Urban Remains Chicago News and Events

the photo gallery below offers a glimpse of some of the newest artifacts recently acquired from last week's listings (15 new items are added daily in their respective categories) on the urban remains website. as of this writing, we have 25,000+ meticulously documented and well-organized artifacts in the urban remains online and/or virtual catalog. the ultimate goal since day one is to have each and...

the bldg. 51 museum has multiple 19th century artifacts from adler and sullivan's guaranty building. these include an interior staircase baluster, which is the only surviving all-original lobby flush mount light fixture ceiling medallion (the current fixtures in situ are recasts), and a few doorknobs and backplates removed from the building's office doors. the baluster in this post is the...

By Rick Kogan contact the reporter|Chicago Tribune| Images courtesy of Eric J. Nordstrom The block of Burton Place between LaSalle and Wells streets is as charming and architecturally distinctive a block as you will find in the city. Go ahead, have a look. It is also a quiet, even serene stretch of sidewalk. But that calm, tree-shadowed facade hides an increasingly...

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...

this week urban remains acquired multiple swing-out seat lunchroom tables removed long ago from the former farley and loetscher millwork factory founded in 1875 by christian loetscher. located in dubque, ia., the mill was incorporated in 1881 as the farley and loetscher manufacturing company. by 1910 the farley and loetscher factory was turning out 500,000 windows and 300,000 doors with 1,200 to 1,500 carloads of lumber used annually. the...

the photo gallery below offers a glimpse of some of the newest artifacts recently acquired from last week's listings (15 new items are added daily in their respective categories) on the urban remains website. as of this writing, we have 24,000+ meticulously documented and well-organized artifacts in the urban remains online and/or virtual catalog. the ultimate goal since day one is to have each and...

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...

the photo gallery below offers a glimpse of some of the newest artifacts recently acquired from last week's listings (15 new items are added daily in their respective categories) on the urban remains website. as of this writing, we have 24,000+ meticulously documented and well-organized artifacts in the urban remains online and/or virtual catalog. the ultimate goal since day one is to have each and...

urban remains carries a vast selection of "portable" fairies lighting fixtures spanning from the company's founding in the late 19th century to the 1950's. from patented bracketed wall and ceiling fixtures, to table lamps and shades, we offer some of the very best lighting (in some of the most highly desirable finishes) offered by faries. some background on founder robert faries...

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...

the photo gallery below offers a glimpse of some of the newest artifacts recently acquired from last week's listings (15 new items are added daily in their respective categories) on the urban remains website. as of this writing, we have 24,000+ meticulously documented and well-organized artifacts in the urban remains online and/or virtual catalog. the ultimate goal since day one is to have each and...

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...

the photo gallery below offers a glimpse of some of the newest artifacts recently acquired from last week's listings (15 new items are added daily in their respective categories) on the urban remains website. as of this writing, we have 24,000+ meticulously documented and well-organized artifacts in the urban remains online and/or virtual catalog. the ultimate goal since day one is to have each and...

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...

pictured below: a very well-maintained example of early steel office furniture in the form of a joseph uhl-designed switchboard operator's adjustable height mobile chair with the highly sought after oxidized copper-plated finish largely intact. identified by period catalogs as "model 511," this remarkable patented pressed, folded and pinched heavy gauge steel chair was built by the toledo metal furniture company, located...

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...