Urban Remains Chicago News and Events

recently acquired for the bldg. 51 collection/museum are a pair of remarkable 1920's exterior light fixtures, discovered in a remodeled stairway leading down to lower wacker west of michigan avenue. the exterior sconces were originally installed at the lincoln park zoo.   though the large globes are not original (they were replaced time and again), they sit atop the original...

at least a fifty or so "projects" related to chicago history are currently awaiting my attention. the information so greatly deserves to be shared, whether through an image gallery or a lengthier narrative tied to research, and i feel the rapid accumulation of this dead weight on my shoulders every time i open another folder full of images in need of...

among the non-chicago based artifacts in the bldg. 51 museum collection is a highly unusual depression-era theater seat end, included in the catalog for its reflection of exotic movie palace architecture in the mid-west, and as an object designed for chicago architects anker graven and arthur mayger. the distinctive polychromatic painted auditorium seat end features a detachable mayan revival figural...

outside of architectural ornament, signage is an important element of the built landscape for its ability to retrace a specific area's changing landscape. as a salvaged object, it is always implicated in whatever historical narrative might arise. this is embodied in a very rare original early 20th century unusually large city of chicago exterior street sign from the intersection of michigan...

  last weekend i made my way over to rush hospital to document what remained of the historically important buildings containing ornamental terra cotta, limestone, and other materials on their facades. once onsite it was clear the presbyterian hospital's daniel a. jones building (1888) was long gone, surviving from then on only in pictures and a pile of crated red...

out of equal parts curiosity and utter fascination i've chosen to devote a considerable amount of my time away from the business life of urban remains, toward meticulously documenting the death of a logan square church. instead of the usual deconstruction process, in which the building is swiftly pulled apart then left as a pile of rubbish, considered waste to...

the following photo gallery offers a glimpse of the most recent artifacts salvaged and/or acquired and posted in the urban remains massive website catalog (15 new items are added daily in their respective categories). this year marks the ten year anniversary of urban remains, and from day one, one of the primary goals -- now and since 2006 -- has been to have...

during this week’s demolition at 2442 w. moffat street, as st. john’s church was painstakingly deconstructed before my eyes, i decided to move forward and secure two matching sets of original c. 1910 gothic style pressed and folded antique copper finials, along with the topmost oversized finial (the lightning rod remains largely intact) from the church building's steeple or tower. the nicely weathered and...

the 19th century two-story wood frame victorian style house had already been mowed down by the time i arrived onsite - i was shuttling back and forth between salvaging, digging and documenting other doomed buildings around the city, so i was unable to commit more time to both exploring and documenting the aldine street boarding house before it was pulled apart. that seems to...

in the coming weeks, i will be thoroughly documenting the salvage of a 106 year old church in logan square, whose structure is slowly being dismantled. the life of the building is to live on in scattered fragments and in the bricks which will purportedly be re-used in whatever new construction is to come—likely condos. in deep relief, the corner...

a permit was issued earlier this week to wreck and remove the terra cotta building at 3228 north clark street which until recently housed “the alley” and long ago held a nickelodeon and neighborhood gathering place called the "clermont". although some tout the current development vision as a great example of adaptive reuse, it is a bit more difficult for me...

mountains of early 20th century lath waiting to be organized and strapped into bundles for reuse as anything and everything. the building is slowly dying, but its remnants will live on elsewhere. the destruction of a building occurs within a finite, and surprisingly quick time frame, but rarely is salvage such a tidy experience. each demolition spills into life...

this past week demolition of a pre-fire workers cottage (the original cottage dates to the late 1860's, with subsequent additions added over the next 40 years) hit close to home (quite literally), with wrecking machines moving in on a neighboring structure, just adjacent to the rear of urban remains warehouse. the long dilapidated building sat in isolation between empty lots, its...

the great majority of the keystones included in this photographic essay were taken from various extant commercial and residential structures built shortly after the great chicago fire of 1871, within what is known as the "burnt district." this area, consisting of downtown and the neighborhoods just north of it, received the most extensive damage from the conflagration. consequently, when rebuilding...

two words: senseless and stupid. post demolition:                                                                          

a demolition that has recently drawn much media attention is underway on the near west side, where harpo studios will be razed to make way for a mcdonald’s corporate headquarters. the studio complex, which is often discussed of late in terms of its occupancy for the last two decades, has yet a longer and more storied history. overshadowed by its...

fifty years ago a sunset pink structure with towering stepped profile crumbled to the ground beside lake michigan. under pressure of bankruptcy and the promise of new development, the edgewater beach hotel abruptly closed its doors in the far northern neighborhood of chicago, only to succumb to the wrecking ball soon after. while a centennial just this year brought together...

as covered in a prior post, last week brought about the salvage of a century-old three-flat commercial masonry structure located near grand and halsted, set to be demolished in the near future. the facade belies somewhat its historic character as residence and production space of the city's first italian food importer. astoundingly, the building’s interior upper floors had essentially been sealed...

another historic structure is threatened with impending demolition at the corner of broadway and sheridan, an iconic art deco building with white molded cement eagles protruding from the cornice and lending the building its colloquial namesake, the "eagles building." the early 20th century harry hale waterman-designed structure, also known as the issaac g. ettelson building, currently houses a starbucks and...

i revisited st. boniface after spending the afternoon bouncing back and forth between the demolition of harpo studios and of a mid-19th century cottage across the street from my shop. despite the local coverage over st. boniface's fate (with recent developments suggesting demolition is imminent), it was mostly quiet onsite. to my surprise and delight, i ran into architectural critic blair...