I don't know for certain which pier this is, but it's so reminiscent of the fishermen you see now on the north side that I wanted to include it.
September 21, 2009
Fishing From Pier
I don't know for certain which pier this is, but it's so reminiscent of the fishermen you see now on the north side that I wanted to include it.
The Latin Quarter Tropical Supper Club
A matchbook from The Latin Quarter Tropical Supper Club. Today the spot is home to Les Skin Care and Acupuncture and Herb Healing.
September 8, 2009
Cradle Cruise: A Navy Bluejacket Remembers Life Aboard the USS Trever During World War II
I've written about my grandfather before. Lon Dawson lived in the Uptown neighborhood during my mom's school years, before retiring to Southern Illinois and taking up a career as a writer.One of the manuscripts he completed chronicles his adventures during World War II in the Pacific. He had enlisted in the Navy prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, was assigned to the USS Trever, a four stack destroyer, and spent most of the war aboard that ship.
Well, just in time for what would have been his 86th birthday, the book is now available. It's an interesting perspective of the war through the eyes of a seventeen-year-old kid from Chicago's north side.
You can read a little more about my grandfather here, or go to Amazon and see the book.
September 1, 2009
Uptown Broadway Builing and Walter Ahlschlager
By Eve M. Kahn
Unverifiable legends persist about the Uptown Broadway Building on Chicago’s North Side. Al Capone allegedly built the place and ran a speakeasy in its basement, which extends deep below the Broadway sidewalks. But the truths about the Uptown Broadway are as interesting as the tales.
The Spanish Baroque 1926 building is engulfed in terra cotta depicting rams, musical instruments, military trophies, garlands, volutes, Medusas, fruit, fringed curtains and tasseled ropes. The roofline bristles with urns and Poseidons, and the building’s triangular footprint, which backs onto the Red Line elevated tracks, narrows to an improbable 9-in.-wide point.
The Uptown’s now-underappreciated architect, Walter W. Ahlschlager (1887-1965), was prolific and charismatic. He ran offices in Chicago, New York and Dallas, working in a variety of Classical Revival modes (and after World War II, he segued gamely into curtain-wall Modernism). His 1920s masterworks are as high profile as Cincinnati’s Carew Tower, Manhattan’s Roxy and Beacon theaters, and Chicago’s InterContinental hotel...
Read complete article at Traditional Building
August 25, 2009
August 22, 2009
Uptown's Buena Park: A Historic, Diverse Chicago Neighborhood Along the Lakefront
Editor's Note: Although the reporter missed the fact that Buena Park (like Margate Park, Andersonville Terrace, Argyle Park, Truman Square, Lakeside, Clarendon Park, and Sheridan Park) is part of Uptown, and not adjacent to it, all in all not a bad profile.
Buena Park: Tucked away next to everything
A historic, diverse neighborhood along the lakefront
"I never considered living north of Irving Park," said Khoi Nguyen, speaking from his three-bedroom condominium in Buena Park. Yet Nguyen and his partner packed up in November and left their contemporary home in the John Hancock Center on Michigan Avenue for a vintage building in historic Buena Park.
"Like most people, I was rigid when it came to looking [for a new home]," he said. "I wanted this, that, everything." The two looked in Lakeview and farther north but were disappointed in the cookie-cutter floor plans that they found. When they finally visited Buena Park, the professor says they were taken by surprise.
"I was amazed even," Nguyen said, referring to the range of properties in the small residential enclave that is bordered on the north by Montrose Avenue and Irving Park Road to the south, and from 1100 west in Graceland Cemetery to Marine Drive to the east...
Read more at Buena Park.
August 14, 2009
Matchbook, Broadmont Dine and Dance, 4404 Broadway
Broadmont = Broadway + Montrose. Clever.
The address puts it in the gorgeous blue and white terra cotta building that was torn down for the Wilson Yard project.
Image courtesy of Mr. Montrose on Flickr.
Woman Sues Edgewater Historical Society
The cost of history
Woman sues Edgewater preservationists for blocking sale: 'They were trying to ruin me'
BY MARK J. KONKOL
Staff Reporter/mkonkol@suntimes.com
The hulking Victorian villa in Edgewater has seen better days.
Its muscular concrete porch is cracked, propped up now by iron supports. A rear addition is slowly sinking into the backyard. Inside, a gut job would be needed to make it habitable once more.
But when members of the Edgewater Historical Society got wind of a developer's plan to buy the yellow-brick behemoth at 6018 N. Kenmore and tear it down to build condos, they rallied to save the place, seeing it as a potential city landmark.
Now, the neighborhood preservationists are being sued. Property owner Brigitta Riedel says she lost out on more than $1 million when the sale went south and is suing to the historical society and four of its board members, accusing them of carrying off a "calculated, sophisticated attack" to kill the sale...
Read more here.
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