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.
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?
This city's tearing itself apart far faster than one mere mortal like myself can document.
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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