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...
tugboat operator james higgie's commercial block was destroyed nearly three years ago. a virtual scrapbook, in the form of images and brief captions provided below, ensure the building and its owner aren't forgotten. i spent months documenting its destruction and salvaging some of the terra...
it's always rewarding when you are able to readily demystify antiquated architectural building materials - whether on the jobsite, or discovering manufacturer markings at a later point in time when documenting the extracted components. identifying the maker of key elements (e.g., plumbing, electrical, stonecutter) used during...
with the power cut and fence erected, walter burley griffin's historically important william f. tempel house (commonly referred to as the "solid rock" house) will be destroyed this week. located in winnetka, ills, the reinforced concrete house was erected in 1911 and later remodeled in...
i've slowly begun the arduous task of organizing all of the data i've amassed from years of identifying and deconstructing or extracting components and systems from chicago worker cottages erected prior to the great chicago fire of 1871. unfortunately, the acquisition of materials, recording of...
in my studio one night recently, i was photographing the latest collection of bottles, chinaware and other debris unearthed from sites along grand avenue, just west of downtown chicago. i was utterly burned out, troubling over moving forward, so i quickly switched gears to set the...
an early to mid-1880s (research ongoing) multi-story brick worker's cottage punctuated with lemont limestone window hoods with centrally located keystones and bracketed wood cornice was destroyed early last week. i managed to photodocument the facade shortly before it was brought down and trucked off to...
a photographic study of excavated utilitarian objects and architectural artifacts from chicago's past. four of the images show building ornament, layers of ash, and common brick "in situ". the fragments were discovered at dig sites across the city prior to being lightly cleaned and photographically...
the chicago balloon frame: beyond "boards and nails." over the past three years, i've collected a considerable amount of photographic images and historic building materials housed in a storage facility in preparation for my "deconstructing chicago" project, which aims to address an increasing number of anomalies...
with over 500,000 photographic images chronicling the destruction of chicago's 19th and early 20th century commercial and residential structures taken over the 20 past years, i've decided it's long overdue to begin the arduous task of mining the data to create a structured database where...
for weeks now, i've been shuttling back and forth through folders housing thousands of images pertaining to upcoming publications, including "unearthing chicago" and "deconstructing chicago." slowly but surely i've been finding homes for these photographs in various chapters, where they complement the text. while pouring over these...
given that i've compiled nearly 2000 blog posts over the past four years, i've decided to begin arranging them up by subject matter, which in turn, may lead to "chapters" for a book on the arcane and greatly overlooked facets of chicago history i find...