Mexican Grocery Store signs

They come in a rainbow of colors (mostly neon, entirely bright), and you can find them all across the city, from Pilsen and Little Village to Logan Square to Rogers Park.


Near West Side




Little Village

Rogers Park

Chicago has tons of Mexican grocers - there are three within a block of my residence alone - and a disproportionate number of them advertise with signs just like these.



The style is universal: wavy lines top and bottom, in bright neon colors. Huge blocky numbers for the price, in red. Smaller font for the letters, but still in a bouncy, informal, chipper mood.





Like the builder's Mid-Century style, it's one of those cases of curious convergence. A quick chat with our local grocer reveals that they get them from varying places, sometimes making them themselves, and sometimes hiring guys to do it. I've seen the stamps of at least two different sign makers on these posters, though most of them remain anonymous.



Why are they all the same style? Is it demanded, expected, or simply unexamined? Does it relate to some deep cultural strain, or is it just a thing that is?

Mixed Use Midcentury

New Urbanists like to make a fuss over the notion of a mixed-use building, touting it as a revival of a long-lost art. While the basic, common-sense notion of people living and working in close proximity certainly did fall out of favor in the 1960s through the 1980s, it never really vanished entirely. And at the height of the 1950s suburban building boom, small-scaled mixed use was actually surprisingly common in Chicago's southern and western neighborhoods.




Harlem Avenue




Main Street, Skokie

"Mixed-use" generally implies some combination of office, retail and residential, and that's generally what you'll find on these commercial buildings. Some feature apartments above storefronts, with generous porch space marked by wood or decorative metal railings.




Cermak Avenue




Western Avenue - more photos here

Others feature upstairs space of a less clear nature. Behind those walls could be office space, either separate or joined with the retail space below, or living space.


Bryn Mawr



The most exciting ones share a similar design vocabulary of materials and style, with an emphasis on angles: angled brick wing walls, angled panels of Roman brick with limestone borders, angled wood roof overhangs.


Cermak Avenue


63rd Street - Midway Lounge


63rd Street

You can find a crop of one-story, single use commercial buildings in the same neighborhoods that use the same design vocabulary, with angled sections of facade and roof overhangs, often trimmed in red wood or red Roman brick.

Victims of the revolution

The behemoth that is O'Hare International Airport has been hungry for land. After a protracted legal battle, it seems its appetite will soon be satisfied, as a large chunk of suburban Bensonville is being torn down to make way for airport expansion.

Dozens of homes are being sacrificed to appease the monster. I paid a visit to them last summer, at a point when perhaps 90% of the homes had been vacated, with only a handful of recalcitrant holdouts remaining. It was an eerie environment, with tidily kept yards and houses standing shoulder-to-shoulder with lots that were rapidly becoming overgrown.








A holdout next to a long-vacant house.




More recently I returned, and found that with the legal hurdles cleared and the holdouts gone, demolition of the entire area was underway. An entire neighborhood had been fenced off and was prepped for systematic destruction. Trees are down, fences are ripped out and piled in the street, grass has been stripped away, and the houses are looking pretty ragged.













The other bizarre casualties of the expansion scheme are two cemeteries that have already been ingested by O'Hare. The two will have to be relocated, but for many months they have stood as untouched islands in a vast construction project.

A Lotta Terra Cotta

It was a random comment by a friend that made me realize concretely something that I was already dimly aware of: Andersonville is just loaded with great terra cotta. It is terra cottalectible. Terra cottalicious. It's terrificotta. It's terra cottacular. It's the place to go when you gotta terra cotta.










The king and queen of Clark Street are this pair, the former Swedish American Bank Building on the left, and the ex-Calo Theater at right.











That last pic there is one of two mostly-nude maiden bedecking the Calo Theater facade. Their rather decadent leers take on a whole new meaning with Andersonville's ascendancy as a popular gay and lesbian destination.

There's no shortage of lush ornament and no end to the variety of styles. Beaux Arts reigns, but Sullivanesque, Deco, and Classical are all represented.









If you're willing to stretch the definition of Andersonville a bit, you can pick up still more impressive buildings. Most people probably consider the neighborhood to end somewhere around Foster, but in architectural terms it essentially runs all the way down to Montrose, the continuity bolstered by several large and beautiful buildings.









And remember our Egyptian car repair friend? He's located in this neighborhood too!



Small wonder that Andersonville is on the National Register of Historic Places.