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This past weekend I went on a walking tour of Riverside, Illinois. The tour was given by the Frederick Law Olmsted Society. Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux were the architects who designed and built the village of Riverside in 1869. Riverside is one of the earliest planned communities in the United States and the Riverside Landscape Architecture District was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1970.

Riverside has been called a village in a park because of its curved roads that follow the bend of the Des Plaines River. Riverside also has a central village square that is located at the Metra BNSF Riverside train station. The train station was built in 1901. It also has a lot of greenspace because it has several large parks and 41 smaller parks and plazas at various intersections throughout the village. Many homes and estates were designed by famous architects of the time such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan, Daniel Burnham, William Le Baron Jenney, Frederick Clarke Withers, Calvert Vaux and Joseph Lyman Silsbee. Another major period of development happened in the 1920s and 1930s when smaller houses were constructed on smaller plots of land. The village has an eclectic mix of different types of buildings including smaller bungalows, larger Victorians and huge early twentieth century mansions. The photos below are from the South Side tour. I plan on taking the North Side tour next Spring. I hope you enjoy viewing these photos as much as I enjoyed taking them!

Last Sunday I visited The Growing Place in Aurora. It was my first visit to the very large and beautiful garden center and nursery. The Growing Place is located at 2000 Montgomery Road in Aurora. While it offers many varieties of plants, trees and shrubs, it’s also a fun place to visit because of the way it is arranged. There are picturesque displays of items throughout the space, as well as small houses in which to explore specialized merchandise. The larger white farmhouse on the property is beautifully maintained inside and out and offers eclectic antique like home decorations available for purchase. I hope you enjoy these photos as much as I enjoyed my trip there. I found my new nursery!

Our first stop during Open House Chicago this weekend was the Wintrust Bank Building located at 231 South Lasalle Street in the downtown financial district. The site is more commonly known as the Central Standard Building (formerly the Continental Illinois Bank of Chicago). It’s located directly across the street from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. It was designed by architects Graham, Anderson, Probst and White in 1924.

It is a combination of neoclassical, Gothic Revival and Art Deco architectural styles. The second floor of the building boasts the grand banking hall. It consists of 88,000 square feet of space. It’s a huge space that has been recently restored to grandure.

The building is located on the former site of the Grand Pacific Hotel, where the U.S. was divided into four standard time zones during a commemorative event in 1883. This is commemorated by a plaque on Jackson Street.

The Bank of America was the primary tenant starting in the mid 1980s after Continental Bank folded. They remained there until 2014 when Wintrust leased the building and it became its permanent headquarters.

 

The Jane Addams Homes were built in 1938 by architect John Holabird and were one of the first projects the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) built to provide housing to the city’s poor in The Little Italy neighborhood on the Near West side. It was the first ABLA housing project. Four housing developments made up ABLA: Jane Addams Homes, Robert Brooks Homes, Loomis Courts, and Grace Abbott Homes.

The Jane Addams Homes consisted of 32 buildings containing approximately 1,000 units. They were built as a result of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Public Works Administration (PWA) Program. They housed hundreds of families over several decades until they were vacated in 2002 and largely demolished by 2007. Below are photos of the only building that remains and plans are to have it house the National Public Housing Museum which is scheduled to open in 2019. The building is located at 1322-24 West Taylor Street.

 

The other day I took a walk on Downer Place in Aurora’s Westside Historic District. The City of Aurora has five historic districts. The historic homes and churches in this area were built in the mid to late 1800s or early 1900s. I hope you enjoy viewing the photos below, as much as I enjoyed taking them.

      

      

      

      

The Target store on State Street in Chicago is located at 1 South State Street, on the corner of State and Madison. It is also referred to as the City Target and is located in the historic Sullivan Center building. The building is named after architect Louis Sullivan who designed it. The building formerly housed the Carson Pirie Scott and Company department store.

It was built in 1899 for the retail firm Schlesinger and Mayer. Additions were also made to the building by Daniel Burnham in 1906 and Holabird & Root in 1961. It was sold to H.G. Selfridge and Company in 1904. Selfridge only occupied the building for a few weeks and then sold it to Otto Young who leased the space to Carson Pirie Scott for $7,000 per month. Carson Pirie Scott & Company occupied the building for greater than a century until 2007 when it was sold and then leased to Target which opened in 2012.

The building is one of the classic structures of the Chicago School of Architecture. It is a steel framed structure 12 stories high. A 40 foot water tower was placed on the roof to be used by the building’s sprinkler system in case of fire. That was a lesson learned from the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

Carson’s closed and left the building in February 2007. The new Target store opened on July 26, 2012. Target leases two floors of the building. Target has met with favorable reviews for the modern design of the interior while preserving the character of this historical building. Other building occupants include the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Gensler Architecture. The Sullivan Building has been a Chicago Landmark since 1975 and is part of the Loop Retail Historic District.

I recently visited the Chicago Architecture Center (CAC) at its’ new location along the Chicago River at 111 E. Wacker Drive. It was previously known as the Chicago Architecture Foundation (CAF) and was located at 224 S. Michigan Avenue in the Railway Exchange Building. It is fitting that the new location is by the Chicago River, since the CAC gives River cruises.

The Chicago Architecture Center  is a non-profit organization dedicated to inspiring people to discover why design matters. The CAC includes two levels of gallery exhibitions.

Level 1 is the Concourse Level and houses the Chicago Gallery, John and Kathleen Buck Atrium, CAC Store and Orientation. Explore this level and you will learn about the architects who shaped Chicago and gave the city its distinctive style and skyline, making it the “City of Architecture.” You’ll also learn about Chicago’s building blocks such as geographical and architectural elements that make Chicago unique. You’ll be exploring five historic Chicago neighborhoods and learn how their buildings and houses have been preserved. You’ll be able to look at common housing types in Chicago and view how Chicago is mapped by viewing a video describing the Chicago City Model (which includes 4,200 buildings). You can also view information about current architectural projects happening in the city currently or in the near future.

Level 2 is the Plaza Level and contains the Usher Lambe Rotating Gallery, Drake Skyscraper Gallery, Arcelormittal Design Studio, and Joan and Gary Gand Lecture Hall. There is a display on Imagining the City of Chicago in 2050, and the Drake Skyscraper Gallery contains large scale models of tall skyscrapers from around the world. You’ll learn about the world’s tallest building, The Burj Khalifa. You’ll also explore technological innovations that enable architects to keep building higher and higher! You’ll learn more about the world’s tallest buildings and Urban Habitat Award Winners. You will also learn about the architects that shaped Chicago architecture and last but certainly not least, if you look out the  windows on the 2nd level of the CAC you’ll see inpiring. views of the buildings along the Chicago River and what is arguably one of the most beautiful spots in Chicago!

The Minnekirken Church is located in Logan Square at 2614 N. Kedzie Avenue, right next to the CTA Blue Line stop. I saw it for the first time on Saturday when I attended the Logan Square 2018 Historic Boulevard House Walk hosted by Logan Square Preservation.  It was built between 1908 and 1912 and was designed by architects Charles F. Sorensen and Mason S.N. Nelson in a Protestant adaptation of Gothic Revival style.

The congregation had actually started in a private home in 1900 before the church was built. The first Pastor was Johan B. Meyer and services were conducted in accordance with traditional services of the Church of Norway. During The Depression the congregation lost the church because it couldn’t pay the mortgage, but they were able to raise enough money and reaquire the church in 1934. It was renamed Den Norske LutherskeMinnekirke, which translates to Norwegian Lutheran Memorial Church. It is the only Lutheran Church in Chicago whose primary language is Norwegian and only one of two in the entire U.S. The other is in Minneapolis. In addition to church services, the church hosts activities such as Norwegian cooking classes, concerts and an annual Christmas bazaar and the annual Logan SquareHistoric Boulevard House Walk.

• Note – The exterior photos are mine. The interior are from Wikipedia.

 

100 years ago on September 4, 1918 a bomb blast ocurred in Chicago’s Loop at the old federal building on Adams and Dearborn. The blast ocurred at about 3 p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon. The bomb went off in the lobby of the federal building and killed four people. It was a powerful blast that even shattered windows at the Marquette building across the street. The person/s who threw the bomb were never caught.

Authorities believe it was an act of terrorism that had to do with the end of World War I or the labor movement. Police rounded up and took into custody large numbers of people that they believed had any links to these movements. The main suspect group was the Industrial Workers of the World radical labor group. This group denied any involvement.

The people killed were postal workers Edwin Kolkow and William Wheeler and sailor Joseph Ladd, as well as Ella Miehlke.

Walt Disney was a postal worker in the building at the time and just barely escaped the bombing. He said he was in the lobby when it ocurred.

Although the explosion did much damage to the federal building, it didn’t affect it’s foundation, so the building was repaired. It wasn’t torn down until 1965. No one was ever convicted for the bombing.

• Photos are from Wikipedia and are public domain

With so many big department stores going out of business or shutting stores today, such as Carson’s and Sears – I thought it was important to remember another big Chicago department store that went out of business long ago.

I very fondly remember Goldblatt’s Department Store in Chicago. We lived near the one on Kimball, Milwaukee and Diversey, but we also visited Goldblatt’s stores at Lincoln, Belmont and Ashland and Belmont and Central. I remember the bargain basement and the smell of food from the deli and snack shop, but I especially remember shopping with my mother and helping her with the “green stamps” books so we could get the discounts. Those childhood shopping trips with my mother were the most special times in my life.

Goldblatt’s was founded in 1914 by brothers Nate and Maurice Goldblatt. They were Polish immigrants that previously ran a grocery store on the West side of Chicago. The first Goldblatt’s store was located at the corner of Ashland and Chicago Avenue. In 1928 they incorporated. Goldblatt’s performed well, even during the Great Depression in the 1930s and purchased several smaller department stores.

Goldblatt’s opened their flagship store on State and Van Buren in 1936 and they started carrying more upscale products, appliances, a deli and snack shops. After it closed, the building was sold to DePaul University.

By the 1950s business started to slow down and the 1960s  saw fierce competition from newer discount retailers, such as Kmart, Woolco, Zayre and Sears. The company filed for bakruptcy in 1981, but reopened in 1982 with six stores that would sell primarily to lower income shoppers. They remained in business until 2003, when the Goldblatt’s stores were closed for good and liquidated.

• Note: The second photo is mine. The rest are from Wikipedia.