a modest downtown chicago post-fire masonry structure built between 1873-1874 for the rubber paint company will be destroyed by end of the week. the two-story brick building retains the original distinctive archtop windows punctuated with unornamented lemont limestone keystones. the original pressed metal or wood projecting...
a 19th century two-flat (discussed in a previous post) has been reduced to rubble, but the discovery of an aqua blobtop miller beer bottle (with intact lighting stopper) left in a wall exposed during the final moments of demolition, has made it worthwhile to photo-document...
five historically important commercial and residential keystones from the bldg. 51 museum collection. [caption id="attachment_34712" align="alignleft" width="2216"] one of a kind original and intact museum-quality and historically important single ornamental hand carved exterior solid keystone salvaged from a pre-fire chicago german school (later known as the gethsemane...
for nearly two decades - if not longer - i've witnessed countless irreplaceable mid-to-late 19th century wood-framed worker cottages targeted for rapid removal and erasure. for the most part every site is the same, where i must carefully and methodically parse through each and every...
a number of mid-19th century bottles were recently unearthed deep below the site of chicago’s former grand central station, with the four richly colored iron and smooth base soda bottles serving as the inspiration to further investigate the slew of structures that were built above...
as more and more 19th century cottages succumbed to the wrecking ball over the course of the past year, i could not help but entertain the idea of salvaging bigger and more visually-striking house "systems," whose parts alone are powerful in size and scale. [gallery ids="22908,22910,22909"] in...
in preparation for publishing "unearthing chicago" in 2022, i've pulled some images capturing 19th and early 20th century bottles at excavation sites around chicago. shortly after being discovered, these remnants of victorian-era rubbish were carefully exposed by removing surrounding dirt and debris to reveal a...
anticipating another year of lost buildings through demolition, i've already prepared additional storage space for the ever-growing collection of lost or discarded objects found under attic floorboards, ledger and sill plates, foundation walls, and stud cavities within those 19th century chicago cottages that are faced with...
the wrecking machine is immobile for a moment, but research on this cottage remains active, as i repeatedly visit to explore and document the house's framework -- bedecked with pegged and notched sill plates, rough-sawn white pine "sticks," and so on. both the interior and exterior have been altered so...
a compilation of images, brief comments taken from other social media platforms, and previous blog bld. 51 blog posts on louis h. sullivan's henry babson house are presented below. the babson house are richard nickel, john vinci, and david norris salvaged louis h. sullivan's 1908 henry babson...
photographic survey (a work in progress) of the romanesque style compton hill standpipe water tower designed by architect harvey ellis in 1898. the compton hill water tower (1898), is the earliest of three extant stand pipe-water towers located in st. louis. the 179-foot water tower was...
washington porter jr.’s "kiosk sphinx" was a custom-designed private museum built between 1928-1933 at a cost of 350,000 dollars on the rear lot of his parent’s mansion, located at 4043 lake park avenue, chicago, ills. the unusual cast concrete structure with massive steel observation tower...
unfortunately, i didn't have the time to systemically document a post-fire chicago wood-framed cottage located on ohio street (west town neighborhood of chicago) until it was nearly demolished. when i arrived, the facade was left partially intact and the interlocking sills and girts where exposed. sheathing and...
the following blog entry revolves around richard nickel images documenting the removal of the louis sullivan-designed carved bedford limestone entrance lunette from the albert sullivan house's façade in 1970. the lunette is one of only a few surviving links to sullivan's work on the 1893 chicago world's...
virtually untouched and largely intact "gardenesque" cast plaster ornament was discovered above a drop ceiling in the chicago athletic association building's cherry circle bar in 2014, when the building was being coverted into a boutique hotel. hugh garden's richly colored hidden ornament (1907) was carefully...
virtual gallery of images representing ongoing project photodocumenting architectural ornament designed by louis h. sullivan on the facade of adler and sullivan's s.a. maxwell five-story loft building erected in 1881. note: additional images of the ground floor and what was discovered behind multiple damaging alterations will...
i'll be posting any and all my images of every 19th or early 20th century chicago house and/or commercial structure i've documented/salvaged over the past five years. this will be a work in progress, so except the chronology to be scattered. perhaps in time, i...
latest, and likely the last, set of images chronicling the destruction of walter burley griffin's william f. temple house (1911), including building samples (concealed in 1918 when house was heavily altered by barry byrne) collected and documented from the demolition site. ...
i will be adding several blog posts over the course of the year pertaining to images and artifacts from the "unearthing chicago" project that reached its end in late 2016 with the discovery of one of the earliest known downtown chicago privy pits or vaults...
in the wake of a number of demolitions that razed beautifully intact 19th century buildings, it feels redundant to pine over the loss of irreplaceable architecture and the blatant disregard for a historic landscape. instead, having returned from a vacation where i was able to...