final chapter ends with complete removal of an increasingly rare joliet limestone chicago commercial building facade

throughout most of the 19th century joliet's numerous quarries were supplying chicago (and other midwestern cities) with great stone slabs used in the paving of city sidewalks, along with several churches, hotels, banks, warehouses and other types of public buildings. the stone was found just below surface level and quarried to remove the covering from the horizontal layers. slabs were then broken or cut down to the required size and form and lifted out with bars slipped under rollers and onto the canal-boat or railroad car for transport to surrounding cities utilizing this stone for construction purposes.

sadly, several of these distinctive pre and post-chicago fire loft style commercial buildings bearing facades clad with this yellowish limestone were demolished with ferocity during urban renewal, only to be replaced with bland, postmodern structures - especially in and around the city's urban core. even to this day, these increasingly rare joliet limestone commercial buildings are succumbing to the wrecking ball and/or undergoing complete removal and replacement of their facades, as is the case with the 1876 commercial loft we finished salvaging.

since the beginning, when we first stepped foot into this building, there has been this ongoing or constant struggle to secure historic building materials that were being carelessly tossed into the dumpster. in similar fashion to the difficulties in securing any and all the original walnut wood newel posts, spindles and railings earlier on, i made every effort long before i knew the facade was going to be replaced, to at the very least, salvage the keystones and larger window hoods or headers accentuated with deeply incised abstract floral motifs. in addition, i really wanted to salvage the small fret-sawn wood lunettes that were mounted above the keystones located on the first floor. again, i was assured that once work commenced, the masonry workmen would set aside these keystones and lunettes as they were being removed from the facade.

despite our most recent successful negotiation in securing the remainder of the pine wood joists and railings with monetary compensation in place, i felt the stone fragments would not be a problem to set aside (mind you, i had no involvement and thus supervision) in the removal of the facade. this was such an odd arrangement to begin with, but at least we had solidified a few deals and artifacts were salvaged by my team.

not surprisingly, once the facade was taken down and thrown into dumpsters (can you imagine the amount of post-chicago fire joliet limestone going to waste?) i arrived to find nothing set aside. when questioned, the response (like a mantra it seems), was that saving these elements was not communicated to them. so with the damage already done, i again, turned to the dumpsters lining milwaukee avenue. i managed to fish out a keystone fragment with the majority of the abstract floral motif intact. the very top was broken off, but it was better than recovering nothing at all. i considered that moment to be the endpoint to a difficult and frustrating "salvage" where our efforts in the eyes of the workmen were very much not a priority - perhaps an afterthought - if that, despite being offered monetary compensation over and over again. to be fair, i completely "get" that situations like this arise often; where the contractor's time to get a building transformed for a new establishment is the number one priority for the developer or wrecker.

nonetheless, the general contractor overseeing this job really did not care (obviously) and to be honest, likely considered our presence to be intrusive and cumbersome at times. so at the very least, i'm glad that we managed to save what we could and i was able to carefully photodocument the materials and methodologies (such as the fully-exposed framing) used in constructing a chicago commercial building built in 1876.

update as of 5-13-2016: a little late in following up, but the new facade looks this (yawn)...