08 Feb eight building bricks shed light on the disappearance of chicago’s architectural past
while sorting through boxes of building materials i’m cataloging for my “deconstructing chicago project,” i decided to set a group of bricks aside that connect with, based on the salvages and/or stories tied to them. eight stories involving the non-extant buildings from which the bricks came from were selected from previous blog postings and listed below.
the bricks (from left to right) include the salerno cookie factory, 500 n. milwaukee, post-fire birdsall cottage, pre-fire german school, john kent russell house, john lomax bottling plant, post-fire osborne & adams commercial building, and finally, the a. finkl foundry.
as i continue to sort through and catalog additional objects and artifacts from both the “unearthing” and “deconstructing” projects completed a year or so ago, i hope to generate future posts that assign narratives to seemingly mundane objects.
common bricks discovered during demolition of the pre-fire german school, completed in 1869. augustus bauer was the school’s architect. the finger markings or impressions left by a laborer working in the press molding department of a brickyard during the 1860’s offers a portal to the past forever frozen in time.
DEMOLITION OF THE FORMER ART DECO STYLE SALERNO COOKIE FACTORY NEARLY COMPLETED
500 NORTH MILWAUKEE: GOING, GOING, GONE.
POST DEMOLITION, EARLY 1870’S RICHARD MAURICE BIRDSALL COTTAGE JUST A FORMER SHADOW OF ITSELF
POST DEMOLITION, EARLY 1870’S RICHARD MAURICE BIRDSALL COTTAGE JUST A FORMER SHADOW OF ITSELF
JOHN KENT RUSSELL HOUSE (1855) LIVES ON THROUGH ITS ARTIFACTS REMOVED ABOVE AND BELOW GROUND
RARE 1850’S TEAL-COLORED AINSWORTH AND LOMAX GLASS BOTTLE RECENTLY UNEARTHED FROM CHICAGO PRIVY
IN THE WAKE OF THE OSBORNE & ADAMS DEMOLITION, HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BUILDING ILLUMINATED BY ITS ARCHITECT
ASSIGNING NARRATIVES TO MUNDANE OBJECTS DESTINED TO BE SCRAPPED OR DISCARDED AS RUBBISH
