historically important mid-19th century chicago aberdeen street wood-framed cottage hidden under countless modifications

across the alley, jst a stone's throw from the john kent russell house (1855) stood two houses facing aberdeen street, or curtiss street at the time of their construction and/or move to the block. when these side-by-side houses landed in my daily demolition notifications, i quickly revisited an 1857 birdseye view of chicago that i'd once used to pinpoint the j.k. russell house.

i wasn't surprised to see a structure directly across from where the russell house once existed. i knew from previous explorations of the surrounding blocks (again, while i was collecting information on the russell house) that several cottages, likely dating as early as the 1840's, were hidden, at least in skeletal form, within the radius of a few blocks. over the last two years i have documented several cottages of interest west of morgan street, south of grand avenue, north from hubbard street and east of ogden avenue. sadly, i've kept tabs on the area in preparation for a death sentence to be handed down to any one of my suspected candidates.

in fact, the two houses on aberdeen street belonged to that list, so i started making preparations to document and ultimately salvage the houses despite there not being a single foreseeable artifact that could be sold through urban remains - i was completely okay with that, even knowing the demolition and excavation would require a lot of time and energy.

i chalk this up to yet another salvage event driven by my manic obsession with uncovering chicago's earliest structures and their framing, before they are wiped away undocumented. from a historic building materials standpoint, capturing the evolution of building methods and materials from chicago's earliest cottages will offer a trove of data to mine through, and will ultimately paint the most accurate portrayal of the heavily hybridized "balloon frame." the balloon frame was a cross-pollination between the old world of post and beam, hewning, joinery, and sawn dimensional lumber, quickly thrown together by unskilled workman through the use of "spikes." this picture of construction will likely muddy the waters of existing theories which support a clean cut progression of chicago's framing techniques, typically using little to no field data, and placing heavy emphasis on the sticks and spikes of balloon framing "invented" here in the early 1830's.

from the street, the neighboring houses offer very little evidence of their true age, but the general configurations, minus additions and heavily modified renovations, leave open the possibility that single or double story frame cottages are likely hiding deep within. that was at least my gut feeling. when the green fences went up, shortly after the utilities were cut, i went through the basements, attics and probed a few of the walls. sure enough, my intuition was proved correct by unmistakable evidence in the structure.

it still remained to be seen whether they were as early as i hoped. unfortunately, it was only through demolition that all of the layers could be stripped away, leaving the original structural systems. even then, i didn't have much time to document or extract samples, since like any demolition, time is of the essence.

when the wrecking machine punched into the first structure i knew i had to focus all of my energy on teasing out any clues to an approximate, or better yet- precise, date of construction. as the house to the south, known simply as "455" began to unravel, i was impressed by the sheer size and roughness of the sheathing, the size and cut of the studs, and the abundant use of notched beams with pegs. i would later learn these were multiple additions, with the first one dating to the civil war.

on the second day of demolition, in which the front half of house "455" and all of house "457" would be brought down, i had no idea the head-spinning finds that would be made. i'm still shaking a little from the implications of what i discovered. i was pleased to walk away with a pile of samples and an entire system (i.e., the entire facsia of house 455), safe and ready to be hauled back to the shop for further analysis.

shortly after the debris was pulled away i managed to get my first glimpse of the foundation configuration for the original house. the sill plates were sawn, but heavily notched in the "old world" tradition with pegs and all to reinforce the mortise and tenon joinery. the heavily fortified mounds of plaster resting on the sill plates between the studs were filled with plaster, wood shavings, sections of molding and lath, crushed glass and newspaper.

despite being badly damaged, i pieced enough sections of the latter together to date the paper to 1845-1847. this was convincing evidence that the first structure (whether built on site, or moved from nearby) was built in the 1840's. i was more than pleased with this finding, and shocked that the house i estimated was built later would be the "star" of the show once demolition was underway.

update as of 6-1-2016: house "655" and its depression-era foundation have been broken apart and hauled off to the dump, leaving behind a lot filled largely with dirt and residual debris. in the course of an afternoon i managed to unearth several artifacts dating from the 1840's to the 1860's. the excavation yielded black glass, mochaware, spongeware, clay and wooden pipes, and a completely intact and one-of-a-kind michael keeley embossed dark amber ale bottle.