15 Feb john vinci photographs documenting the final days of adler and sullivan’s chicago stock exchange building
john vinci images documenting the final stages of the senseless destruction of adler and sullivan’s chicago stock exchange (1894), taken in april or early may of 1972. vinci shot the building in black and white and kodachrome, picking up where richard nickel left off before he was killed onsite in april, when the building had become a death trap, with frequent and unpredictable collapses deep within – including what was left of the trading room.
the images of the east facade’s two remaining stories show the fully exposed spandrel panels (within the arches) designed solely by sullivan’s head draftsman, george grant elmslie. richard nickel, who documented the building’s demolition, oversaw the removal of three flights of sullivan-designed stairways for the metropolitan, and assisted john vinci in salvaging the trading room, was preparing to salvage a complete elmslie-designed panel for university of illinois at chicago before an unexpected collapse within the building took his life only weeks before vinci shot these photos. a completely salvaged and reassembled spandrel panel can be viewed in the building fragment garden at the graham institute.
knowing there was a good chance nickel was encased within the rubble deep within the building’s sub-basement, three oaks worked quickly to pull down what was left of the building, not even bothering to thoroughly scrap materials, including the massive solid bronze arched tympium above the lasalle street entrance. chicago’s cultural historian, tim samuelson, who was involved in both the salvaged and search efforts recalled seeing a mangled section of the tympanum poking out among the rubble being dumped near lake calumet, which had over fifty landfills and dumping grounds at the time.
all images courtesy of john vinci collection. digitized and edited by eric j. nordstrom.