationary platform which you stepped from and on to a very slowly moving platform. Then it was just an easy step over to a faster moving platform where you could sit on a canopied covered bench until you were ready to disembark at your destination. Never traveling much faster than 3 miles per hour, the conveyance moved approximately 40,000 people an hour through the acres of Fair grounds. It was so popular that in November, 1893 a consortium of businessmen proposed building an elevated movable sidewalk in the downtown commercial district to accompany the new elevated loop railroad. The elevated railroad got built, but not the walkway.
Anna May was also quite the innovative thinker and planner. She lived north of the river in her secluded community and all of her shopping was done south of the river in the central retail district. The bridges crossing the river were ugly and crowded and Anna had an idea that there was a better way to traverse the dividing waterway by building a boulevard that would travel under the river bed. Chicago Mayor DeWitt Cregier had proposed building an expansive bridge at a wide point in the river connecting Michigan Avenue with the north side at a cost of $5,000,000. Anna believed the bridge idea was old school and proposed constructing a 50-foot-wide, 3,200-foot-long, slowly-receding, road and pedestrian boulevard tunnel just east of today's Rush Street, that would burrow under the river and rise again on Michigan Avenue at Randolph Street. She hired Silsbee to work with her on the plan which included Corinthian-capped columns supports, white glazed tile walls and electric lighting, all coming in at a much less costly $1,500,000. Thirty years later the Michigan Avenue Bridge connected the two sides, while Mrs. May's tunnel scheme never saw a shovel put to ground.
When her husband died suddenly in 1898, Anna May hired Silsbee to design the May Chapel in Rosehill Cemetery - the end point of an interesting architectural relationship.

105 W. Madison Building, Chicago

 by: chicago designslinger

[105 W. Madison Building (1928) D.H. Burnham & Co., architects /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

The monumental architect Daniel Burnham died in 1912, but his namesake firm lived on in a couple of interpretive reiterations over the next few years. First as Graham, Burnham & Co. when lead designer Ernest Graham partnered with Burnham's two sons, Hubert and Daniel, Jr. Then when Graham went off on his own to carry on in the grand classical Burnham tradition, the Burnham boys set up an office of their own and went back to using D.H. Burnham & Co.

   [105 W. Madison Building, 105 W. Madison Street, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

In 1928 the brothers completed construction on a rather nondescript, terra cotta coated building located on the southwest corner of Madison and Clark Streets. The 23-story tower looked like any number of tall office buildings in downtown Chicago, but for the Burnham's it marked the end of an era, there wasn't a traditional acanthus leaf, fluted column, or scotia in sight. Their geometrically-inspired decoration for 105 W. Madison Street found inspiration in the distinctive contemporary designs of their era rather than the historicism of the ancient Greece and Rome - change was in the air.

  [105 W. Madison Building, Chicago, Chicago Real Estate Board Building /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

A few months after construction got underway, Hubert & Daniel Burnham changed the name of the company to Burnham Brothers, simpler, more accurate, and perhaps a sign that they had emerged from the classical shadow of their father and were ready to make their own mark in the world. In 1942 the Chicago Real Estate Board moved into the building from their West Randolph Street offices which garnered the naming rights of the building for the Board, a title that the tower held on to until 1970 when the real estate concern vacated the structure after a substantial rent increase. By then the brothers long association with architecture had come to an end. Hubert left Chicago in 1955 after retiring as a partner in the extended firm name of Burnham Bros. & Hammond and relocated to La Jolla, CA. where he died in 1969 at age eighty-seven. Younger brother Daniel, Jr. on the other hand remained active in the firm until his death in a car accident in 1961, age seventy-five.

451 W. Wrightwood, Chicago

 by: chicago designslinger

 [451 W. Wrightwood, Chicago (1928) Raymond A. Gregori, architect /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

During the mid-to-late 1920s Chicago experienced a boom in tall apartment building construction. Focused primarily along the lake front and nearby neighborhoods, the city's relatively low-rise residential skyline was punctuated by these rising 12, to 15, to 20-story towers. Some were built with large, expensive, 9-room-and-up floor plans, while others provided 1, 2 or 3-room apartments at a more affordable price. But even the developers of these less expensive, smaller-quartered-units spent money on elaborate exterior decoration, providing their buildings with a visual umph that belied their more modest accommodations.

  [451 W. Wrightwood, Chicago, Park Royale Apartments /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

When builder and developer Ben Bogeaus purchased the large corner lot in the Lakeview neighborhood in 1927 where the Williams family mansion once stood, he called on architect Raymond A. Gregori to design two, multi-story apartment buildings. The two structures would share a common courtyard and both would offer smaller sized residential units, but the builder wanted each building to have something distinctive that would catch the eye of a passerby, or make a good first impression on a potential renter. Many developers thought that the spending a few extra dollars on an additional flourish or two would pay-off when it came time to market their investment. So a lot of architects around the city were dressing-up the exteriors of these rather bland brick towers with some sort of interpretative re-imagining of a past architectural era, and the more styles you threw in, the better. Gregori went wild with the tower at the corner of Wrightwood and Hampden Court, concocting a decorative scheme that seems to have been inspired by ancient Babylon, the Middle East, with a smattering of Italian Romanesque thrown in for good measure.

  [451 W. Wrightwood, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

The 14-story Park Royale Apartments would provide apartments of 1 to 4 rooms, starting at $40/month and peaking at $140/month. The Park Royale, unlike its sister building the Park Central next door, would provide hotel-like accommodations with furnished apartments, a concierge, and 24-hour switchboard and elevator service. Bogeaus' $2.5 million investment also included an elaborate, 65 X 100-foot long lobby with Florentine-style trimmings, along with a Wizard of Oz themed playroom in the tower penthouse for the youngsters. The building held on to its Park Royale name while going through several changes in ownership and management over the ensuing decades, but by 1983 the name had been changed to the less regal sounding Wrightwood Court. Today, while Gregori's Royale has held on to all of its extravagant decoration, it is now known simply as 451 W. Wrightwood.

Anshe Emet Synagogue, Chicago

 by: chicago designslinger

 [Anshe Emet Synagogue, Chicago (1910) Alfred S. Alschuler, architect /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

1926 was a big year for Congregation Anshe Emes. Organized by a small group of men in the parlor of Louis Sax's near north side Chicago home in 1873, 53 years later the 1,000+ members of Anshe Emes were able to raise $325,000 in cash and purchase a 1,300-seat house of worship on North Pine Grove Avenue.

  [Anshe Emet Synagogue, Chicago, Anshe Emes Synagogue, 627 W. Patterson Avenue, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

This was not the Conservative Jewish congregation's first move. That occurred in 1876 when the original members were able to raise enough funds to rent Phoenix Hall on Division Street for weekly services. By 1893, things were going well enough that the group was able to build their own synagogue around the corner on Sedgwick Street, but one more move had to happen before settling into their Pine Grove sanctuary. By 1914 the folks who worshipped at Anshe Emes were moving up and away from the old neighborhood and relocating further north. So that same year, the congregation purchased an empty lot on Gary Place (now Patterson) near Addison just off today's Broadway. The new building was not much larger than the Sedgwick property, but it did include a social hall and enough space for classrooms.

  [Anshe Emet Synagogue, Chicago, 3760 N. Pine Grove Avenue, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Anshe Emes was not the first Jewish congregation to locate in the neighborhood. In 1910 architect Alfred Alschuler designed a large sanctuary and meeting hall building for the Reform congregation Temple Sholom, which was just around the corner and up the block from Anshe Emes. When Temple Sholom decided to move a few blocks over to Lake Shore Drive and build a new house of worship in the mid-1920s, the members of Anshe Emes decided to buy the soon-to-be-vacated building and move around the corner. It was in 1929, when Rabbi Solomon Goldman was formally installed as the spiritual leader of the synagogue that the "s" in emes was replaced by a "t", and Anshe Emes became Anshe Emet. In Hebrew, the word for truth is emet (אֱמֶת).

Cobbler Square- Western Wheel Works Building

 by: chicago designslinger

 [Cobbler Square - Western Wheel Works Building (1889-1895) Henry Sierks, Julius H. Huber, architects; (1985) adaptive reuse, Kenneth A. Schroeder & Associates /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

With the magnifier icon at hand and zoom function in operation, a close look at Robinson's 1886 Map of Chicago shows a double-store-fronted building on Wells Street just south of Schiller bearing the inscription Western Toy Company. It's the spot where Adolph Schoeninger reopened for business after the Chicago Fire had wiped his successful toy operation from the map in 1871, and left German immigrant bankrupt. By 1889 on the other hand, Schoeninger's toy company had morphed into the Western Wheel Works, one of the country's largest bicycle manufacturers, and construction began on a multi-story manufacturing plant directly behind the 2-story toy store.

  [Cobbler Square - Western Wheel Works Building, 1350 N. Wells Street, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

The success of Western Wheel Works had quite an impact on the block bounded by Wells, Schiller, Evergreen (then Sibel) Streets and North Park Avenue. Eventually, piece by piece, Schoeninger took over existing residential properties, tore the houses down, and built another portion of his factory complex. By the time the maze of structures was completed around 1893, all of the buildings seen on the Robinson Map were gone except for a line of them along Wells Street, which included the original toy company store. Comprised of 16 individual structures, the buildings wound their way around a city alleyway that zig-zagged through the property which had once serviced the former residential community, and had somehow survived intact.

[Cobbler Square - Western Wheel Works Building /Image & Artwork: chicago desingslinger]

In 1900, Western Wheel Works, a company that was selling 70,000 bikes a year in 1896, went out-of-business as bike sales began to take an over-the-cliff nose dive in the U.S. The Liquid Carbonic Company, makers of soda fountains and related supplies took over all 16 buildings where they made everything from marble counter tops to mahogany wood cases and bars, to the syrups that flavored soda-infused drinks. By the mid-1930s the complex was serving a variety of manufacturers, including the makers of Dr. William Scholl's line of foot care products. And in 1954, Scholl celebrated the 50th anniversary of the founding of his company by building a final addition to the complex along Wells Street, where the original Western Toy Company building had finally been demolished.
The Scholl company left their Chicago plant in 1980 and moved to Tennessee. Soon after plans were in the works to convert the maze of structures into one, cohesive housing community, and Cobbler Square was born. A few of the inner buildings were demolished to open-up the interior while expanding the original city alleyway, and Scholl's Wells Street addition was altered to create a grand entrance to the 292 apartment complex and to once again provide retail space along Wells. And although Schoeninger's toy shop is long gone, the store once sat just behind the tree on the right side of the photo, where a national retail chain is now located.  

Cuneo Family House

 by: chicago designslinger

 [Cuneo Family House (ca. 1889) /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

One of the more remarkable finds along a street with many remarkable architectural features, is an amazing example of how metal can be molded into shapes that seem to defy the alloys rigid nature. Coils, and vines of delicately wrought leaves have wrapped this greystone mansion on State Parkway for all of its 122 years. That the house was able to hold on to these decorative accoutrements, especially during the Second World War when the city was virtually stripped of anything iron (like railings and fencing) to support the war effort, may be a testament to the fact that the house remained in the hands of one family for over 70 years.

  [Cuneo Family House, 1364 N. State Parkway, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

John B. Cuneo left Genoa, Italy in 1857 with his wife Katherine and two young sons, and came to Chicago. He opened a grocery store where Lawrence, Andrew, and Frank (born in Chicago in 1862) got their first taste of the retail trade, and where they must have realized that real money was to be made in wholesaling and not retailing. Because in 1879 Andrew joined Garibaldi & Arata, wholesale fruit traders, becoming a partner in 1882. In 1880, Frank joined Garibaldi & Cuneo, while brother Lawrence formed Cuneo & Boitano with Louis Boitano. Andrew left Garibaldi and Frank, and joined forces with Lawrence. Boitano left the brothers in 1893, and the firm went on to sell massive amounts of fruits and nuts under the name Cuneo Bros. While all of this moving around and trading up was going on, John's three sons built large single-family homes within blocks of one another on the city's near north side. Lawrence on La Salle Boulevard, Andrew on Astor Street, and Frank on State.

  [Cuneo Family House, Gold Coast National Historic District, Chicago/Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Garibaldi & Cuneo grew into one of the largest fruit and nut wholesalers in the country.   The company cornered the banana market in the U.S., and Frank caught a lot a flack for trying to fix prices. He left State Parkway (then State Street) in 1906 when he moved farther north, literally, to a house on Sheridan Road. Frank had purchased a piece property at the corner of Wilson Avenue and Sheridan which inluded a large single family home. Thinking that Wilson could be come a major commercial district and profitable real estate investment, he had the entire multi-ton, three-story brick house moved two blocks north as he began transforming Wilson from a sleepy, quiet, primarily residential avenue into a thriving, commercial hot-spot. Andrew meanwhile left his house on Astor and moved into Frank's 18-room greystone mansion, where the elder Cuneo brother died in 1927. The Cuneo family continued to call the State Street house home when Andrew's daughter and her husband Dom Rocca took over as owners. And in 1947, Rosemary Cuneo Rocca was married in her family's homestead wearing great-grandmother Katherine's wedding lace. In 1960 the last member of the Cuneo family left the great house, and after a few subsequent owners and a restoration or two, it remains a single family residence to the present day.