a chicago-based residential and commercial 19th century historic building materials database to become website

acquiring louis sullivan and frank lloyd architectural artifacts to bolster the bldg. 51 museum collection is very important to me, and will continue on (likely with the addition of another artifact catalog in the coming years), but as i'm nearing the ten year anniversary of urban remains, i realize the need to continually evolve and diversify in other directions in order to stoke the flames of passion i have for historic architecture. of course, some ideas and/or projects have or will fail, but then there are the other endeavors that will eventually gel and become apart of the urban remains spectrum.

a great case in point is the john kent russell salvage and subsequent excavation of the site's privy and ash pits, where i have spent the greater part of the year focused - even obsessed - with early building materials and methodologies used in chicago between the 1830's until 1900. my recent visit and possible collaboration with the staff at the henry b. clark house (1836), along with salvaging primarily building materials (for study) from an 1876 commercial building undergoing a complete "gut" job are good indicators that another interest and ultimately, facet of the business has taken hold and is here to stay. there is no doubt that i've been focusing a great deal of time documenting and retrieving building materials (e.g., cut nails, clap boards, joists, etc.), in addition to the merchantable artifacts needed to sustain inventory and/or sales.

with so many fragments and "systems" already cataloged - at least photographically, it seems obvious to construct a database of all these images so that researchers, homeowners and the like can research, reference and gain further insight into the materials used in 19th century buildings across the city of chicago. i've already hinted or perhaps suggested doing a project like this in earlier posts, but now is the time to create a simple website that will be populated with the images (examples can be seen in the gallery below) of these 19th century materials i have documented and will continue to document as future demolitions come my way.

the suspect the website will be very basic, driven largely by imagery over text - at least in the beginning. materials will by organized by type, construction date, location and so on. like the bldg. 51 virtual museum, i hope this solidifies into something that will continue to grow with time by including additional artifacts, etc.