Bldg. 51 Feed

for well over 18 years now, whenever i encountered this remarkable german baroque style mansion, built for joseph b. kalvelage in 1896 by local architect otto strack, i felt a strong sense of unease as i approached the facade with my camera. it certainly didn't help that directly behind the milwaukee mansion was the (now-demolished) apartment building where jeffery dahmer committed disturbing...

Deconstructing Early Chicago Saturday October 17 & Sunday October 18, 2015 9:00am-5:00pm Coach House of Glessner House Museum 1800 S. Prairie Avenue, Chicago, IL 60616 Free Admission Clarke House Museum and Building 51 Museum will partner to present a special exhibition of early Chicago building fragments and systems on display in the historic Glessner House Museum coach house. This two-day installation features...

on saturday afternoon i arrived at the salerno cookie factory, or rather what was left of it, after a wrecking company hastily tore down the long stretch of the building's facade. this was comprised of red brick divided by cast concrete columns, accentuated with brightly colored inlaid tile. the once visually stunning art deco "machine age" streamlined style entrance was nearly...

upon discovering this building i instantly fell in love with and greatly admired the slim and sleek profile of the chicago motor club building, which like the nearby carbide and carbon building by architects holabird and roche (reopened as the hard rock hotel in 2004), was well on its way to being transformed into a hotel. fortunately, in both buildings, the exterior...

portable fire escapes date back to 18th century england, where in 1784, daniel maseres invented a machine simply called a "fire escape," a device fastened to the window of a building that would enable a person to descend to the street without injury. abraham wivell created an improved design, including an escape chute, after becoming superintendent of the "royal society for the...

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...

very little remains of a. finkl & sons foundry as demolition draws to a close. the images below were taken a few days ago when i visited the site. even though our work there was completed weeks ago, i had been itching to return and photodocument what, if anything, remained standing of this former gargantuan industrial complex.  as expected, virtually every building clustered together on both...

it was surprisingly challenging to put together a collection of images designed to provide the reader with a visual synopsis of all the work that transpired at the chicago athletic club association building over the past few years. with over 10,000 images captured and tucked away on hard drives (many still in raw format), i feel it would take at least a...

every time i entered one of the many mammoth industrial melt, machine or forge "shops" located throughout the sprawling a. finkl & sons chicago foundry complex, i could not help but look up in awe. high above rested remarkably antiquated overhead cranes designed to to move insanely heavy pots of molten metal. the gargantuan metal bridges or "hoists" would crawl along parallel...

with the ten year anniversary of urban remains rapidly approaching, i've taken a considerable amount of time to reflect on where i began and where i'm going. dwelling more on the former for the time-being, i'm looking through hundreds of pictures taken when i first started salvaging large-scale construction sites and historically significant buildings. the nortown theater was both, and i knew that...

investigating a near west side chicago site, i discovered some history through researching nineteenth century maps. according to an 1886 e. robinson's atlas (sanborn insurance) map of chicago (lots 14-17), a large parking lot that was recently excavated used to be a huge coal yard surrounded by several wood-framed structures and a scattering of light manufacturing. when the backhoe began busting through the concrete...

beginning monday, i found myself documenting a dig site where a prototypical late 19th century graystone two-flat  (demolished earlier this year) once resided. with the exception of  an early 1880's cobalt john a. lomax hutchinson unearthed at the front of the lot, a surprisingly large assortment of 1870's bottles and shards were discovered in condensed "deposits" under an enclosed porch (an addition likely...

long ago when i studied the chicago world's fair or "columbian exposition" of 1893 i wondered what, if anything, remained from the "white city" long after it was burned down and/or demolished. where did all the statues go? the lamp posts? like many others, i  was particularly fascinated with the gargantuan ferris wheel constructed on the midway plaisance.  the attraction...

once again i arrived on another heneghan wrecking job site (my crew and i recently completed salvage work at the a. finkl & sons foundry and the howard johnson excavation site) where a massive wooden rood truss warehouse constructed in 1918 was undergoing demolition. when the demolition permit for this structure landed on my radar, i was immediately interested. the otherwise mundane masonry structure contained a...

i've amassed this large collection of antique chicago-based bottles (mainly "soda" or "mineral water") through auctions, excavation sites, privies, and private collectors over the past 8 months. with the "unearthing chicago" book taking shape, i'm scrambling to find many more bottles to fill in many blanks found in each of the decades i'm including in the book. in the meantime...

in the wake of recently completing a publication on my collection, "bldg. 51 museum: a collection of historically important american architectural artifacts," i have decided to make some additions to the virtual bldg. 51 museum in the form of services offered. this will include archival services (akin to my 3-year documentation of the 1893 chicago athletic association building's transition to...

visiting milwaukee over the weekend was brief, but productive nonetheless. in addition to visiting familiar haunts, i decided to take some time to photograph the vibrantly colored 19th century masonry, or "cream city" brick structures. these containing upper facade commercial false fronts, or "boomtown" cornices with striking stamped tin or cut stone name plaques (often accompanied by the date the building...

my participation in yesterday's auction proved to be successful when i managed to secure a historically important, frank lloyd wright leaded art glass window designed for the arthur heurtley house (1902). remarkably the strongly geometric art glass window was free from damage and unlike most of my other frank lloyd wright windows, the original wood sash frame was intact and...

this was the first job site where i was unable to document the demolition of a late 19th century chicago two story wood-framed residence. it contained both old growth notched timber sills and girts with mortise and tenon joinery. in my place, i sent my most skilled salvagers to oversee the demolition and photodocument the timbers both "in situ" and...

late last week i was bombarded with several 19th century chicago soda and ale bottles sourced from auctions, fellow bottle enthusiasts and privy pits. a few will go into my personal collection of historically important 19th century bottles with the most notable being the cobalt blue glass george lomax soda or mineral water bottle, which is the only known example of an open-pontiled chicago...