Chicago’s police stations have not been widely known as architectural treasures, let alone as anything out of the ordinary. However, older stations were typically designed to respect the fabric of the neighborhoods in which they were placed and were often aesthetically pleasing structures. Many have been replaced over the
“These were dangerous days for the abandoned parts of town. Those districts of old warehouses and abandoned factories that suddenly seemed attractive to real estate developers. I made a point of wandering through those endangered zones, like a botanist collecting samples in some rain forest, just ahead of the slash
Although a significant amount of it has been lost, what remains of the Schoenhofen Brewery are still the most impressive pre-Prohibition era brewery structures in Chicago. Buildings were first erected at 18th and Canalport in 1862 when the brewery relocated here from 12th and Jefferson. The last buildings were built
The city began removing yellow street signs and changing them to green in the mid-1970s. We have found a few remaining on street poles, however, there are more floating around in the city (and the world) in use as decorations. Left: This sign adorns a backyard in Old Town on
‘Old Addresses’ refer to pre-1909 numbering systems. Before Edward Brennan developed and implemented a comprehensive system, three different systems existed, one for each ‘division’ of the city. Under the old system, the Chicago River is the dividing line for north and south numbers from Lake Michigan westward until the river