the first urban remains storefront was housed in wm. mulvihill's soda water bottling plant

last week i was doing research into the timeline of the notable chicago-based john a. lomax bottle company, when reading text written by a friend and avid collector of all things lomax. i was shocked to discover that the chicago consolidated bottling company, established in 1887 after lomax acquired fifteen additional bottling plants, had constructed a new bottling plant at 411 n. paulina, the former urban remains storefront.

during my five year occupancy there (2006-2011), i often looked across the street at the brick building not knowing what existed there before. i had always noticed the bedford limestone monogrammed plaque with initials "gl", located near the roofline, and wondered what it stood for. as it turns out, "george lomax", the son of john lomax who took over the company at his father's death in 1899. the new bottling plant was established in 1906, and remained in business in this iteration until the mid-1920's when it was re-named the lomax brothers bottling company.

postcard courtesy of ray komorowski.

although the lomax bottling plant still stands, it has been heavily modified, with structures demolished, windows bricked in, and so on. the photo album below contains a collection of images i recently shot of the extant building earlier this week.

image of the mulvihill bottling plant interior taken in 2011, shortly after urban remains relocated. note the grooved flooring, which i was told provided greater traction for the horses used to transport the wooden crates of bottles that were distributed throughout chicago.

interior of the bottling factory (urban remains) in 2006.

i was told by the property owner (where urban remains first resided) that the long and narrow two story brick building used to be "an old bottling factory." at the time i was manically consumed with growing my business and salvaging buildings, and never took the time to research and determine which bottling factory operated there. nearly ten years later, i discovered, within a few minutes of online searching that william mulvihill operated his soda water company and/or bottling plant on the first and second floor.

the bottling factory (urban remains) in 2006.

to make things more interesting, when i was excavating the john kent russell site a little over a year ago, i remember discovering several of mulvihill's blobtop bottles around the dig site. that salvage was what kicked off my obsession with chicago bottlers and privy pits, amassing thousands of bottle and fragments from dig sites around the city, and ultimately, creating a publication entitled "unearthing chicago".  it is hard to deny these serendipitous events, which a good friend of mine says to me over and over, are "cosmic connections." whether that is true or not, at the very least, it makes for a great story.c

410 n. paulina in 2015