Feature image: July 2016. Chicago Skyway Toll Bridge, 95th St. & S. Baltimore Ave 4.03mb DSC_0774 (1). Author’s photograph.
This photograph of the Chicago Skyway Toll Bridge (also known as the “Skyway”) is at the exact point where it spans the Calumet River and Calumet Harbor, a major harbor for industrial ships. Built by the City of Chicago in 1958 this massive steel undergirding is part of the 7.8 miles long expressway toll road that connects Chicago’s Dan Ryan freeway on the South Side to the Indiana Toll Road. The main feature of the Skyway is this half-mile long steel truss bridge known as the “High Bridge” whose maximum vertical clearance allowing ships and objects to pass safely underneath is 125 feet or about 10-12 building stories. The Chicago Skyway truss is primarily made of rolled and built-up steel beams for incredible weight-bearing strength, durability and functionality.
The Skyway was operated and maintained by the City of Chicago until January 2005 when Skyway Concession Company, LLC assumed its operations under a 99-year operating lease. The lease agreement between Skyway and the City of Chicago was the first privatization of an existing toll road in the United States. In February 2016, Skyway was purchased by three Canadian Pension Funds (OMERS Infrastructure, CPP Investment Board, and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan) and in December 2022 global toll road operator Atlas Arteria Group based in Australia, acquired 66.67% stake in the Skyway with OTPP retaining the rest. see – The Skyway – Chicago Skyway – retrieved December 19, 2025. While exact current figures go up and down, best estimates put daily vehicular traffic on the Chicago Skyway, both cars and trucks, at between 40,000 and 50,000 per day. see – FHWA – Center for Innovative Finance Support – Value Capture – Case Studies: Hays County, Texas Transportation Reinvestment Zones – retrieved December 19, 2025.
FEATURE Image: February 2018. Village “Art” Theatre, 1548-50 N. Clark Street, Chicago, Illinois 60610. The use of masks had been used in theatre since ancient times. They were usually tied to their dramatic source material and the inherent psychology of the characters. The Landmark Designation Report for the Village Theatre described this polychrome character head with musical instruments as “singing” in honor of the neighboring Germania Club, a German social club with its origins in men’s choral music. The head also wears a Baroque-style “wig” of oak leaves and acorns. In Germany, oak trees are revered, and acorns are a symbol of good luck. A decorative keystone on the theater’s round-arched window also has an acorn ornament. 88% 7.94mb DSC_4799 Author’s photograph.
Designed by architect Adolphe Woerner (born Stuttgart, Germany 1851- 1926), the Village (Art) Theatre opened as the Germania Theatre on July 29, 1916 and closed in its 91st year in March 2007. The building was erected by German-born Frank Schoeninger exclusively as a movie theater for $75,000 (about $2.2 million in 2025) and leased for an annual $7,000 rent (about $205,000 today) to Herman L. Gumbiner (Germany, 1879- 1952, Santa Monica, Calif.) in a 10-year contract with his company, The Villas Amusement Company (later Gumbiner Theatrical Enterprises). By 1910, buildings erected solely for the purpose to showcase motion pictures were becoming increasingly popular as the appetite to consume the latest silent motion pictures out of Hollywood was booming everywhere. These neighborhood movie houses, larger than dingy storefront nickelodeons and yet smaller than flamboyantly ornate vaudeville theatres, had movie “palace” touches while fitted conveniently into Chicago’s many local commercial strips. Nearly all of these first-generation movie theaters in Chicago have been demolished or remodeled for other purposes including those larger-scale theaters developed by major theater operators such as Balaban and Katz, Lubliner and Trinz, and the Marks Brothers. While those palatial theatres could hold between 2,000 and 4,000 movie-goers the Village Theatre, one of the last and best first generation movie houses to survive for so long, originally held 1,000 spectators. Originally named the Germania Theater because it was next door to the Germania Club, it looked to attract affluent club members to its flicks.
The Germania Theatre was built in 1916 on Frank Schoeninger’s open land pictured above between the Germania Club (completed in 1889) and his tavern and hotel on the corner of Clark Street and North Avenue. In 1986 the Germania Club, citing the dwindling numbers of members, finally disbanded. Public Domain.
Herman Gumbinger was a major film exhibitor who was busy in Chicago building his independent theatre chain in the 1910’s, with several new movie house projects and acquisitions throughout the city’s northside primarily. After building Chicago’s first independent movie house chain in the teens, Gumbinger relocated to Los Angeles, California, in 1921 where he built the famous Los Angeles Theatre in the Broadway Historic Theatre District of Downtown L.A. Erected at a cost of over $1.5 million ($31 million today) and designed by renowned movie theatre architect S. Charles Lee (1899-1990) Gumbinger’s theatre premiered Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights. Gumbinger Theatrical Enterprises finally dissolved in 1943.
Herman Gumbinger (1879-1956), c. 1924, built Chicago’s first independent movie chain, including what became the Village Art Theatre. By the end of the 1920s, Chicago had more than thirty of these movie palace theaters. Among its holdings, Herman Gubinger and his brothers operated the New Blaine which was renamed and is today the Music Box Theatre. Public Domain.
The Germania was one of the first-generation movie theatres built at the intersection of three Chicago neighborhoods – Gold Coast to the south and east, Old Town to the north and west and Lincoln Park to the north. An architectural mix of styles including Classical Revival (triangle pediments, pilasters and cornice with dentils fashioned in terra cotta) and Renaissance Revival (rusticated exterior and round-arched windows with keystones), the movie house also incorporated Germanic symbolism in its details reflecting the area’s then prominent ethnic group. During World War One, in a wave of anti-German sentiment, The Germania Club renamed itself the Lincoln Club. It changed its name back in 1921. The Germania Theatre changed its name to the Parkside and never looked back. In 1931 until 1962 it was known as the Gold Coast theatre. Meanwhile, prohibition closed down Frank Schoeninger’s tavern and he left for Wisconsin. In the 1960’s the theatre was updated and renamed the Globe Theatre. In 1967 the building was renamed the Village Theatre after it survived being demolished by the nearby Sandburg Village development.
Sandburg Village is a Chicago urban renewal project consisting of eight high-rise buildings, a mid-rise building and 60 townhomes and artists’ lofts. The development was first occupied In 1963 and completed in 1971. In the early 1960’s the Village Theatre was to be incorporated into the project until its landowner refused to sell. PHOTO: “20190323 08 Carl Sandburg Village (49490506022)” by David Wilson from Oak Park, Illinois, USA is licensed under CC BY 2.0.February 2018. The Village Theatre in the last days before its demolition. Its marquee from the 1960’s has been removed. The Village Theatre sat across the street from Latin School of Chicago at North and Clark Streets in Gold Coast/Old Town. In its Landmark Designation Report, the Village Theatre façade is described as having “a symmetrical arrangement, with a central theater entrance and separate entrances to the upstairs offices at opposite ends of the building. Each upper-story entrance has a deeply-recessed alcove lined with brick and white, carved-wood panels. A limestone slab step, inset with hexagonal tiles, is inside each alcove. Each alcove is framed with white terra cotta and brick pilasters on a base of gray terra cotta, made to imitate granite. The pilasters are topped with a triangular, white terra-cotta pediment.” 70% 7.93 mb DSC_4797. Author’s photograph.
The original two-story façade of red pressed brick and white beige glazed terra cotta decoration competed with a sizeable modern marquee that was removed before its demolition in 2018. Since after college I lived in Chicago for about 15 years, I recall seeing several films here. The ones I can remember seeing at the Village Theatre were Wall Street, House of Games, Fatal Attraction, Russia House, Michael Collins, and The Red Violin, among others of that period. In early 1991 the interior of the theater was divided into four screens and I didn’t stop going to movies there but just not as frequently as I did before. In April 2018, the Village Theatre and neighboring buildings along North Avenue were completely demolished to make way for construction of a condominium building. The ornate Clark Street frontage was stabilized as everything else crumbled to dust around it. The façade was repurposed to serve as the entrance for the new condo development known as Fifteen Fifty on the Park with units priced at opening at $1.625 to $5.85 million.
There had been at least three marquees for the Village Theatre: the original vertical Germania sign that was taken down almost as soon as it went up owing to anti-German sentiment in World War I; a horizontal, awning-style marquee like the one at the Biograph Theater (1914) at 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue in Chicago that was put up in conjunction with its existence as the Gold Coast theatre; and this prow-shaped marquee (pictured above) with steel-and glass doors believed to be part of the mid 1960s modifications when the movie house was the “Globe.” PHOTO: “Germania (Parkside, Gold Coast, Globe, Village) Theatre, Chicago, IL” by BWChicago is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.The Village Theatre took the moniker Village Art Theatre after The Chicago International Film Festival used the Village Theatre as a venue to screen “art house” films starting in 1969. PHOTO: “Village Art Theatre” by BWChicago is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.The rear of the 102-year-old Village Theatre before its impending destruction in 2018. “Germania (Parkside, Gold Coast, Globe, Village) Theatre, Chicago, IL” by BWChicago is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.October 2018. Author’s collection.
This explanatory article may be periodically updated.
FEATURE Image: March 2016. Immanuel United Church of Christ, 1500 Old Church Road, Streamwood, Illinois. Built in 1868, it is the congregation’s second house of worship on the site and remains the congregation’s active sanctuary. 7.49mb _0979
IMMANUEL UCC in Streamwood, Illinois, has a unique history within the context of the similar histories of other early settlers in Northern Illinois beginning in the 1820’s. Though diverse settlement throughout this part of the state was feverish (Chicago incorporated as a city in 1837), the prairie landscape expanse remained sparsely populated into the 1830’s and 1840’s with its mixture of farms, industry, and trade. The Streamwood church and burial grounds were founded in 1852 when W.G. Hubbard donated its five acres of land for “the sole and exclusive use of erecting a house thereon for religious worship and a burying ground.”
It was a group of 13 farmers who organized the church and chose its name: Deutsche Vereingigte, Evangelische Lutherische Immanuael’s Germeinde. Apparently, as Illinois was the edge of the Western frontier, in those days there wasn’t anyone around, or very many, to enjoin them to state it in English. Of course, it translates as “United Evangelical Lutheran Immanuel Congregation.” Today, Streamwood is in Cook County and sits just on the other side of DuPage County to the south that broke off from Cook and was established in its own right in February 1839. The original relatively open site today is surrounded by tract housing and other modern development for as far as the eye can see or vehicle drives with Elgin about 9 miles to the west.
1851 map of Cook and Dupage Counties. Hanover is between Elgin and Schaumburg Townships. Public Domain.
Streamwood, incorporated in 1957, is one of three communities that comprise the so-called “Tri Village” area that includes Bartlett and Hanover Park. This part of Northern Illinois had served as a seasonal hunting and camping ground for the Cherokee, Miami, Potawatomi, and Ottawa Indians. In their turn, the land had been claimed by France, England, Spain, Virginia, and the Northwest Territory before it became part of the State of Illinois in 1818.
March 2016. The ImmanuelUCC church and burial ground were created in 1852 for German settlers in Hanover Township in today’s northwest DuPage/Cook Counties. Three U.S. Civil War veterans are buried here, including from the 127th Illinois Infantry; Volunteer 5th Calvary Illinois Regiment; and U.S. Calvary Co. H, 3rd Regiment. All three died and were buried in the cemetery decades after the war had ended. Author’s photograph.
While the church started out as Evangelical Lutheran, over time the congregation moved towards becoming part of the United Church of Christ. In 1959 the members changed its name to reflect that reality. The first church building that was completed in 1853 was replaced in 1868 and is the present one. Among other buildings added to the church complex, the same historic sanctuary remains this Chicago suburban congregation’s house of worship today.
March 2016. Landscape and grounds near ImmanuelUCC church in Streamwood. Hanover Township was an expansive area of farmland settled by mid-19th century German settlers to Illinois. Author’s photograph.
Sources:
DuPage Roots, Richard A. Thompson, editor, DuPage County Historical Society, 1985.
FEATURE Image: May 2024. 143 First Street, c. 1863. 7.52 mb_6360. Since the 19th century Batavia, Illinois, 40 miles west of Chicago, was a railroad and manufacturing center in addition to its farmsteads. This mid-19th century limestone factory building is testament to Batavia’s industrial heritage. After the U.S. Civil War, Batavia was a major manufacturer of Conestoga wagons used in the country’s westward expansion.
Text & Photographs John P. Walsh.
May 2024. 143 First Street, c. 1863. 7.52 mb_6360. The square shaped south façade’s stone cut is more grandiose than the longer west side indicating that it is the front face of the building. The tower at the north end likely held the building’s water tank and added more room and height for pulleys and other equipment.May 2024. Batavia is one of the towns along the Fox River settled in the 1830’s between Geneva and St. Charles to the north and larger Aurora to the south. 95% 7.75 mb DSC_6350.July 2016. Fermilab is to the east and adjacent to Batavia. Since 1969 it has housed a herd of bison when Fermilab’s first director, Robert Wilson, established the herd as a symbol of the history of the Midwestern prairie and the laboratory’s pioneering research at the frontiers of particle physics. Each spring new calves are born signaling the herd’s rejuvenation. 4.70mb _0577 see – https://www.fnal.gov/pub/about/bisoncam/ – retrieved 1.24.25.May 2024. Campana Sales Company Factory, Batavia, Illinois, East Elevation, 1936-1937. The Campana Factory was built in the International Style to manufacture cosmetics for The Campana Company. At the time Campana’s “Italian Balm,” heavily promoted on the radio, was the nation’s best-selling hand lotion. The building was designed by Frank D. Chase & Company (founded in 1913) with Childs and Smith in Chicago. Frank David Chase (1877-1937) built newspaper plants in St. Louis, Milwaukee and Oklahoma City and a number of important buildings in Chicago including hospitals and office buildings. The central tower reflects the 19th-century heritage of Batavia’s limestone factories. The one story wings on the extremity of the building were added in the late 1940’s. The factory was purchased by the laundry detergent brand Purex who later closed Campana operations in 1982. 77% 7.72mb _6437.https://www.artic.edu/artworks/102112/campana-sales-company-factory-batavia-illinois-east-elevation – retrieved January 22, 2025.https://www.artic.edu/artworks/102113/campana-sales-company-factory-batavia-illinois-landscape-perspective – retrieved January 22, 2025.May 2024. At the bottom of the tower of Campana Sales Company Factory the main entrance is stainless steel set into black polished marble. 7.48mb _6446.May 2024. The Congregational Church, 21 S. Batavia Avenue, 1856. 89% 7.73mb _6372. The locally quarried limestone central section dates to September 1856. The church displays the eclecticism of New England Colonial and Classical styles. Though the building’s classical detailing of capitals and pilasters is mostly missing, the precisely cut and laid stone are original. These cut ashlar blocks include neatly finished arches, sills, and entablatures. The church’s design is attributed to architect Elijah Shumway Town (1804-1890) who built Batavia’s Bellevue Place Sanitarium in 1853 where Mary Todd Lincoln was committed for 4 months in 1875. When the original steeple was knocked down in a storm in 1877 it wasn’t replaced until 97 years later in 1974 and is the tallest steeple in Kane County. There have been subsequent additions to the church in the last 60 years. Established in Thompson Paxton’s cabin in 1835 as “Church of the Big and Little Woods” and affiliated with the Presbyterians, the church relocated to Batavia Avenue in 1841. Sharing a common belief in the anti-slavery doctrine, the church was supported by church members and the community-at-large so that the church changed its name to “Congregational Church and Society of Bavaria” in 1843.May 2024. 355 First Street, 1852. 96% 7.83mb DSC_6389. This was the Methodist church built in the Greek Revival. The pilasters are Doric order that meet the main beam resting across the tops of columns (architrave), blank frieze, cornice, and classical pediment. After 1886 the building was used as a schoolhouse in the Batavia school system. Today it is law offices. In 1836 a group meeting in William Van Nortwick’s home in Batavia organized the “First Methodist Class” which marked the establishment of the Methodist church in Batavia.July 2013. West wall stone work and window of former Methodust Church built in 1852. 7.02mb _0004Born in Maine, Elijah Gammon (1819-1891) was a spiritual and business powerhouse. After he moved to Illinois he was the Methodist church’s first preacher in 1854. Having to give up preaching because of health in 1858, he changed careers to the manufacture of harvesting machinery. As he substantially contributed to the industry’s development and earned a fortune, his business responsibilities and success in no way limited his spiritual vision.https://aaregistry.org/story/elijah-gammon-supported-black-ministry/ – retrieved January 23, 2025.May 2024. United Methodist Church of Batavia, 8 N. Batavia, 1887. 87%7.91mb _6498. United Methodist Church of Batavia, 8 N. Batavia Avenue, Batavia, Illinois was built in 1887. The rugged eclectic Richardsonian Romanesque-type building was designed by Solon Spencer Beman (1853 –1914) and inspired by a church in France that its donors had admired. The structure was almost entirely the gift of abolitionist Elijah J. Gammon (1819-1891), the church’s first preacher and local businessman, and Captain Don Carlos Newton (1832-1893), another active local businessman who had a house investment property across the street. Beman was an architect of note as he designed the planned Pullman community and adjacent Pullman Company factory complex in Chicago as well as Chicago’s Fine Arts Building (1884) on Michigan Avenue. At the top of the tower is a Palladian window under a pyramidal roof while in the back are hipped roofs. The building’s boulders were taken from the contractor’s farm about a mile from the building site. The new church building replaced the first Methodist church in Batavia built in 1853 in Greek Revival and which still stands today.Born in New York, Captain Newton was a very active businessman. He died unexpectedly at his home in Batavia after attending the Chicago World’s Fair for a week with his family in 1893. He was described as ”a persevering, self-made man.” https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/16849480/don-carlos-newton – retrieved January 23, 2025.Chicago-based architect Solon Spencer Beman designed the United Methodist Church of Batavia in 1887. Beman is an architect of note as he designed the planned Pullman community and adjacent Pullman Company factory complex as well as Chicago’s Fine Arts Building (1884) on Michigan Avenue. Several of his largest commissions, including the Pullman Office Building, Pabst Building in Milwaukee (1891), and the Romanesque Revival Grand Central Station (1890) in Chicago, have since been demolished.A number of architects trained with Beman, including Prairie School architect William L. Steele (1875-1949), church architect Charles Draper Faulkner (1890-1979) and Spencer Solon Beman (1887-1952).May 2024. 415 Main Street, 1860. Eclectic Gothic Revival with Italianate features including scroll-cut square brackets tailored to the pitched roof line, segmental arches above the windows, and the heavy outlines of the door entrance. A polygonal bay and wings are informal features found in the Italianate that balances a formal façade. 89% 7.87mb. July 2011. 415 Main Street (1860). The door is larger than the windows and offset by the small ventilating window at the top in the gable. 2.54mb100_3328 (1)May 2024. 360 Main Street, 1855. 74% 7.72mb DSC_6409. The house is an example of the evolving transition from Greek Revival to Gothic Revival to Italianate. May 2024. 33 S. Lincoln Street, 1850. 73% 7.85mb DSC_6520. The lengthy 1850 Greek Revival is formal and simple. There are four pairs of windows and an architrave, frieze and cornice characteristic of the type as well as its corner pilasters. May 2024. 505 Main Street, 1858. The house is in the Swiss style and has a peacock feather spread motif above the second floor balcony. There are also trifoils set in circles in the gable. The brick sun room was added to the east around 1910. 92% 7.81mb DSC_6426 (1) July 2011. 505 Main Street’s in-vogue late 1850’s peacock feather motif was made by scroll cut boards nailed to a backing and long tubes made by a lathe. To the left under the roof extension there is incised ornamentation with a tall thistle plant motif. 1.54mb 100_3331 (1) May 2024. 356 First Street, c. 1850. 62% 7.80mb DSC_6395. Greek Revival frame clapboard house. May 2024. 637 N. Batavia Avenue, 1906. The Prairie style house was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) in 1906. It is frame and stucco with massive chimneys. With its horizontals, low pitched roof, casement windows and thin eaves, it is the Prairie style fully developed. Frank Lloyd Wright in 1903, likely a self-portrait. Public Domain.July 2013. Fabyan Villa was the home of George and Nelle Fabyan from 1908 to 1939. A mid-19th century farmhouse was acquired by the Fabyans in 1905 and extensively remodeled by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1907. The house, on a hilltop looking east to the Fox River was the centerpiece of the Fabyans country estate called “Riverbank.” In 1914, the Fabyans purchased a windmill (photo below) that was located on a farm near Oakbrook, Illinois, and had it relocated opposite Riverbank on acreage that they acquired that same year.May 2024. 111 S. Lincoln Street, c. 1850 92% 7.84mb DSC_6396. Though obscured by modern adaptations, the severe cube of the structure indicates its Greek Revival roots. May 2024. 125 S. Lincoln, 1852. The Greek Revival style with the central section temple like with matching side pilaster ascending to a pediment as an incomplete entablature as one side is merely suggested by returns at the top of each pilaster. The wings include a one-story entrance and a two-story addition with cornice and dormers with window arches and tiny pitched roofs. 88% 7.78 mb DSC_6400May 2024. 432 Main Street, c. 1850. The front porch may or may not be original but befits the broad formal mid-19th century Greek Revival structure. 93% 7.82mb DSC_6431 (1)July 2011. Between Batavia and Geneva, Illinois, The Fabyan Windmill is an authentic, working Dutch windmill dating from the 1850s. It was built by a German craftsman, Louis Blackhaus, and moved to this location next to the Fox River from its original site near Oakbrook, Illinois, in July 1915. 2 mb 100_3357July 2011. 333 S. Jefferson Street, Batavia Institute, Bellevue Mental Hospital, 1853. Following the assassination of her husband, President Abraham Lincoln, Bellevue became the residence of Mary Todd Lincoln briefly in 1875. 2.87mb 100_3332 Mary Todd Lincoln in 1846. Mary Todd was 23 years old when she married 33-year-old Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois on November 4, 1842. Their four sons were all born in Springfield. In 1875 Robert Todd Lincoln (1843-1926), her eldest son, had her institutionalized following a jury trial. She was committed to this private asylum in Batavia on May 20, 1875. Estranged from her finances and her son, she fell into a deep depression in the mental institution. Making contact with her lawyer and the press, the former First Lady got the wheels of justice and public opinion on her side. The resulting bad publicity for Robert Lincoln prompted the asylum director to pre-emptively change his opinion of Mary’s mental fitness so that in September 1875 she was released into the care of her sister Elizabeth Todd Edwards (1813-1888) with whom she was close and moved to Springfield. Following a second jury trial on June 19, 1876 that declared Mary “restored to reason,” Mary Todd Lincoln was back in charge of her money and freedom and promptly fled the country. She lived in France for the next four years. When she returned to Springfield in poor health in 1880, she lived again with her sister in Springfield. On July 16, 1882. Mary Todd Lincoln died of a stroke in Elizabeth’s home. Mary was 63 years old. Before her burial in Oak Ridge Cemetery next to her slain husband, her funeral was held at First Presbyterian Church in Springfield. Just steps from the Lincoln home, this was the church Abraham Lincoln started attending in 1850 after the death of their second son, four-year-old Eddie. The present church building was dedicated in 1868 and remains standing at 7th Street and Capitol Avenue today. see – https://www.nps.gov/features/liho/25/25.htm – retrieved January 23, 2025. Elizabeth Todd Edwards. She and Mary were long close both in Springfield in the 1830’s and, later, at the White House. In 1875 Elizabeth accommodated her sister and the 64 trunks of her possessions with two rooms in her Springfield mansion. see – https://web.archive.org/web/20171201042129/https://www.civilwarwomenblog.com/elizabeth-todd-edwards/ – retrieved January 23, 2025.July 2013. 333 S. Jefferson Street, Batavia Institute, Bellevue Mental Hospital, 1853. The monumental Italianate structure was designed by Elijah Shumway Town (1804-1890) who built Batavia’s Congregational Church. Projecting two story wings with Mansard roof containing a third story is built of slightly cruder stone and added before 1870. July 2013. details. July 2013. details. 5.11mb 0479 July 2013. 419 Union Street, 1863. The exuberance of the Italianate style is manifest in a soaring polygonal bay on the facade’s one side and a cupola on the other. Large windows are characteristic of the Italianate as are multiple curved brackets. Contrasting textures of stucco and heavy stone provide interest and work to suggest the appearance of more expensive materials and construction than actually used. This was the residence of one of the doctors at the Batavia Institute across the street. 4.77mb _0092 (1)
Sources:
A Guide to Chicago’s Historic Suburbs on Wheels and on Foot, Ira J. Bach, Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 1981, pp. 304-319.
FEATURE Image: Steuben Club Building/Randolph Tower. 188 W. Randolph Street, Chicago. View from the west, August 2021. Author’s photograph. 12.72mb_9354 (1)
The 1929 limestone tower whose shape may be the last surviving skyscraper reflective of the 1923 zoning law with setbacks and a telescoping tower presages Vitzthum & Burns’ mighty 1 N. LaSalle Street Building in 1930. Randolph Tower was restored in 1993 by Stenbro, Ltd. and in 2013 opened as the residences of Randolph Tower City. In addition to its 15-story tower, the building is 27 stories tall and 465 feet high built on rock caissons. German-born Karl Martin Vitzthum (1880-1967) and John Joseph Burns (1886-1956) built some of Chicago’s best-known skyscrapers of the 1920s and 1930s. The firm also built, in 1953, St. Peter’s Church in the Loop at 110 W. Madison Street two doors down from the corner skyscraper of 1 N. LaSalle Street Building. Karl M. Vitzhum was architect on the Midland Hotel (then the Midland Club Building ). Built in 1927, it is 22 stories of roaring 1920’s Beaux-Arts architecture.
Karl Martin Vitzthum (1880-1967). One of the architects of the Steuben Club Building/Randolph Tower with partner John J. Burns. The skyscrapers they built starting in 1925 until the Great Depression became taller and more vertical as time progressed and are some of the most visible soaring stone structures of the period in downtown Chicago. Karl Martin Vitzthum (Architect), Steuben Club Building, Chicago, Illinois, Perspective Randolph Street, 188 West (Building address), 1924-1928, Watercolor and tempera on paper 86 × 35.6 cm (33 7/8 × 14 in.) The Art Institute of Chicago. see – https://www.artic.edu/artworks/158560/steuben-club-building-chicago-illinois-perspective – retrieved September 21, 2024.
With each building the move from classicism to Modernism is clear as well as pure verticality. During the 1980s and 1990’s, I worked in one of Vitzthum & Burns’ mid1920s office buildings in Chicago – The Old Republic Building at 307 North Michigan Avenue built in 1925. My airy office on the 7th floor looked right onto Michigan Avenue where I could admire the Carbide and Carbon Building across the street built in 1929.
Steuben Club Building/Randolph Tower. August 2021. Author’s photograph. 82% 7.88 mb _9354
Vitzthum arrived in Chicago from Germany in 1914 and worked with architectural firms such as Graham Anderson Probst and White, Burnham & Co., and White, Jarvis & Hunt. He often worked with Fredrick J. Teich (1874- n.a) prior to establishing his own firm with John J. Burns in 1919. Vitzthum was a young architect on Burnham’s staff when he worked on some engineering details for the old Comiskey Park (1910-1990). The partnership of Vitzthum and Burns started in 1919 and ended with Burns’ death in 1956. Though known for eclectic styled bank buildings throughout the Midwest, the pair had built the one-screen 1,000 seat The Hollywood Theatre at Fullerton Avenue and Greenview Avenue in 1926. The theatre closed in 1957 after being renamed the Holly Theatre and was demolished soon afterwards. It is a parking lot today for a local Walgreens across the street from Facets movie theatre.
SOURCES:
Frank A. Randall, History of Development of Building Construction in Chicago, Second Edition, Revised and Expanded by John D. Randall, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1999, pp. 331 and 319.
Saliga, Pauline A., editor, The Sky’s The Limit A Century of Chicago Skyscrapers, Rizzoli New York, 1990, p. 133.
Alice Sinkevitch, AIA Guide to Chicago, 2nd Edition, Harcourt, Inc., Orlando, 2004, p. 84.
FEATURE image: Blue Cross Blue Shield Tower building, Day and Night. November 2017. It was designed by Goettsch Partners (GP) an architecture firm based in Chicago, with additional offices in Denver and Shanghai.
The Blue Cross Blue Shield Tower sits on the northeast corner of East Randolph Street and Columbus Drive in Chicago, Illinois. It is on the north side of Millennium Park. The tower is the headquarters of Health Care Services Corporation, a company founded in 1936 and based in Chicago, Illinois. HCSC is the licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association that provides health insurance to more than 115 million people in the U.S. as of 2022.
The Blue Cross Blue Shield Tower was built in two stages. The first stage was the original 32-story building completed by Lohan Associates (today Goettsch Partners) in 1997. It was built with the potential for a vertical expansion so that the client could grow in the same location. An expansion occurred in 2007 with a 24-story addition completed in 2010. It became the first building project in downtown Chicago that built upon an existing tower.The views are from inside Millennium Park. November 2017 7.38 mb 3417 (1)The Blue Cross Blue Shield Tower (second from right) in its setting on the north side of Millennium Park which was established in 1998. From left: One Prudential Plaza (1955), Two Prudential Plaza (1990), Aon Center (1973/1994). The Blue Cross Blue Shield Tower is next to the Aon Center with original plans to connect the two buildings via an underground pedway but did not come to fruition. November 2017 5.76mb 3397 (1)The Blue Cross Blue Shield Tower was designed by Jim Goettsch, chairman of Goettsch Partners. November 2017 99% 7.41mb3480
FEATURE image: The massive Harold Washington Library sits on the northwest corner of State Street and Ida B. Wells (Congress) Drive. November 2017 5.02 mb.
November 2017.
In 1987, Hammond, Beeby and Babka won the competition to design the main branch of Chicago’s library. The Harold Washington Library was completed in 1991 and is one of the Chicago-based architectural firm’s most famous structures. The building recalls neo-classical institutional buildings yet whose style is creatively applied in its details.
PHOTO CREDIT: “Harold Washington (9519692588)” by City of Boston Archives from West Roxbury, United States is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
The Harold Washington Library is named for Chicago’s first Black mayor. Harold Washington (1922-1987) was elected to two terms as mayor starting in 1983. The well-read and erudite mayor died suddenly of a heart attack the day before Thanksgiving in November1987 just a few months into his second term. I was running along the lakefront in Lincoln Park on an overcast day when I heard the news on my Walkman. My fiancée and I were one of the thousands of Chicagoans (and one of the few whites) who passed by his open casket in the lobby of City Hall between November 27 and 29, 1987. I had also seen and heard Harold Washington speak a couple of times during his public appearances as mayor.
FROM THE PROGRAM: “The jury becomes the ultimate client…There are three areas of evaluation: the design of the building; how it meets technical specifications and how it fulfills the library program…•
Five competing architecture teams race to create the vision for the new Harold Washington (Chicago Public Main) Library that opened at 400 S. State Street on October 7, 1991. The Burnham-dreamed park south across Congress/Ida B. Wells from the library never materialized (Pritzker Park is to the north). The NOVA episode follows these creators as they develop and present their ideas to be judged by the city and public for the downtown building that range from postmodern to Beaux-Arts design concepts. FROM THE PROGRAM: “The jury becomes the ultimate client…There are three areas of evaluation: the design of the building; how it meets technical specifications and how it fulfills the library program…•
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This explanatory article may be periodically updated.
FEATURE Image: Dearborn Street Station in Chicago’s South Loop is an Italian brick Romanesque building with a granite base that was opened in 1885 at the cost of $500,000 (or almost $16 million in 2024). The architect was New York–based Cyrus L.W. Eidlitz who went on to build One Times Square (1904) in New York City from which the annual lit ball has dropped each New Year’s Eve since 1908. see – https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1885?amount=500000 – retrieved February 27, 2024. Author’s photograph, November 2017. 6.44mb
The Hoosier leaving Dearborn Street Station in Chicago (its clock tower visible at right) for Indianapolis. Pre-1978, no mark. Public Domain.The Dearborn Street Station in Chicago with its original hipped roofs, including on the tower, c. 1908. Public Domain.
The Dearborn Street Station is Chicago’s oldest existing train station though it has not operated as one since 1971. It is a U-shaped Italian brick three-story Romanesque structure with a granite base that was originally 80 feet tall to the roof line.
Today’s flat roof is a modification by an unknown architect from its elaborate original hipped roof that was lost in a 1922 fire. The eye-catching Flemish tower, originally 166 feet tall, was also modified after the same conflagration. The station building marks the southern terminus of Dearborn Street which today extends about 4 miles to its northern terminus at the southern boundary of Lincoln Park. Author’s photograph.
Looking south on Dearborn Street to the Dearborn Street Station which ends the 4-mile downtown street at the south. “South Dearborn Street” by Reading Tom is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
The station’s frontage on Polk Street extends 212 feet. Originally the station extended 446 feet south along Plymouth Court with the train sheds 600 feet long with 8 tracks. The station’s train shed was demolished in 1976. In 1986 the station was converted to offices and shops (I had my Bank One branch in the Polk Street Station). Today it is the Dearborn Station Galleria in the South Loop Printing House Historic District.
Following demolition of the train sheds in 1976 the first phase of the Dearborn Park residential development south of the Dearborn Street Station building quickly sprang to life.
The 1885 clock tower of the Dearborn Street Station is visible at the left. Open land which for almost 100 years had been the Dearborn Street Station‘s busy train tracks into a shed equal to two football fields in length were cleared off to make room for Dearborn Park residential development. The photograph is dated from 1977 by William C. Brubaker. “Site for Dearborn Park residential development” by UIC Library Digital Collections is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
The Dearborn Station had 8 tracks that accommodated 12 coaches and engines with 122 trains arriving and departing daily. Train lines that entered this station included the Chicago & Eastern Illinois (1877-1976), Chicago and Atlantic Railway (later the Chicago and Erie Railroad) (1871-1941), the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe (1859-1996), the Louisville, New Albany & Chicago (or Monon) (1897-1971), Grand Trunk Western Railroad Company (1859-1991), the Wabash Railroad (1837-1964), the Erie Railroad (1832-1960) and the Chicago & Western Indiana (1880-present).
Chicago & Eastern Illinois (1877-1976).
C&EI The Danville – Chicago Flyer at Steger, Illinois on November 26, 1965. Public Domain. Map of the Dixie Route to Florida and connecting lines, published by the C&EI, L&N, and NC&StL railroads, 1926. Public Domain.Preferred Share of the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad Company, issued 1889. Public Domain.
Chicago and Atlantic Railway, later the Chicago and Erie Railroad (1871-1941).
Chicago and Atlantic Railway 1889 ad featuring The New York and Chicago Vestibule Limited. Public Domain.
Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe (1859-1996).
AT&SF passenger train, c. 1895. Public Domain.Map of “The Santa Fé Route” and subsidiary lines, as published in an 1891 issue of the Grain Dealers and Shippers Gazetteer. Public Domain.
Louisville, New Albany & Chicago, or Monon (1897-1971).
Chicago, Indianapolis and Louisville Railway, route map, 1903, Unknown author – Poor’s Manual of the Railroads of the United States. Public Domain.
Grand Trunk Western Railroad Company (1859-1991).
A 1976 map of the proposed routes to be turned over by Conrail on the GTW, DT&I and P&LE. Public Domain. Grand Trunk Western Railroad locomotive shop, Battle Creek, Michigan, 1908. GT Western RR was one of the lines into Dearborn Street Station in Chicago. Public Domain.
The Wabash Railroad (1837-1964).
1886 map of the Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railway. Public Domain.System timetable back and front cover, 1887. Public Domain.Wabash system map, early 20th century. Public Domain.
The Erie Railroad (1832-1960).
An 1855 map of the New York and Erie Railroad. Public Domain.
Chicago & Western Indiana (1880-present).
The Kansas City Chief at Dearborn Station on February 5, 1968. The glowing face of the station clock in the clocktower is visible upper-left. Photograph by A Roger Puta. Public Domain.
All lines operating into Dearborn Station, except for the Santa Fe (above), travelled over the C&WI.
Colossal damages in December 1922 fire.
On December 21, 1922, fire destroyed the roof of the Dearborn Street Station. The blaze started on the third floor and raged throughout that top floor. Hundreds of passengers and employees were safely evacuated and there was one reported injury. The Chicago Tribune reported that when the fire reached the central tower it roared up the long shaft which became a blazing torch. The crowds watched in amazement as the tower clock stopped and the hands on its three faces crashed into the raging fire below.Dearborn Station Clock Tower. “Dearborn Station Clock Tower” by Atelier Teee is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
32-year-old architect of Dearborn Street Station came from Illustrious East Coast family of builders and architects.
Cyrus L. W. Eidlitz who built the Dearborn Street Station in Chicago in 1885 was from an influential American family of architects and builders—his father, Leopold Eidlitz (1823-1908), was a founder of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). Cyrus L. W. Eidlitz is best known for designing One Times Square, the former New York Times Building, on Times Square in 1904. He also founded HLW International, one of the oldest architecture firms in the United States. The reconstruction of Dearborn Station in Chicago in 1923 following its devastating fire was done by an unknown architect two years after Cyrus L. W. Eidlitz’s death.
Original facade completed in 1904 of One Times Square in 1919 by Cyrus L. W. Eidlitz who designed and built the Dearborn Station in Chicago in 1885. Public Domain.The clock tower of the Dearborn Street Station is seen down Dearborn Street from Alexander Calder’s Flamingo in the Federal Center plaza. Author’s photograph, June 2022.
SOURCES:
AIA Guide to Chicago, 2nd Edition, Alice Sinkevitch, Harcourt, Inc., Orlando, 2004, p. 154.
History of Development of Building Construction in Chicago, Second Edition, Frank A. Randall, Revised and Expanded by John D. Randall, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1999, pp. 104-105 and 221-223.
Chicago’s Famous Buildings, 5th Edition, Franze Schulze and Kevin Harrington, The University of Chicago Press, 2003, pp. 89-90.
FEATURE image: Chicago Loop Synagogue with stained glass window, Let There Be Light (1960) by American Expressionist artist Abraham Rattner (1895-1978). The synagogue was built in 1957 with this wall of stained glass. The colorful and semi-abstract artwork contrasts and complements with the architectural minimalism of the rest of the sanctuary. Text and all photographs by John P. Walsh, unless otherwise noted.
Chicago Loop Synogogue, exterior. May 2024 97% 7.89 mbChicago Loop Synagogue on Clark Street in downtown Chicago, “Chicago Loop Synagogue” by _jjph is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
Chicago Loop Synagogue was a midcareer project for a pair of leading Chicago Jewish architects of Modernism — Jerrold Loebl (1899–1978) and Norman Schlossman (1901– 1990). Loeble was a son of Hungarian immigrants and Schlossman was the grandson of immigrants from Germany. Both graduated from the Armour Institute (today’s Illinois Institute of Technology) and became partners in 1925. The third partner changed over the decades and in 2024 the firm is Loebl, Schlossman, & Hackl. Following World War II, the firm was Loebl, Schlossman & Bennett and the team created influential examples of Chicago’s mid-century Modernism. Richard Marsh Bennett (1907-1996) had been chairman of the Yale Architecture Department and stayed with the firm until 1974 when he returned to teach at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. The architectural firm’s designs included Weiss Memorial Hospital (4646 N Marine Drive) and The Darien (3100 N. Lake Shore Drive ) also built in the 1950s.
The Ten Commandments meet the visitors in the foyer upon entering synagogue. For the Jews, the Ten Commandments (found in the Bible in Exodus 20:2-17 and Deuteronomy 5: 6-21) are a special set of spiritual laws that the LORD Himself wrote on two stone tablets (luchot) that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai. In the Scriptures these laws are called the “Aseret Ha Devarim,” the “ten words” or “ten utterances.” In rabbinical writings, they are usually referred to as “Aseret Ha Dibrot,” and in Christian theological writings they are called the Decalogue which is derived from the Greek name “dekalogos” (“ten statements”) found in the Septuagint (Exodus 34:28 and Deuteronomy 10:4), which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew name. To the Jews the Torah has a total of 613 commandments which includes the ten from the Decalogue. See – https://www.the-ten-commandments.org/the-ten-commandments.html – retrieved December 4, 2023).
Chicago Loop Synagogue. “Chicago Loop Synagogue” by _jjph is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.The limestone blocks of the North wall are cut at an angle to evoke the Western Wall of the Temple in Jerusalem.The Holy Ark is made by Israeli sculptor and ceramicist Henri Azaz (1923-2008). Jutting into the prayer space from the far-left corner of the window, Rattner incorporated the ark that would house the Torah scrolls. He surrounded it with flames – integrated into the glass – leaping up and out, drawing attention to the presence of God in the very heart of the sanctuary. “Chicago Loop Synagogue” by _jjph is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.The House of Worship is 3 floors, 450 seats, 6 Torahs, and a 40-foot-tall stained-glass window that fills the Eastern façade and the congregation with filtered sunlight. The Chicago Loop Synagogue was founded in 1929 to serve the religious needs of those whose business activities brought them downtown.“Chicago Loop Synagogue” by _jjph is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.Visitors to the Chicago Loop Synagogue are guided by one of its members.
Abraham Rattner, the Expressionist artist of the wall-filling colorful stained-glass window was born in Poughkeepsie, New York to a Russian-Jewish father and a Romanian-Jewish mother. Rattner studied to be architect, but turned to painting studying at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington D.C. and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Rattner served as a camouflage artist in France during World War I and, after the war, joined many of “the Lost Generation” that writer and critic Gertrude Stein spoke about when referencing the post- war Ernest Hemingway and many others who lived in Europe, mainly Paris, in the 1920s. Rattner lived in Paris for 20 years, from 1920 until late 1939 where, during that extensive time period, he met Claude Monet (1840-1926). To avoid the coming Nazi invasion of France, Rattner and his wife Bettina Bedwell (1889-1947), a journalist and fashion illustrator from Nebraska who studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and who married in 1924, returned to America, where they lived in New York City. Rattner was known for his rich use of color and abstraction in his artwork and whose subject matter often had to do with religion. In the post-World War II era he taught at several schools, including New York’s The New School (1947–55) and at Yale University (1952-1953). In 1949 Rattner married Esther Gentle (1899 – 1991), an artist and art dealer, and was a friend of writer Henry Miller (1891-1980) who wrote about their friendship in 1968 in A Word About Abraham Rattner.
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The colors and design elements of this 31 x 40-foot glass artwork signify God’s relationship with the cosmos, humanity, and the Jewish people. After two years working on conceptual and design schemes, the artist Abraham Rattner spent a year fabricating the window – a presentation of cool blues and warm red and yellows studded with purples that take on shapes of planets, trees, Hebrew letters and the Israelite tribes. It was made in Paris’s 15th arrondissement at Atelier Barillet, the house and workshop of master glassmaker Louis Barillet (1880-1948). The artwork was the subject of a 1976 exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and a 1978 exhibit at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. The window was made to fit inside the prayer space for which it was created. To create the stained glass work, Rattner drew inspiration from the opening passages of Genesis, honing in on the hidden meanings of the words “And there was light” to channel cosmic creative energies of the Divine.
The Tree of Life (above) is also visaged as the Menorah and is identified with the light of innermost perception – the spirit; thought; ideas; life; and of knowledge. This Primal Light, God’s light, radiates outward, extending and expanding throughout the universe.
The Menorah (above) poetically conceived as a tree of life and of light. The Menorah is the classic symbol of Judaism.
The Star of David (above right) and the palm branch used on the Sukkot (Feast of Booths) harvest festival.
The shofur or ram’s horn (above) is an ancient instrument used on High Holidays to call the people to repentance. In close proximity to the shofur is the etrog which is a fruit of the Holy Land which expresses earth’s bounty as well as the overflowing love of a human being’s heart for God.
A view of the sanctuary from its balcony. The near perfect beauty of the Chicago Loop Synagogue is self-evident. The prayer room on the first floor is used for daily prayer and other gatherings.
Chicago Churches and Synagogues: An Architectural Pilgrimage, George Lane, S.J., and Algimantas Kezys, Loyola University Press, Chicago, 1981,pp. 202-203.
AIA Guide to Chicago, 2nd Edition, Alice Sinkevitch, Harcourt, Inc., Orlando, 2004, p. 74.
FEATURE image: Aeolian Skinner organ, sanctuary, 10/2015 6.27mb. Text and Photographs by John P. Walsh.
Daniel Hudson Burnham, c. 1890. The First Presbyterian of Evanston church building was designed in 1895 by architect Daniel Burnham (1846-1912) who lived in Evanston.The sanctuary seats over 1,000 worshippers. It has a vaulted roof with Nordic-style timber trusses for support instead of major columns that might obstruct views as well as retains an inclusive worship space. “PA02.2018 – 101” by Presbytery of Chicago is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.Music is enhanced by First Presbyterian Church of Evanston’s Aeolian Skinner organ, portions of which date to the 1890s, and is one of Chicago’s finest organs. Wall-filling arched stained-glass windows tell Old and New Testament stories. 10/2015 6.81mbFirst Presbyterian Church, 1427 Chicago Ave, Evanston, IL One of the historic church’s dramatic wall-filling stained-glass windows.10/2015 7.79mb 80%Creation of Adam; Fall of Adam and Eve; Expulsion from the Garden; Priest Aaron and brother of Moses; three angelic visitors to Abraham; the story of Moses. 10/ 2015 7.87mb 90%Burt J. Denman, born in Toledo, Ohio, was an engineering graduate of the University of Michigan who was vice president and general manager of the United Light Power Company. Denman was for a while a leading Methodist layman and trustee of Northwestern University. 10/2015 2.76mbFrom Raymond Park, stained glass window and limestone walls. 10/2015 5.35 mbKing Solomon. 10/2015 7.81mb 98%Adjacent to Raymond Park, the 1895 Gothic Renaissance building is made of Lemont limestone with a tile roof and 120-foot-tall bell tower with open belfry. Raymond Park, which is part of the Evanston parks system, is named for Rev. Dr. Miner Raymond (1811-1897). Rev. Miner Raymond was born in New York City and began his career as a cobbler. Following his matriculation at Methodist Wesleyan Academy in Wilbraham, Massachusetts, Raymond became a teacher at the school starting in 1833 and its principal from 1848 to 1864. In 1837 he married Elizabeth Henderson in Webster, Massachusetts, and they had 8 children together. In 1864 Rev. Miner Raymond with his family relocated to Illinois where he became professor of systematic theology at Garrett Biblical Institute in Chicago. In 1884 he received his LL.D. from Northwestern University. Mrs. Raymond died in 1877 and the widower married Isabella (Hill) Binney in 1879 though she died after 1880. Dr. Rev. Miner Raymond died in 1897 and is buried in historic Rosehill Cemetery. “First Presbyterian Church of Evanston” by Marit & Toomas Hinnosaar is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
