Urban Remains Chicago News and Events

yet again, i will kick off from a previous post... "the vast scattering of excavation sites in and around downtown chicago have provided a dizzying, seemly endless amount of artifacts discarded by chicagoans of the 19th century. the quantity of "hutchinson" type soda or mineral water bottles alone is impressive to say the least. moreso, the sheer variety of medicinal bottles, chinaware and condiment...

i feel trapped in this inescapable and horrific cycle of documenting one residential demolition after another. i simply cannot keep up. i receive calls and email notifications daily that a wrecker is onsite and well into dismantling, or rather, erasing another piece of 19th century chicago. too often it is only to be replaced with some bland, nondescript three-flat built by...

i find it incredibly strange that the last five demolitions i've been involved in shared three nearly identical characteristics: oversized sill plates (with both lap and mortise and tenon joinery), faceted pegs, and 1-2  summer beams with notched parallel floor joists (versus the more common perpendicularly arranged joists without the use of any summer beams and/or girts). these houses are all...

i will kick off from a previous post... "the vast scattering of excavation sites in and around downtown chicago have provided a dizzying, seemly endless amount of artifacts discarded by chicagoans of the 19th century. the quantity of "hutchinson" type soda or mineral water bottles alone is impressive to say the least. moreso, the sheer variety of medicinal bottles, chinaware and condiment bottles extracted...

a fine collection of "real bronze" ornamental builders' hardware designed and fabricated by the metal compression casting company and/or the russell & erwin mfg. company was recently purchased by urban remains earlier this week. the "mccc collection," consisting of some of the most finely executed hardware (i.e., doorknobs and escutcheons) of the 1870's, belonged to notable collector len blumin, who authored the early...

i was indifferent when i found a human skull wedged under a load-bearing column while the building (1871) around me was being demolished. perhaps i was more concerned about my safety, but i had to capture a shot of the intact facade before it was pulled down. i've seen far more gruesome things... when a building is left to die...

the recent burst of demolition activity in my "study area" over the last two weeks has been rather bitter-sweet in terms of loss and discovery. the rate at which these outwardly nondescript 19th century wood-framed cottages are being pummeled into the ground (and their remains trucked off to the landfill) is mind boggling, not to mention utterly exhausting to keep track of. on...

thank you so much anne sullivan for having me as guest lecturer in your building and materials class this year. i was truly honored and feel now that all of my efforts toward gathering this crazy assemblage of chicago balloon frame components is indeed important. at the very least, these objects are learning tools sampled from the "field," where most...

the photo gallery below offers a glimpse of some of the newest artifacts recently acquired from last week's listings (15 new items are added daily in their respective categories) on the urban remains website. as of this writing, we have 26,000+ meticulously documented and well-organized artifacts in the urban remains online and/or virtual catalog. the ultimate goal since day one is to have each and...

the vast scattering of excavation sites in and around downtown chicago have provided a dizzying, seemly endless amount of artifacts discarded by chicagoans of the 19th century. the quantity of "hutchinson" type soda or mineral water bottles alone is impressive to say the least. moreso, the sheer variety of medicinal bottles, chinaware and condiment bottles extracted from these dump sites has offered tremendous insight into...

|Guest Lecture Series|1pm-4pm|9-23-2015|SAIC|Eric J. Nordstrom| PART ONE: Deconstructing the John Kent Russell House PART 2: Harvesting materials and recreating "systems" for additional study. ADDITIONAL CASE STUDIES IN PROGRESS.

from the moment i struck through a wall near the northeast corner of the house, i knew that my suspicions about its true identity were correct. after peeling back continuous layers i am convinced this house was likely moved from the central business district sometime during the 1850's (around the time masonry began replacing the wood-framed shanties). in fact, once i...

an unusual number of original and matching ornamented cast iron "chicago style" newel posts were recently salvaged from a chicago residence dating to the 1880's. the nicely distressed paint ball-finial newels are identical in size with various open hole configurations designed for use with tubular pipe railings. the freestanding newel posts were designed and fabricated by the dearborn foundry works...

over two hours of talking and sustained concentration left me utterly exhausted but satisfied, knowing that i managed to communicate a single important message: urban archaeological research in chicago is virtually non-existent, and an especially overlooked area of the field is in documentation of 19th century household privy pits. hopefully with the publication of "unearthing chicago," filled with case studies pertaining to...

the fisher building is 20-story, 275 foot tall neo-gothic landmark building in the chicago loop community area of chicago. commissioned by paper magnate lucius fisher, the original building was completed in 1896 by d.h. burnham & company with an addition later added in 1907. it was designated a chicago landmark on june 7, 1978. at the time of its completion...

as mentioned earlier, after discussing my recent urban privy find with several people in the field (e.g., historians, archaeologists, chicago bottle collectors and so on), there is very little doubt that i have come across the oldest known/documented chicago urban privy pit, with artifacts pulled from various "pockets" dating to the late 1830's-1850's. most of the nearby mid-19th century pockets a few...

earlier this week i discovered a downtown chicago privy pit that dates from 1830's-1850's, based on the pockets of artifacts or fragments found therein. the artifacts were situated by a haphazard arrangement of early clay bricks, likely used as infill when the privy or trash pit was covered over. this is a remarkable find considering chicago became a city in 1837. perhaps the...

on the final day of the freemont street house demolition, the day before we salvaged the ornamental white painted galvanized sheet iron cornice, we managed to secure any and all of the decorative face brick or blocks that adorned the two-flat's facade. the salvaged terra cotta bricks were designed with an embossed bulls eye or sunburst design motif. a few...

the alarming rate of demolition permits issued over the past few years, and the subsequent slow eradication of chicago's rich 19th century landscape needs to stop. wishful thinking of course. i wasn't as concerned or aware of these trends when i was living a dichotomous life, as both a research neuropharmacologist and urban archaeologist. the later morphed into being a full-time architectural antique "salvager." ten years...

the photo gallery below offers a glimpse of some of the newest artifacts recently acquired from last week's listings (15 new items are added daily in their respective categories) on the urban remains website. as of this writing, we have 25,800+ meticulously documented and well-organized artifacts in the urban remains online and/or virtual catalog. the ultimate goal since day one is to have each and...