Salvages

before its rapid transformation, the “fulton street market” of tech giants and restauranteurs was a quintessential part of chicago’s industrial past, a thriving home to the city’s first century as a gritty, blue collar hub, where food distribution and manufacturing boomed. sadly, as preservation becomes a front for more development, and landmarking an effort to calcify that history into higher...

before it was demolished nearly 10 years ago, the patton and fisher-designed dana hotel (built as the erie apartment building in 1891) was chicago's oldest continuously-running hotel, and one of the oldest extant hotel structures in the city. it was furthermore, a remarkable queen anne style flat constructed in 1891 that had not been significantly altered. the five and a half...

richard nickel images documenting the demolition of adler & sullivan's meyer building or commercial lofts (1892). the 7-story structure was commissioned by the estate of m.a. meyer, a former partner in selz, schwab, & company.  the heavily fortified masonry and terra cotta m.a. meyer lofts or commercial building was designed by the firm of adler & sullivan in 1892. located...

several amazingly intact post-fire chicago soda "blobtop" smooth base bottles were discovered during excavation of a lot where a wood-frame cottage (1873-1876) once stood. the majority of the bottles unearthed, were made for bottler william h. hutchinson (whh). nearly all of the bottles were found along the cottage's partially buried limestone foundation wall. the images below show the approximate location...

the felsenthal store, apartment, office and loft building was designed and built by louis h. sullivan in 1906 for eli e. felsenthal (friend and family attorney for sullivan's former partner, dankmar adler). the two-story masonry building was located at 701-709 east 47th street, chicago, ills.  the project marked the transition in sullivan's practice from tall commercial skyscraper buildings to the...

erasure of the second german evangelical zion church from chicago's cityscape is happening at a surprisingly ferocious pace, with masonry façade and bell tower (bell removed long ago), the only notable features left standing, despite being covered in a web of scaffolding. the third and final segment documenting the death of this tragically neglected and abandoned church, will conclude with...

if a 19th century chicago frame cottage is handed a death sentence, you can rest assured i will be there to document its death. i will pick apart, lightly clean, and photograph any and all relevant building materials in my studio. i do this to amass "real" data and gain further insight into the materials and methods used in constructing...

while sorting through boxes of building materials i'm cataloging for my "deconstructing chicago project," i decided to set a group of bricks aside that connect with, based on the salvages and/or stories tied to them. eight stories involving the non-extant buildings from which the bricks came from were selected from previous blog postings and listed below. the bricks (from left...

the looming threat of the second german evangelical zion church's destruction, which had been in a holding pattern for months, was handed its death sentence when the demolition permit was released and the wrecker arrived with equipment to prepare it for destruction. thankfully, i managed to document the interior and exterior on several occasions including the final day before the...

an impressive 19th century chicago (wicker park neighborhood) three-flat apartment building with distinctive masonry punctuated with ornamental anderson pressed brick, fret-sawn wood window lunettes and amazingly intact surrounding ornamental cast and wrought iron newel, bracket and pipe railings flanking stoops and along sidewalk, will be reduced to rubble in the coming weeks. in addition, a pre-fire wood-framed chicago workers cottage...

the three-story hollenbach seed company building designed by the architectural firm of worthmann and steinbach and completed in 1912, was reduced to rubble in a matter of hours yesterday afternoon. sadly, the distinctive sprayed-glaze red terra cotta ornament, including the centrally located name plaque bearing the owner's name, was destroyed during demolition. surprisingly, there was absolutely no interest and/or arrangements...

the hollenbach building (1912) will be the latest casualty to succumb to the rapidly changing fulton market cityscape on the west side of chicago. the three-story brick and terra cotta commercial building was built for charles hollenbach’s seed company in 1912 at a cost of 12,000 dollars by the architectural firm of worthmann and steinbach. hollenbach ran his seed company operation...

the following blog post links arranged in chronological order below offer highlights of the work of eric j. nordstrom, urban remains, and the bldg. 51 museum archive in 2019. over the past few years my work towards creating and/or collaborating with people and organizations deeply entrenched in architectural preservation has greatly intensified, which is clearly reflected in the posts i...

from three years ago: the south side masonic temple (1921) is presently under demolition.  it has been less than six months since I documented the demolition of the logan square masonic temple, also by clarence hatzfeld, architect, and more can be read about his prolific career and special emphasis on masonic temples in that post driving to englewood today the...

at the southeast corner of wells and division in chicago’s near north neighborhood, excavation and the choreography of new development have been happening for some time. just last march, ground was broken on the mega-project at atrium village, which will transform a mid-rise residential complex constructed in 1977 into the site of four new high-rises. the original atrium village was...

a little over a year ago a single house demolition dramatically altered the course of my life's work, in ways I could never have imagined. in ways i still struggle to make sense of. this house held an odd fixation for me and I would later discover it connected deep passions from my past with a new path for my...

it's rather unfortunate that my recollections of exploring the partially operational (or perhaps largely crippled and chaotic) cook county hospital's power plant are so faint and fragmented. to make matter worse, hundreds of digital photographs taken of cook county hospital's interior during the short-lived salvage were lost due to a computer crash. i did, however, manage to extract a handful of images...

demolition in glencoe on the horizon. images from a visual record i made of the sprawling estate of h. earl hoover (nephew of william h. hoover), who purchased the land in 1922 and commissioned architect william furst of armstrong, furst and tilton to design the tudor style mansion and outbuildings (e.g., stable, greenhouse, etc.) completed in 1925. with the exception...

when companies are contracted by the developers to extricate structurally unsound vaulted sidewalks and alleys in and around sites to be excavated for future construction, work continues with subsequent digging to remove concrete and asphalt, which in many cases, leads to the discovery of well-preserved 19th or early 20th century fired red brick or granite pavers, and in rare cases...

  as i continue to stitch together bits and pieces of prior salvage experiences i often fall victim to a dense cloud of confusion and frustration when i pour over the notes and images taken during urban remains's infancy. looking back, i feel the process of documentation was satisfactory, but certainly nowhere near the maniacal methodology that i've developed at present. in...