A Neighborhood Drug Store

The building housing the R.V. Kunka Pharmacy is part of a long line of commercial structures on the south side of Archer Avenue. It is located at a 6-way intersection with Loomis and Fuller Streets.

This typical late 19th Century building got a snazzy update some time around the 1930s. Glazed panels, modern fonts, a two-tone color scheme, and an emphasis on horizontal lines combine to form a Streamlined slipcover storefront.



Though easy to overlook, the entryway to the store is the focal point of the remodeling. Two vertical plastic "pilasters" appear to light up from within, marking the main door. The doors themselves feature stylish door pulls. Even the concrete step was given a reddish tint to harmonize with the facade.



Whatever was once on the north side of this street was mostly blasted into oblivion by the coming of I-55. Today, many of these buildings face a Chinese Wall of concrete retaining walls and fenced-off areas beneath looming overpasses.

Riding in the dark

Here's how I spent my Saturday night last weekend:







The L.A.T.E. Ride is a massive yearly event, sponsored by McDonald's, that sends bike riders on a 25-mile loop around northern Chicago, starting at 1:30 in the morning. The path starts at Buckingham Fountain, heads northwest up Elston, and cuts across Foster to the lakefront to turn back south.

I didn't join up for the whole ride, but rode southwards from Rogers Park, back-tracing the route down Foster, then Elston. Starting around 2am, scattered groups of bikers started passing me, heading north. First a few... then dozens. Soon packs of a hundred or more were cruising past. By the time I made it to Ashland and Elston, the road was so thick with bicyclists that it was clearly time to turn around and go with the flow.



What unspeakable comradery, to rule the roads on two wheels with hundreds of like-minded cohorts! The ride attracted all types, all ages. Bar patrons waved and cheered us on. Harried policemen and exuberant volunteers ushered us through major intersections. Waiting drivers whooped and hollered. We got high-fives from what looked like a crowd of Naval cadets and from a hippie lady with a huge stereo system mounted on a three-wheeled bike.

A half-way resting point at River Park on Foster provided snacks for registered riders. Dawn was beginning to show as we reached the lakefront; stopping for frequent photographs and letting many groups pass me by, I'd fallen almost to the end of the mass. Knowing I had places to be that afternoon, I headed home to get some sleep, as the sun prepared to rise over the lake.



I only did about half the ride total, but next year I'm not missing any of it!

Three south side commercial streets

Years ago, I made one of my first trips to Chicago to pay a visit to Frank Lloyd Wright's home and studio out in Oak Park. With that mission accomplished, my friend and I decided to see if we could make it down to the Robie House on the south side as well. I was driving, and elected to take a long, leisurely route through the city streets rather than jumping on a highway. It was on this trip that I discovered W. 18th Street.



I was sufficiently blown away by its endless ranks of 3- and 4-story commercial buildings, all seeming to date from the post-Fire years, that I made another trip down to Chicago just a week later, for the express purpose of paying a lengthy visit to this remarkable street.

Years later, the Pilsen neighborhood usually figures into my plans at least every few months. As a predominantly Mexican neighborhood, it's home to scads of restaurants, and the Mexican Fine Arts Museum.



It's also just a comfortable and friendly place to wander and photograph. The street is rich with details - signs, graffiti, ad hoc renovations, store displays, half-completed projects, murals, rusting fire escapes, and of course block after block of ornate vintage architecture.







In light of this commercially and aesthetically rich strip, I was surprised to find not one but two additional commercial streets nearby, both equal to W. 18th Street in architecture and culture.

The first one I encountered only this weekend. I was a bit tired and hungry, but the major buildings on this stretch of Cermak Road were just too amazing to pass up. I stopped the car and walked for an hour or so. The strip is west and a bit south from 18th Street.



The prize find, and the building that compelled me to stop, was the old Marshall Square Theater, now called Apollo's 2000.



The building was, after a fashion, familiar to me from a striking photograph in Camilo Jose Vergara's wonderful Unexpected Chicagoland, but not till I was standing in front of it did I have the "ah hah!" moment of recognition, when I saw the remorselessly vandalized goddess figure on the front facade, her face obliterated by a box beam ramming through it.



A second theater, last operated as the West Theatre, stands a few blocks east. It's not as ornate, but still lovely.



The neighborhood's official names include South Lawndale and Little Village; demographically speaking, today it's a westward extension of Pilsen, with a heavily Mexican-American population.






Further west and south again from Cermak, W. 26th Street forms the core of the Little Village neighborhood. Founded and first settled by Eastern European immigrants, the area's current name originated in the 1970s from its more recent Mexican immigrant population.





The street's centerpiece is the former Atlantic Theater building, now converted to mundane commercial use.





Any one of these streets would be a marvel by itself; finding them all in such close conjunction is simply amazing.

Lakefront bike path etiquette

I love the lakefront bike path, and unlike many people, I just find it more exciting when it gets crowded. Remember the gargantuan space battle at the end of Return of the Jedi, with a billion ships flying in every direction, zipping past at breathtaking speed? That's the lakefront trail at its best. Bobbing and weaving, zig-zagging a path through elusive and short-lived gaps, shouting warnings, slowing and accelerating, the kchunk! of shifting gears -- I love it.



But as much as I love the thrill of it, safety and etiquette have to come first. And so, I have few words for my fellow bicyclists:

1) There is a time to lay on the speed, and a time to hit the brakes. When the path is clogged up with pedestrians, slower bikers, roller bladers, etc., etc., that is the time to hit the brakes. This is a multi-use recreational path, not a velodrome. It won't hurt you to slow down for a moment till the traffic clears (though not slowing down just might.) You will still get your exercise, you won't lose any race, and nobody would've been impressed with your blazing speed anyway, just annoyed at your rude behavior.

2) You are not mute. "ON YOUR LEFT!", when properly used, is your friend. It's rude to blast by people who're only marginally in your way without giving them some kind of warning. Yes, there are lots of clueless people wandering with their head in a cloud. That is no reason to be rude. You haven't gotten used to this by now? You should.

3) It is rude to pass a fellow bicyclist who's slowed down for one of the aforementioned masses of pedestrians, bladers, etc. Believe me, we all want to be at the front of the line, and that goes double for people like me who actually belong there. So just take a number, get in line, wait patiently like the rest of us, and if you have any business passing me (you probably don't*), you can do it once we're in the clear.**



* Yes, I am confident of my biking skills to the point of arrogance. What about it?

**Heck, that's good advice for a lot of Chicago drivers, too.

Unsurprisingly, I'm far from the only resident who has something to say about the bike path.

The Fine Arts Building

You've seen it; it's one of the mile-long row of architectural gems lining Michigan Avenue south of the river, just north of the landmark Auditorium Building.



The Fine Arts Building was erected in 1885 to the designs of Solon S. Beman, as the Studebaker Building. Predating the automobile age, its upper floor were used to assemble wagons and carriages, while show rooms were in the wide-windowed lower floors. 13 years later Beman returned to the building, lopping off the top floor and adding three new ones in its place, and converting the building to a center of studio space for artists. It remains in this function today, housing architects, photographers, piano instructors, a violin maker, and many similar tenants.

Tarnished by years of grime, it has a raw feeling of age that many of the more polished buildings around it lack. Its rough stone facade, brawny and massive, belies the fact that its facade contains very large areas of glass.

At the base, the Artist's Snack Shop cafe offers outdoor seating, somewhat overpriced food, and an awe-inspiring neon and bulb-lit sign.



Inside, the building offers a number of delights. The corridors retain their original wood and iron work. Murals decorate a central light well adjacent to the main stairs and other places. A top-floor ballroom features ornate light fixtures and sweeping views of the lake and Grant Park.



Equally vintage are the elevators, with all their original metal trim intact. The system requires an operator, who flashes past the floors in a slow streak of light as the cars go up and down.







Behind the building, facing Wabash and the rails of the L, stands an incredibly thin building, at 421 S. Wabash. Built as the Fine Arts Building Annex, it dates from 1924, was designed by architects Rebori, Wentworth, Dewey & McCormick, and housed heating equipment and additional studio space. The "Rebori" in the architectural firm is Andrew Rebori, who did renovation work on the main building, and went on to design some amazing Art Deco around Chicago. The building's emphatic verticality, reinforced by two slender pilasters running the full height of the facade, is distinctly Chicago School.





The side of the annex is a vast wall of common Chicago brick, with a painted ad for a Tiki restaurant called Pago Pago.



The Fine Arts Building has its own web site, proudly proclaiming its continued status as a haven for artists.

Don't Fight It

I am perpetually amused by buildings whose owners fight against the building's basic nature. When it happens to great and significant buildings, it's a tragedy, but when it happens to ordinary and common structures, it can be a bemusing commentary on tastes and desires.



Here we have a suburban Midcentury garage rendered in wood. The car door is a grid of squares. The side screens are a grid of squares. To this simple, clean composition has been appended Olde West "shutters" and a wood flower box. It apparently wasn't enough to be living in the inner suburbs; the trappings of a frontier existence were needed.



Out on Touhy at the highway, Studio 41's interior design store apparently couldn't be seen in a MidCentury commercial building. So, a little Greek Classical makeup was applied, apparently in the hopes that four columns and an architrave would hide the grid of recessed brick, the polished granite panels, the massive storefront windows, and the total lack of any other applied ornament.

Is that a Greek Classical commercial awning I see? Perhaps a Greek Classical internally lit plastic sign, as well?



Fan that I am of Chicago's MidCentury builder vernacular, I was a bit flabbergasted by this one. Three sculptural panels have been applied over the stock triple glass block openings by the front door. They could be original, especially given how neatly they fit into the openings, but it seems to run counter to the aesthetic. What's definitely not original is that thin little wreath, attempting to bring rustic flavor to a Modernist stew.



This is a form of abuse endured by many MidCentury buildings in Chicago. The original wood doors age, get damaged, or just wear out. Rather than repair or refinish them, owners find it easier (or cheaper) to pitch them out and install a low-cost door from Home Depot. Unfortunately, those doors are made for contemporary starter castles out in the far suburbs. They look very out of place alongside the geometric details and clean lines of MidCentury Chicago. Many of the original doors aren't terribly special -- just a square or diamond opening in a flat wood door -- but it damages the building's look, and probably a few spectacular doors have been thrown out because of this trend.



And then there's this. I don't know what it is, where it came from, or what its creators were thinking, but it's certainly unique. It's a suburban-scaled micro-mansion, with two-story columns flanking its miniscule entry porch, but that's just the start of the story. It's got floral wrought metal scrollwork, images of birds and horses and eagles, and (not pictured) a Victorian greenhouse appended to one side. It's got decorative brick patterns around the windows, and quoins at the corners. Quoins!! Round-topped faux-dormers break the roofline, there are flattened-arch-topped windows below, and on the far right (again not pictured) is a full-blown Palladian window.

It seems to be a mish-mash grab bag of about fifty architectural ideas, all thrown in together in the fervent belief that an assembly of beautiful parts would surely result in a beautiful whole. I can't say I agree myself, but it sure is interesting to look at!

Trilla Steel Drum Corp.

What the -



- what the heck is it?



Thus ran my initial reaction upon seeing the building of the Trilla Steel Drum Corporation during a cross-south side bike trip. The company's low-slung factory and office building sits alongside 47th Street in a region of light industry, bars and houses.

The building's designers made delightful use of the company's signature product, both to enliven the building and to advertise the company's wares. Stacked steel drums serve as decorative pilasters and as actual columns, holding up the roof of the front portico.





Just across the street, Town & Country Liquor offers both a small batch of Chicago's characteristic incised and glazed glass block, and a handsome Midcentury neon sign.

Casa Bonita condominiums

The U-shaped apartment building is a very standard 1920s Chicago development scheme, allowing a tall building with lots of rental units, while still providing each with plenty of natural light. The resulting courtyard can also become an amenity, providing a slice of nature to the residents.

These buildings are decorated in a wide variety of styles, but far and away the most elaborate one I've found to date is the Casa Bonita, on Ridge Avenue just north of Touhy.



Designed in 1928 by Alexander Capraro and Morris Komar, it's slathered in glazed white terra cotta ornament. Sculpted faces, spiral pilasters, brackets, medallions, and floral decoration are only part of the list.



The building is well-maintained today, having been converted to condominiums. Plantings surround a small reflecting pool with a sculpture in the center.

Two trees near the open end of the courtyard ensure that it's almost invisible from Ridge (and unfortunately make photographing the building as a whole impossible.)



But those trees also provide a screen from the street; a grade change allows the courtyard to be sunken half a flight down from the street, further sheltering it from the busy traffic on Ridge. The entire building as it stands is a testimony to how wonderful controlled outdoor space can be, a literally shining example of the wonderful power of architecture.



More detail photos may be seen at my Flickr space.

Louis Sullivan bank in Iowa suffers flood damage

A Chicago Tribune blog reports that Louis Sullivan's Peoples Savings Bank in Cedar Rapids, Iowa has sustained an unknown amount of flood damage, with several feet of water entering the bank.



The bank is one of a series of late-career works by Sullivan, scattered across the Midwest; it is currently a Wells Fargo location. I visited it in 2004, but was unable to go inside as my visit occurred on a weekend. It's less than a block away from the river which runs through the center of town.

At least one Flickrite has a photo of the floodwaters surrounding the bank.

The bank is far from the only architectural victim of the floods; much of the city's old downtown is reported to have sustained damage.

Northerly Island

Northerly Island, a peninsula of land on the lakefront at the south end of downtown Chicago, is the perfect example of something hidden in plain sight.

Tourists flood the nearby Field Museum, and a steady stream make the trek out to Adler Planetarium, at the point from which the peninsula springs. Yet Northerly's sylvan trails, looping among the prairie plants, were virtually deserted when I payed a visit on a summer Saturday afternoon. In all my wanderings through the city, I'd never actually been there till recently, when I decided to seek out the site of the long-vanished airport that I knew had once stood on the lakefront.

The history and function of the peninsula is, likewise, the sort of thing a non-Chicago resident just wouldn't know about. The island hosted Chicago's second World's Fair, in 1933, but all traces of that event are long vanished. A couple of Google searches reveal that the "long-gone" airport, Meigs Field, closed down just a few years ago (in 2003), and under some bizarre and shocking conditions. Mayor Daley, wanting the peninsula for park land, cited bogus concerns about terrorism and apparently ordered work crews to go out in the dead of night and bulldoze a series of Xs into the airport's runways, rendering them nonfunctional. It worked, too; he got his way. The airport ceased operation, once 16 stranded aircraft were cleared out via the taxiway. The city essentially pulled this off with only a slap on the wrist from the FAA. Now there's talk of the island being a venue should Chicago's 2016 Olympics bid go through. How conveeeenient!



Today, the former airport is a flat space, a replica prairie land (built, ironically enough, on landfill.) A few biking/walking paths loop through it, and a trio of sculptures rise from the grasses. Various structures from the airport remain, including the control tower, various storage fences and sheds, and the terminal building, an unremarkable MidCentury Modern affair of precast concrete panels and glass, enlivened by a nice interior arrangement and a few stock 60s details.





The island is nothing stunning or enormously special, but it does offer a nice respite from the hustle of the city, particular as under-utilized as it currently is. The views of the skyline are also unparalleled. If you live downtown, this truly is the place to get away from it all.



Also hidden away on the peninsula is the 12th Street Beach, a quiet little corner of the lakefront that offers the surreal sight of the Adler Planetarium looming over the sandy beach. It's outlasted the World's Fair, the airport... and might outlast the prairie, if the Olympics come tromping across Northerly Island.