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more buildings with "sullivanesque" style midland terra cotta are coming down

the small, but visually distinctive single story commercial buildings bedecked with bright white glazed terra cotta "sullivanesque" ornament in numerous configurations on their facades are disappearing more and more from the urban landscape in and around the chicago area as the number of demolition permits seem to have greatly increased this year.

the majority of the these commercial structures outfitted with "sullivanesque" terra cotta (fabricated by the midland terra company) were constructed beginning around the turn of the century, with a fever pitch reached by the 1920's. gradual decline or fading out of these buildings likely began during or shortly after the depression (mass production of terra cotta used as an ornamental building material virtually ceased by the late 1940's).

i'm not going to go into great detail about anything and everything "sullivanesque," so for additional information, including a very scholarly approach to the evolution and execution of this type of building terra cotta, i strongly recommend adding the book "sullivanesque" authored by richard e. schmitt to your reference library (see below).

 

perhaps what motivated me to briefly post on this subject matter was the discovery that two unaltered and well-maintained "sullivanesque" style buildings were recently slapped with demolition permits (as of this writing, one of the two buildings has already been demolished) and the other building, which contains one of my favorite ornamental pieces executed by the midland terra cotta company, is "calling" for me to intervene as quickly as possible to salvage any or all of the ornament before the backhoe begins to rip it apart.

additionally, i have been pouring over several midland terra cotta "plates" that had been tucked away in my library. i had forgotten the overwhelming wealth of information the set of plates provide - both in terms of the wide array of product and the suggested installations for any number of commercial buildings with numerous, heavily illustrated schematics that go into great detail. it appears (at least in terms of the extant "sullivanesque" buildings in chicago), that the circular medallions and the multi-part cartouches were used extensively.

i really hope i can connect with the developer and/or wrecker to establish a deal where i can carefully extract the "sullivanesque" terra cotta from the building soon to be demolished. we shall see... in the meantime, i provided a gallery below that shows a small sampling of "sullivanesque" terra cotta fragments that i have salvaged from chicago storefronts that have since been demolished over the years.

 



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