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This was, until recently, the charming vista where the Brown Line L crosses Kedzie Avenue -- a typical neighborhood commercial center, with stores at the sidewalk and apartments above. This particular building seems to have held a local Hispanic-run grocer, La Esperanza Food Store.
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Sadly, it was torn down in the fall, and the site is now an empty lot. I can only assume that something new will go up to replace the old brick and limestone building, but will it match the destroyed building's scale, detail and charm?
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This city's tearing itself apart far faster than one mere mortal like myself can document.
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3 comments:
La Esperanza was originally the Albany Park Masonic Temple, though the meeting hall appeared to have been gutted long ago.
Glad you got this, I know I have a "before" photo somewhere when I could tell this place looked at risk. I forgot about it for a while and visited that Brown Line station, finding a vacant lot. There have been many teardowns on N. Kedzie in the last year (Lawrence too), I can't possibly keep up with them either...
When I was a kid, my dad and I used to go to this Certi Saver to buy meat. Always very good. There was this building and a smaller one next to it. When the supermarket one was torn, it exposed a Wonder radio ghost ad on the smaller building which I have here: http://dimbeautyofchicago.blogspot.com/2007/12/wonder-radio-sales-co.html
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