St. Joseph Catholic Church, Wilmette

A most imposing edifice, towering over the suburban houses and 2-story commercial buildings around it, stands at Lake and Ridge in western Wilmette. St. Joseph Church is that rarest of beasts, a church constructed during the lean years of the 1930s, a time when even the Catholic church slowed its building program.



St. Joseph is unusually tall and imposing. Its most striking feature is the indented front entrance, which looms like a shallow cave sculpted out of a mountainside.



The building is a mild update of traditional church styling. It's historicist in bent, but the influence of Art Deco is inescapable. It's nothing radical or stylized; the Deco is in the details.



The tower, in particular, is faintly reminiscent of Bertram Goodhue's 1922 capitol building for Nebraska.






Inside, St. Joseph is clean and spare. Applied ornament is almost absent.









Angular Deco details can be seen in the hanging lamps, the wall sconces, and the side aisle arches.

The style of the stained glass windows matches the building itself: leaning toward traditional, with inoffensively faint traces of Modernist influence, such as the geometric patterns bordering this window.



St. Joseph was designed by McCarthy, Smith & Eppig, and dedicated in 1939.



And a coda: Across the street, a beautiful associated school building harmonizes with the church's style, and somehow fails to have the sun on it every single time I pass by.

Art Deco Moralizing

If you've browsed the spectacular Unexpected Chicagoland (Camilo Jose Vergara and Tim Samuelson), you surely remember the equally spectacular Laramie State Bank of Chicago (architects Meyer & Cook, with the Northwestern Terra Cotta Company, 1927.)



It's a beauty, one of the finest Deco facades you'll find in the city. It's also covered in fine and, to my mind, rather amusing detail.



The theme of the entire facade is "hard work and savings", and the artists laid it on thick and heavy. Across its columns and around its windows, industrial workers labor in factories, surrounded by rivers of coins. Atop the columns, squirrels and bees prepare their hordes for winter, while a wise owl watches in sage approval.



And above the door, a contented family gathers for their meal.



Meanwhile, on the eastern facade, the American eagle sinks its claws into the entire globe. Hard work + savings = American hegemony!





The building is located at 5200 W. Chicago Avenue, most of the way out to Oak Park. This is a pretty hardscrabble neighborhood today, but the building survives as a combination of banquet hall, carryout restaurant, church, and I'm not sure what else.

Gold-Plated Deco Bits

You remember these guys from last week, right?


Grand Avenue


Devon Avenue I


Devon Avenue II

The three buildings share more than just a similar design style; they actually have the exact same gold-hued catalog ornament.


Grand Avenue


Devon Avenue I


Devon Avenue II


And they're not alone. Several other Deco buildings were designed by contractors with their finger in the same catalog.


Lawrence Avenue, directly south of the previous two




Bryn Mawr at Sawyer, west of the river



It looks like the supplier made the same ornament in multiple finishes. Consider these two details, the first from the Lawrence Ave. building, the second from another Devon Ave. building:




The two designs are identical, just flipped and rendered in a different finish.

Round Corner Deco

The Streamline Deco style really lent itself to commercial buildings. They could be built with extremely simple designs, and still be considered stylish and modern.


6747 W. Cermak Road, at Oak Park Avenue


Bryn Mawr, west of Sheridan




2755 W. 63rd Street at California

This one is the most basic model - rectangular blocks with a glazed, colored face, with horizontal banding lines on top and bottom. This model serves on countless storefronts around the city, both on corners and in the middle of the street wall.


Clark Street - Lakeview. Whatever this building may have once been, it's now buried under an awful asphalt shingle mansard roof, except for this forlorn little corner peaking out at the alley.


Here on Chicago Avenue, the worst slipcover job ever has partially given way to reveal the stock Streamline facade beneath.


The same idea was used to greater effect on Devon Avenue, where a corner didn't require the entry to be round.



Devon Avenue



The same model is used on a tiny free-standing building where Grand and Chicago intersect.


And again in a storefront at 6719 Northwest Highway.



On this North Avenue building, the same effect is achieved with metal panels. This building has had a renovation / add-on that really fights against its host building. Apparently, Streamline just doesn't have the same allure as rustic Swiss Alpine.




You could pull the same effect off in concrete or limestone, too:




Simple and Streamline weren't the only word in corner commercial chic, however. The varied vagaries of Art Deco offered an array of options for the shopkeeper willing to spend a bit more on his facade, and there are some beautiful examples here and there.


3001 W. 63rd Street


3324 W. 55th Street


Archer Avenue at Richmond Street

Angley Jangley Deco

Two handsome Art Deco specimens from out west.

The Medical Arts Building, Oak Park

715 Lake Street is hard to miss if you've visited Oak Park; it's a rare tall building in a low-rise suburb. Architect Roy J. Hotchkiss designed the Deco/Nouveau skyscraper near the end of a highly productive career, in 1929; still in use as office space, it's a contributing member of a National Register district.





It's also quite dramatically illuminated at night.

4500 W. Division

O & G Spring and Wire Forms Specialty Company occupies this low, long factory building, the front facade of a fairly large complex.



The factory's entire facade is nicely decorated with mosaic tile and brick patterns, but it's the entry tower that makes you swerve to the side of the road for a longer look.







Hey.... aren't those the same wall sconces as the Medical Arts Building?

O & G was founded in 1966 by a Polish immigrant and employs about 75 people today. The company made unfortunate headlines in 2008, when a supervisor shot and killed an employee after a quarrel.

The Tribune library archives are not working correctly, or I might have more info on the building itself. But maybe it's enough to just bask in its geometric glory.