eric j. nordstrom's unearthing chicago project revisited through multitude of documented discoveries

all images and artifacts courtesy of eric j. nordstrom photography, unearthing chicago and the bldg. 51 archive.

according to 19th century chicago public health reports, periodicals (e.g., the sanitarian), and city ordinances, it was rather common for licensed "night scavengers" to dump refuse collected from residential privy pits or "vaults" into vacant lots.

i've discovered several of these dumps over the past 5 years while gathering data for my "unearthing chicago" project. however, i haven't been actively involved in a long time - perhaps i needed a break from the rigor of such endeavors. but then again, maybe there hasn't been an opportunity where i've felt the overpowering urge to rekindle the flame. recently though, my interest was reignited when i was asked to take a look at a rather large dump discovered on the west side of chicago the other day.

when i arrived, i could distinctly recall the 1880's house (without a basement) that once stood there - it was demolished late last year and a subsequent excavation was put off. i spent the afternoon there documenting artifacts as they were pulled from the ground, and the refuse recovered from the bottom-most layer suggests usage of the dump beginning in the mid-1880's.

the images below represent only a fraction taken the other day. when time permits, i will add more, including fragments cleaned and shot in the studio.

images and artifacts courtesy of eric j. nordstrom and the bldg. 51 museum archive.

posted may 6, 2015:

---remnants of chicago's past unearthed at the former howard johnson inn site---

demolition of the downtown chicago howard johnson inn, constructed in the late 1960's, is nearly complete. in preparation high-rise development that will be constructed on the site (located at the corner of la salle and superior), the wrecker has spent the past few weeks systematically "potholing" the site to make way for drilling the caissons that will serve as the foundation system for the high-rise.

i've spent several afternoons documenting what lies beneath the former travel lodge and parking lot as the backhoe operator digs deep into the ground, revealing artifacts from chicago's past. the great majority of material consists of stone and brick rubble from the buildings that were likely constructed there shortly after the great chicago fire swept through the area in 1871. nearly all of the buildings that occupied the lot were of masonry construction. from what i could see, the foundations consisted of both brick and limestone - likely recycled from the great chicago fire.

in one of the more interesting pot holes, i discovered wood flooring with surrounding household debris that dated back to mid-19th century chicago, when the block consisted of wood-framed dwellings. a completely intact 1857-59 cobalt blue "pony style" william h. hutchinson glass soda bottle (whh) was discovered just above the badly deteriorated privy floor boards. the site where the bottle was located was nearly 10 feet below the basement floor of the howard johnson inn.

according to a highly informative polychromatic lithograph of chicago in 1857 by christian inger and based in a drawing by j.t. palmatary (pubished by brauhold & sonne) multiple dwellings lined the stretch of superior street where the howard johnson was later built. it is likely that the bottle, shards and privy boards belonged to a long-abandoned privy "vault" behind one of those houses that once stood there.

another digsite revealed a largely undisturbed segment of intact "nicolson" creosoted wood pavers belonging to a larger wood block alley that bisected the block. nearby, i found a large pile of 19th century brown or richards and kelly solid glass vault light lenses that likely were used in cast iron sidewalk panels before being replaced with concrete later in the 20th century.

a few large pockets of fused material from the chicago fire and a seemingly unending supply of scattered coal was consistently found within every dig site. with only a few more holes to be dug, i hope to discover more discarded material from the chicago fire. more to follow in future posts.

images courtesy of bldg. 51 archive.

prior to visiting this site, i had only seen it in pictures, by way of google street view. despite toggling back and forth between images of the house between 2007-2014 on google's "timeline," it was difficult to ascertain stylistic features or architectural characteristics that would provide better insight into when the house was built and how it was configured (i.e., single family versus multi-family residence).

when i arrived onsite, all that remained of the building was a limestone foundation covered over long ago. however, once the excavator removed the foundation walls and basement slab, fragments from bottles and chinaware began to emerge. within the next few hours, completely intact bottles and an unusually large amount of ink bottle earthenware was spotted and retrieved from what quickly became a long and narrow lot of stench-filled mud located well below grade.

as of late, i've been finding fragments and a bottle or two at most residential sites. sporadic ash pits with animal bones and with no privy vaults have seemingly become the norm. thus discovering intact bottles in quantity at this recent dig was most welcome. it is a much-needed change of pace for collecting material and imagery, and will ultimately bolster the depth and scope of artifacts to be included in the up and coming unearthing chicago book.

on another note, i've grown increasingly frustrated with the amount of time needed to research and write up a detailed synopsis pertaining to this site (and the artifacts discovered there). sure, i can quickly look over a few sanborn insurance maps to see what exactly resided there, but doing this often leads to more questions than answers. for instance, according to Robinson's 1886 Atlas of the City of Chicago, nothing existed on the site. yet, at least half the bottles discovered date between 1875-1885. since the artifacts were scattered in a seemingly random fashion instead of discovered in concentration within a privy vault, i wonder if this may have been a temporary dumping ground for neighboring residents.

for the time-being questions surrounding this urban dig site will remain unanswered until i find the time to revisit them (and i will have to do so if i decide to include this find in my book). at the very least, i have images of the site and surrounding neighborhood, notes on where the artifacts were located in relation to one another, images of each and every artifact retrieved and later cleaned, and of course, the artifacts themselves. these will be carefully tucked away in a box with an address label and notes added. i have at least two full pallet shelves filled with such boxes, containing artifacts from dig sites all over chicago. at the rate i'm going i will have to rent another warehouse just to store these fragments, left behind by 19th and early 20th century chicagoans who had no idea that over a hundred years later someone would spend a great deal of time and resources unearthing their trash. i hope this process of documentation and storage will help others appreciate what daily life was like long ago.

the gallery below represents some of the artifacts i've managed to lightly clean and photodocument in my studio. several more artifacts were discovered, but due to time constraints, i'm sharing the images taken from the first day. as i write this post, two additional days of gathering artifacts from this site have passed (concluding late last week) and i'm now on another excavation site in the heart of downtown chicago, where i hope to find mid-19th century remnants where early wood-framed houses once stood.

images courtesy of the bldg 51 archive.

unearthing a former parking lot yields a wealth of artifacts from chicago's past

beginning last week we were notified of a major excavation where a former parking lot will be redeveloped for condo construction. consisting of several lots, this massive parcel of land once contained multiple brick and wood-framed dwellings, according to sanborn insurance maps dating back to 1886 and another from 1917.

after only a few short days into the dig, the backhoe managed to unearth limestone foundations the once supported structures demolished long ago. during the excavation several ash piles, cisterns and privy pits were discovered. an impressive field of buried debris, comprised largely of rubble left from the time of demolition, was in great abundance. working around these cumbersome piles of brick and stone, we managed to find a number of pockets that yielded bottles, china, bones, and other odds and ends left by the occupants that called this area home. as of this writing, the material recovered and later cataloged dates between 1885-1930. however, there are areas that have yet to be excavated that may very well contain artifacts dating back to the civil war. at least one known frame dwelling resided on one of the lots. hopefully we will discover an intact, wood or brick-lined privy filled with pontiled bottles and other period artifacts that would offer insight into the living conditions of the chicagoans during that time.

the images below provide several examples of bottles shortly before they were removed from there original resting place. the galley offers an assemblage of bottles and assorted pottery and/or china found at the site. one group represents late 19th century artifacts found in pockets dug from a greater depth, whereas the other group features depression era milk bottles, utilitarian bottles, etc., found near the surface.

my large 3'x'3 framed photograph of a william h. hutchinson (w.h.h.) soda or mineral water bottle was delivered the other day. the colors are so vibrant! whh cobalt blue glass bottles were manufactured in chicago between 1855-1879.

i had this blown up and framed as a reminder when i first discovered one of these beautiful bottles in the bottom of a privy pit a year ago, which subsequently triggered an obsession that has left me with a collection of over 5,000 bottles, hundreds of hours digging around chicago, and the book "unearthing chicago," which captures this year-long obsession through stories and images.

i learned a great deal about how chicagoans of the 19th century lived, how they handled their trash and where to find it. most importantly, i met several unique individuals along the way, with friendships forged through our common interests in urban archaeology.

i'm so very exhausted... i need to walk away from this for awhile.
perhaps i will return to this one day, but with revamped mindset that is much more selective in terms of the digs i chase after. i have to keep reminding myself that i cannot be everywhere at once!

at this point, all i want is the book published and find a home for my entire collection of artifacts and images - perhaps in the form of a donation to a museum or academic institution that can benefit from this treasure trove of information.

images courtesy of bldg. 51 archive.

unearthing the remains of the former curtiss factory - home of the "baby ruth" candy bar.

the excavating machines showed signs of life as they began opening a formerly vacant parcel of ground located just west of ogden slip (a man-made harbor located near the mouth of the chicago river) in preparation for yet another high-rise (the 42-story "optima").

shortly after they dug into the earth, i was drawn to the job site with strong suspicions that massive amounts of building material once pushed deep into the ground as "fill" would once more see the light of day. thus, i wasn't surprised to discover several piles of wood timbers, concrete and stone slabs and a steampunk-esque assemblage of twisted and heavily corroded pipes, gauges, casters, carts, tierods, grates and a giant spring. i couldn't resist taking the latter back to the shop, along with a few granite pavers, to photograph in the studio.

though i haven't had much time to research in detail the evolution of the urban landscape surrounding the dig site, based on a few historic aerial photographs showing the slip and the warehouses north of the river, i can say with complete certainty that the heavily weathered materials extracted thus far are remnants belonging to the curtiss candy company factory complex, home of such sweets as the "baby ruth" and "butterfinger" candy bars.

the curtiss candy company was one of several large manufacturers who grew a booming post-war candy industry in chicago. otto schnering founded the business in 1916, after graduating from the university of chicago with a degree in philosophy and taking the odd job of piano selling. the 24-year old native chicagoan began producing candy with a 5 gallon kettle and a stove in a leased space on north halsted street that was at the back of a hardware store and over a plumbing shop. the name "curtiss" was his mother's maiden name, chosen to make the company sound more "american" at a time when anti-german sentiment was strong. after several years of experimenting, the factory's first successful product-- kandy kake -- was refashioned in 1921 as the baby ruth bar, made to compete with the "oh henry!" bar as a candy priced five cents less, and marketed by the phrase "everything you want for a nickel."

by 1919, otto expanded his factory into the streeterville area, just north of the chicago river and west of lake michigan. by 1928, curtiss candy produced a billion candy bars per year within its three chicago factories operated by 3500 employees.

in the 1940's, having weathered the depression and war, schnering eventually expanded into agricultural side businesses (namely champion cattle breeding and poultry raising). schnering bought farmland near cary, illinois, as it was said that he wanted to repay the farming community and dairy farmers who had been supplying milk, eggs, and cream for his candy business through the years. he oversaw an impressive operation that entailed care of thousands of animals by hundreds of employees on his estate, shaping the area into a mini-city or company town at curtiss farms. after his death in the early 1950's, the company was run by his family for a time and then bought out by standard brands (eventually coming to be owned by nestle)

the general characteristic of the unearthed remains paint a heavily fragmented, but at the same time, somewhat cohesive portrait of the candy factory that resided there, both in terms of the massive load-bearing wood posts, concrete floors, type of brick, "fireproof" windows, and so on. as more material is excavated during potholing in preparation for digging the pilings that will anchor the new development firmly into the bedrock, i will be monitoring their progress, hoping more remnants pertaining to the candy factory surface to lend further insight into a demolished candy factory that likely was never documented over the course of its existence.

images courtesy of bldg. 51 archive.

the w.h. hutchinson & sons bottling company (whh) donated thousands of wooden soda bottle crates to chicago's post office - a causality of the great chicago fire (1871) - for sorting mail at a makeshift post office built shortly after the fire was struck out. the crates were mostly built for "whh" cobalt blue soda bottles shown in the image.
note: the "dug" bottles were found in privy pits or dumps across the city.courtesy of bldg. 51 archive.

i ran across a sizable late 19th century privy "vault" or pit located in west town, where an old saloon once stood. there were well over fifty largely intact pictorial hutchinson soda (note the deeply embossed animals) bottles, along with hundreds of fragments from broken pottery jugs, flasks, utility bottles, and so on. research on the saloon is ongoing, but at least i can safely say the refuse unearthed dates to 1895-1905.

images courtesy of bldg. 51 archive.

collection of richly colored iron-pontiled chicago soda bottles dug from privy pits across the city. the majority of lightly embossed blobtop bottles date to mid-1850s.

courtesy of bldg. 51 archive, unearthing project.

unfortunately, i missed documenting a chicago post-fire cottage demolished a few day before i arrived. while there however, the lot where the cottage stood was being excavated for new construction. several bottles were found along the original limestone foundation (ne corner). clearly this wasn't a privy pit, so i'm thinking that tradesmen left these smooth base "blobtop" soda bottles while laying the foundation. if that is indeed the case, the cottage was likely built between 1872-1875.

courtesy of bldg. 51 archive.

images of a largely intact 19th century residential privy pit or vault located on the west side of chicago. the original circular-shaped pine wood floor was later extracted and reconstructed. bottles (note the number of 1880s john lomax blobtop sodas) and fragments where found in and around the pit.

images courtesy of bldg. 51 archive.

one of several 19th century residential privy vault pine wood floors i've discovered over the years. the one pictured (in situ) is a circular-shaped privy floor, comprised of pine boards with no evidence of tongue and groove joints.
unfortunately, only a very few artifacts were found in and around the pit. it likely was cleaned out by a "night scavenger" before being filled in.
at the height of my maniacal obsession unearthing chicago, i had boxes of intact bottles and fragments in my shop and at home. i recall spending days meticulously cleaning and reconstructing privy floors i extracted from sites across chicago (see last image).

images courtesy of bldg. 51 archive.

artifacts i dug from an 1850s downtown chicago privy pit in 2015. the open-pontiled amber scroll flask fragment likely dates to the 1840s. i don't dig anymore, nor do i document sites, but i have thousands of photos and fragments from 2014-2017, when i was still active.
to this day, i regret not grabbing an original oak wood foundation pile section during excavation of site where s.s. beman's grand central station (1890) was located.

images courtesy of bldg. 51 archive.

the small chicago worker's cottage was torn down long ago, but from the smattering of objects unearthed (thus far) during excavation, i managed to gain some insight into what transpired there, beginning from the time of construction sometime during the mid-19th century.

i was notified early one morning when the first discovery was made by the excavator. before looking at sanborn insurance maps of the site, i assumed the house faced north along huron street. several brick and wood houses in the surrounding area were positioned the same way.

however, when the first artifact-- a william h. hutchinson sand-pontiled cobalt soda bottle--was discovered against the limestone foundation towards the back of the lot, i wondered whether this wood-framed house was set back, possibly moved, or facing the opposite direction. according to maps, this was a little street known as "bismarck" street. with my mind stuck on the latter, i took a walk down the street (now known as "ancona"). sure enough, there were several extant 19th century buildings facing this street, with the one in the image depicted below likely constructed between 1865-1875.

as the house was wrecked and buried, and dirt and debris removed from the back portion of the lot, more and more of the foundation became exposed. in the meantime, artifacts began appearing towards the front, facing huron street. in fact, the remains of an early wood privy pit were found right against the lot line several feet away from the rear foundation. a few bottles and several pottery shards were found in and around the rotten wood boards. one of the bottles was fabricated for a perfumery, and was likely hand-blown during the mid-1860's. this makes sense considering the william h. soda bottle (the first artifact discovered, and what brought me to the site) dates to this period. if the bottle were iron-pontiled, it would be slightly older, dating to as early as 1855, when hutchinson's cobalt sodas were first produced. the smooth base technology came later (1860's), so discovering two complete bottles that were made within the same time period suggests the house was constructed around this time. also corroborating this construction date estimate is the fact that the w.h.h. cobalt was discovered near the foundation instead of the privy, leading me to believe it was tossed there by a stonemason constructing the house's foundation.

the excavation is still in progress, so i hope to find additional pieces to the puzzle. i hope not only to understand who the residents were by what they left behind, but also what the house or worker's cottage may have looked like, based on building materials (that are currently being cleaned for me to photodocument). gleaning information from an 1886 city directory with a house address pointing towards bismark street, i managed to find a number of different people resided here; repeatedly listed occupations of the residents include machinist, sailor, tinsmith and laborer. as of this writing, i've discovered fragments of clapboard, bricks, cut limestone and what appears to be a sill plate fragment. a few ash pits produced additional artifacts, including a partially intact and heavily irridized hayes brothers soda bottle, a charred boxspring, three west side company milk bottles and medicinal bottles, which stretches the timeline of occupant activity well into the 20th century.

---additional images of several malformed cluster specimens - likely a combination of coal, coke and other industrial by-products were found in abundance around the ash pits nestled above layer of clay---

images courtesy of bldg. 51 archive.

rare 1860's cdv featuring a horse-drawn chicago beer/soda wagon for bottler william h. hutchinson. the following period bottles, extracted from chicago privy pits, were likely the type or style found in the crates transported by hutchinson's wagons during this time.

courtesy of bld. 51 museum archive.

19th and early 20th century dug fragments on partially reconstructed 1860s circular-shaped residential privy pit floor comprised of pine wood tongue and groove boards with tapered edges.

courtesy of bld. 51 museum archive.

This entry was posted in , Miscellaneous, Salvages, Bldg. 51, Events & Announcements, Featured Posts & Bldg. 51 Feed on June 20 2022 by Eric