john vinci and i made the trek to st. louis to visit richard nickel's architectural ornament at southern university edwardsville, the wainwright and union trust buildings, city museum, and the wainwright tomb, located in bellefontaine cemetery. time was very limited, so i didn't get a...
images of richard nickel’s adler & sullivan building ornament collection on display at lovejoy library, southern illinois university edwardsville (siue). nickel sold his architectural artifact collection to the university in 1965 but continued salvaging additional fragments until his untimely death in 1972. ...
richard nickel images of adler & sullivan's solomon blumenfeld building taken during its demolition. the three-story building with limestone facade was built for chicago clothing merchant solomon blumenfeld between 1883-1884. [caption id="attachment_39151" align="alignleft" width="2516"] taken by nickel while still a student at the institute of design....
the following image gallery offers a glimpse at the most recent american architectural, medical, and industrial artifacts and/or miscellaneous objects added to our ever-expanding urban remains virtual catalog (over 40,000 catalog listings to date). the newly acquired items have been documented, cleaned/refinished (if need be)...
the following image gallery offers a glimpse at the most recent american architectural, medical, and industrial artifacts and/or miscellaneous objects added to our ever-expanding urban remains virtual catalog (over 40,000 catalog listings to date). the newly acquired items have been documented, cleaned/refinished (if need be)...
adler & sullivan’s wainwright tomb - located in bellefontaine cemetery st. louis – was originally constructed for charlotte dickson wainwright, the wife of ellis wainwright, who’s building was designed by the same firm a year before the tomb was completed in 1892. shortly after construction...
if i recall correctly, i salvaged an old pharmacy located in east chicago sometime in 2006. the family-owned business and the 1920's building housing it, shut down after a walgreens moved in around the corner. while salvaging the drugstore - or what was left of it...
in 1951, crombie taylor – then acting director of chicago’s institute of design – worked with newly-appointed photography instructor aaron siskind to develop a photographic study or survey of commercial and residential buildings designed by the firm of dankmar adler and louis sullivan. over...
the uptown theater (1925) is one of the few remaining "roaring twenties" neighborhood movie palaces left standing in chicago. the gargantuan structure is the last of the "big three" theaters (i.e., non-extant tivoli, 1921 and the extant chicago, 1921) designed by the architectural firm of...
although i'm not well-versed in bridge technology - in this case, a pony truss bascule bridge completed in 1914 - i figured it was worth an afternoon to document the historic chicago avenue bridge and operator houses not only to gain an appreciation for its...
the following image gallery offers a glimpse at the most recent american architectural, medical, and industrial artifacts and/or miscellaneous objects added to our ever-expanding urban remains virtual catalog (over 40,000 catalog listings to date). the newly acquired items have been documented, cleaned/refinished (if need be)...
when it came to salvaging architectural ornament, chicago's richard nickel was exacting, tedious, and methodical, both in preparation and execution, on any and all demolition sites. an invaluable example of this approach (rarely seen since) lives on in the form of nickel's "ornament "scrapbook," which...
a found a bag of diminutive stainless steel letters and numbers the other day. completely slipped my mind i salvaged them over 10 years ago from veterans administration lakeside hospital (1950). i believe schmidt, garden, and erickson were the architects. [caption id="attachment_38317" align="alignleft" width="900"] the brushed...
fatigue and restlessness from spending too much time digitizing photographs, slides and ephemera on chicago's architectural past has reinvigorated me to resume my work, or rather, photographic studies on the city's architectural ornament through the use of my camera and zoom lenses. the intimacy i feel...
continued digitization of chicago architect john vinci's kodachrome and/or ektachrome archive remains a top priority in 2018. to see the first two installations or galleries of images from this ever-growing collection (over six-hundred completed as of this writing), please click on the links below. the color photographs were taken...
the following images were taken during a recent visit to frank lloyd wright's home and studio (1889). unlike most of my blog entries, i selected a handful of images, focusing on exterior and interior details that appealed to my mind'y eye. ...
i can't reiterate how fulfilling it is to travel back in time and immerse myself in a seemingly endless cache of richard nickel contact prints documenting the death of first chicago school buildings, including many built by the firm of adler & sullivan. as an...
the following john vinci slides paint the demolition of adler & sullivan's schiller building or garrick theater (completed in 1892) in full color, thanks to the use of kodachrome, which was the first commercially successful color film praised since the great depression for its sharpness, archival durability, and...
the following images were pulled from one of my latest photographic archives devoted to the study of ornamental detail found throughout interior spaces within adler & sullivan's 1889 auditorium building. images taken from the building's theater and ganz hall will be addressed in future posts. [caption...
the following image gallery offers a glimpse at the most recent american architectural, medical, and industrial artifacts and/or miscellaneous objects added to our ever-expanding urban remains virtual catalog (over 35,800 catalog listings to date). the newly acquired items have been documented, cleaned/refinished (if need be)...