The Eric J. Nordstrom Interview Posted on September 16, 2016 Since I was a much younger person I've been interested in "lost" Chicago, the buildings that have been boarded up or torn down and lost to history (you can check out an interview with David Garrard...
the decorators'' supply company traces its history back to 1883 when the original founders, simon strahn and richard c. foster, established a partnership to manufacture "artistic decorative accessories." an old lease document dated april 13, 1890 describes the company as a carving and guilders business. by...
a remarkably intact wood-framed cottage with gable front was reduced to rubble in a matter of hours this past weekend. once the residence of william schmidt - a chicago patrolman during the 1870's - the house likely dated to shortly after the great chicago fire...
the bldg. 51 museum has secured several historically important chicago building artifacts over the past month that are just now being carefully documented and photographed for exhibition in the ever-growing collection. earlier this week it began with an all original heavily ornamented figural cast iron...
there's good reason why i cannot leave a wrecking site until everything has been trucked off, including the earth excavated for laying the foundation of the structure replacing the one reduced to rubble. every now and then, while a building is being blasted by the excavator's bucket, something...
i never made it to work on friday. instead, i drove over to evergreen street after seeing demolition permits reissued, and hearing from an associate that the bright yellow wrecking machine is parked in front of the four endangered structures there. catching wind of this...
a little over a month ago urban remains covered the initial stages of the death sentence handed to noble square’s early 20th century historically important st. boniface church. as wrecking begins on the dilapidated structure, despite community protest to adaptively reuse the building, urban remains...
i'm so thankful to have made the time to quickly document this remarkable pot-fire italianate style residence before it was brought down earlier this week. thanks to quality wrecking i managed to document both the interior and exterior shortly before and during the house's untimely...
since 1910, st. john's oversized cast bronze church bell was used to call the congregation to service, announce weddings, and of course, toll at funerals. late last week that oversized bell, fabricated by the henery stuckstede foundry, st. louis, mo., was carefully extracted from the exposed...
recently acquired for the bldg. 51 collection/museum are a pair of remarkable 1920's exterior light fixtures, discovered in a remodeled stairway leading down to lower wacker west of michigan avenue. the exterior sconces were originally installed at the lincoln park zoo. though the large globes are...
at least a fifty or so "projects" related to chicago history are currently awaiting my attention. the information so greatly deserves to be shared, whether through an image gallery or a lengthier narrative tied to research, and i feel the rapid accumulation of this dead weight...
among the non-chicago based artifacts in the bldg. 51 museum collection is a highly unusual depression-era theater seat end, included in the catalog for its reflection of exotic movie palace architecture in the mid-west, and as an object designed for chicago architects anker graven and...
outside of architectural ornament, signage is an important element of the built landscape for its ability to retrace a specific area's changing landscape. as a salvaged object, it is always implicated in whatever historical narrative might arise. this is embodied in a very rare original...
last weekend i made my way over to rush hospital to document what remained of the historically important buildings containing ornamental terra cotta, limestone, and other materials on their facades. once onsite it was clear the presbyterian hospital's daniel a. jones building (1888) was long...
out of equal parts curiosity and utter fascination i've chosen to devote a considerable amount of my time away from the business life of urban remains, toward meticulously documenting the death of a logan square church. instead of the usual deconstruction process, in which the...
during this week’s demolition at 2442 w. moffat street, as st. john’s church was painstakingly deconstructed before my eyes, i decided to move forward and secure two matching sets of original c. 1910 gothic style pressed and folded antique copper finials, along with the topmost oversized finial...
the 19th century two-story wood frame victorian style house had already been mowed down by the time i arrived onsite - i was shuttling back and forth between salvaging, digging and documenting other doomed buildings around the city, so i was unable to commit more time to...
in the coming weeks, i will be thoroughly documenting the salvage of a 106 year old church in logan square, whose structure is slowly being dismantled. the life of the building is to live on in scattered fragments and in the bricks which will purportedly...
a permit was issued earlier this week to wreck and remove the terra cotta building at 3228 north clark street which until recently housed “the alley” and long ago held a nickelodeon and neighborhood gathering place called the "clermont". although some tout the current development vision...
[caption id="attachment_23470" align="alignleft" width="1000"] mountains of early 20th century lath waiting to be organized and strapped into bundles for reuse as anything and everything. the building is slowly dying, but its remnants will live on elsewhere.[/caption] the destruction of a building occurs within a finite, and...