Urban Remains Chicago News and Events

when my salvage team arrived at the church building located at 1639 n. artesian avenue late last week, i wasn't expecting to salvage much of anything. based on preliminary research there wasn't much to expect, with the interior having been altered time and again. aside from a few limestone ornamental blocks adorning the facade, i wasn't terribly excited to spend time...

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on the way to the office this morning i made a stop at the corner of huron and state to document the progression of a demolition, a site at which my repeated requests to salvage ornament ultimately fell on deaf ears. this was due in large part to my lack of familiarity or relationship with the wrecking company that had been assigned to bring down the...

several days after salvaging the late 19th century west side chicago holy bethel or "adams street" church's interior, which involved extracting its painted tin time capsule filled with an assortment of ephemera pertaining to the congregation that built it in 1888, i made one final trip to recover the limestone cornerstone itself. the cornerstone was cut and carved by p. kempe...

rush hospital awarded heneghan wrecking the task to bring down its older buildings as part of its decade-long campus transformation. for months now, their excavators have been tearing away at the daniel a. jones hospital building, constructed in 1888. the entrance and other elements, including an unopened time capsule were removed for the hospital. in addition, the majority of the red terra cotta...

the following photo gallery offers a glimpse of the most recent artifacts acquired and listed on the urban remains website (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 every salvaged...

this week three lots located on west ohio street were in the beginning phase of being dug by workers from one of many demolition companies i work with. the lot being excavated once contained a small workers cottage that i missed the chance to document during its demolition late last year. the cottage stood directly across from the building where notable chicago architect...

with the combination salvage and photo-documentation phase of the c. 1888 west side chicago holy bethel church (more often referred to as the adams street church) nearly completed, i'm now prepared to witness its heartbreaking death when the excavator begins demolition on monday. originally the demolition date was set for the 18th of february, but a tumultuous weather system packing a punch, with...

this week sees the impending demolition of the late 1880's holy bethel or "adams street" church situated at the corner of adams and damen, near the united center on chicago's west side. with the excavator set to arrive on thursday, i have all day wednesday to remove anything and everything within the church's interior. since there were countless remuddlings and...

in the bldg. 51 collection is a stunning ornamental cast iron elevator grille fabricated by the winslow brothers for the interior of the manhattan building. the single-sided copper-plated panel features very unique organic motifs throughout. the detailed vertical panel is a historically important remnant of the oldest surviving commercial building of skeletal construction in chicago, designed by william lebaron jenney...

the following photo gallery offers a glimpse of the most recent artifacts acquired and listed on the urban remains website (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 every...

wrecking permits were issued for 4 and 8 east huron on 2-9-2016. there are not many houses left downtown, as one can imagine, and these two were slated for demo back in 2008. the owners (a law firm i believe) first auctioned off the interior furnishings way back when. i was there, and if i recall correctly, the marble fireplace...

this week saw the purchase of a historically important and exquisitely detailed sumac pattern plasterwork frieze fragment from the extant dana-thomas house at 301 e lawrence avenue, in springfield, il. the frank lloyd wright-designed residence was commissioned for susan lawrence dana in 1902, about a decade after wright was fired from sullivan's firm for taking outside commissions, his well-known "bootleg...

when i arrived at the address late last week, i wasn't exactly sure what to expect. perhaps the wreckers weren't exactly sure either, since the endgame seemed ambiguous. the post-fire brick workers cottage did not land on my radar because there wasn't a demolition permit pulled. instead, i was told this was going to be a partial demolition, where the back and...

the following photo gallery offers a glimpse of the most recent artifacts acquired and listed on the urban remains website (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 every salvaged...

in 2011 i was given the green light to briefly explore the vacant "old main" or former central post office at 433 w. van buren with a few building contractors who were assigned the task of gutting the interior - minus the grand lobby - for future development. it was quite a surreal experience (albeit a brief one) to navigate through a very massive and...

…the “Monadnock” went ahead; an amazing cliff of brickwork, rising sheer and stark, with a subtlety of line and surface, a direct singleness of purpose, that gave one the thrill of romance. It was the first and last work of its kind; a great work in its day, but its day vanished almost over night, leaving it to stand as...

going into 2016 marks an important milestone for urban remains, a milestone representing a sometimes arduous, surprising and notably transformative journey full of wonder, beauty and not a few dangerous exploits. i have now spent over a decade salvaging, archiving and compiling an enormous repository of data on a variety of artifacts from buildings. dying, decaying, often forgotten buildings, those...

a development in the afterlife of the non-extant osborne & adams commercial loft arrived recently via an email from my good friend, tim samuelson while we were discussing the use and/or abundance of both sandstone and limestone as building materials used in post fire chicago construction. as it turns out, tim's research several years ago at the landmark commission office...

i was pleased to see a write-up on urban remains in the local publication, "skyline" featuring news for chicago's loop, and surrounding neighborhoods. in "history lost in storage," peter von buol profiles the discovery of original materials from the reliance building and eric nordstrom's purchase of the fragments from hotel burnham. buol also mentions, in brief, the history of al capone's...