BY SEAN LEWIS AND STACY FRIEDMAN CHICAGO -- Eric Nordstrom didn’t plan to spend his life poking around crumbling churches, homes and hospitals on a quest to document history. He studied molecular genetics at the University of Minnesota and was a staff scientist at the University...
another physically and emotionally draining year has drawn to a close, but the ungodly amount of projects have left a heap of photographic images, documents, and artifact extractions waiting to be transformed into blog posts, exhibits, lectures, and narratives, that will carry into 2017 and perhaps...
the bldg. 51 american architectural artifact museum recently acquired several r.r. donnelley printing plant (extant) ornamental terra cotta exterior shields featuring richly colored polychromatic finishes. fabricated by the midland terra cotta (chicago, ills.), the shields adorned the exterior facade of the massive printing facility, considered the...
in a previous post, the bldg. 51 museum acquired a unique and highly figurative terra cotta rondel that was positioned between the spandrels on the exterior of the sullivan-inspired late 19th century st. boniface school building (demolished in the 1990's). late last week several pallets of...
after learning that the city had rejected the demolition of a post-fire chicago cottage located at 1639 n. north park avenue this morning, i opened up my schedule to spend the afternoon photodocumenting the frame house's exterior characteristics. from there, i decided to broaden the...
with the drebohl brothers and zessler "munich" style art glass windows removed from park view lutheran church (see prior posts), my only business being was to document its senseless and destruction, that surprisingly, went largely unnoticed by neighbors and preservationists alike. it was utterly surreal...
a collection of fulton market cold storage warehouse utilitarian objects. ...
earlier this month, two nearly identical, museum-quality cast plaster interior residential ceiling medallions salvaged by richard nickel in 1968 were recently added to the bldg. 51 museum collection. the remarkable solid plaster ceiling medallions or rosettes were designed by louis h. sullivan for the louis...
documenting rapp and rapp's chicago theater (1921) today was nothing short of sensory overload. my camera crawled over so many intricate fixtures, and i was engulfed in a sea of ornamental plasterwork - both in the lobby and auditorium (see previous posts for a discussion...
...
my eye gravitates toward crazed paint, cracked windows, timeworn stonework, and "ghost signs" as i walk the streets with camera in hand. those are only a few of the numerous attributes that i look for in aging buildings that have avoided substantial alteration. even when...
to this day, the rookery building (burnham & root, 1888) still houses the northern trust company's old central safety deposit vaults in its basement. while the vault room no longer houses the 1100 private safes (installed in 1901) used to protect chicagoan's securities and valuables, the...
an exceptionally well-maintained two-story masonry residence, constructed between 1888-1894, was issued a demolition permit late last week. despite being structurally sound and a solid representation of a late 19th century victorian-era chicago boarding house and/or two-flat, it seems it was sadly only a matter of...
after spending the day engaging with people over my pop-up exhibition of "fragments from chicago's past," i brought some of the architectural artifacts to my studio to photograph before they return to the bldg. 51 museum. i cleaned, documented, and photographed each and every fragment, both...
after spending an afternoon a few ago photographing the facade of the congress theater, combined with revisiting nortown theater ornament i salvaged in 2007, and researching the architectural firm of rapp and rapp for an upcoming exhibit i'm putting together on "artifacts from atmospheric theaters,"...
less than a week ago i posted images and a brief commentary about two adjoining 1870's italianate "athen's marble" fronted residential buildings on monroe street, which were vacated in preparation for a demolition that i suspected to be only weeks away. i'm constantly surprised how quickly...
the architectural firm of rapp and rapp, consisting of brothers cornelius ward rapp and george leslie rapp (founded in 1907), was widely considered to be one of the leading designers of the great movie palaces constructed during the early 20th century. the firm designed over 400...
i spent the afternoon last week helping my friend tim samuelson transport an ornamental terra cotta figural rondel head salvaged from sullivan & adler's schiller building (garrick theater) to be repaired by another mutual friend, mike gruzca, in preparation for an upcoming exhibit. gruzca is...
several 1870's-era joilet limestone commercial and residential structures have been wiped away from chicago's ciyscape this year. i find this deeply disconcerting. could you imagine buildings in soho, fronted with cast iron facades, being broken apart and scrapped? just as with the buildings in soho's cast...
as i stood across the street from the congress theater's facade, i was reminded of my good fortune, to at one time have had intimate, unabridged access to the chicago athletic association's intricately ornamented building facade. the athletic club had a similar scaffolding configuration as...