FEATURE image: Detail of 804 Forest Avenue, Wilmette, Illinois. The Prairie style house was built in 1906 by architect George Washington Maher (1864-1926) whose influence on the Midwest was profound and prolonged and, in its time, as great as Frank Lloyd Wright’s. Author’s photograph. 6/2014 3.95mb
5 – 1231 Forest Avenue, 1898. A two-story clapboard with a flared hipped roof with three dormers, one each in the front and on the sides. The façade-length porch also has a hipped roof. The first floor has a projecting polygonal bay window and a front door and separate square vestibule window. 6/2014 4.76mb6 – 1215 Forest Avenue, c. 1909. The two-story home is built of finely dressed (cut, worked) ashlar stone. The home has a hipped roof and steep pitched pediment with a broken cornice and a false balcony with rounded attic window. In a rigidly centralized composition, there is a slight projecting bay above the entrance that is sheltered by a large porch with a massive projecting pediment held by a masonry pier with short bulging columns. 6/2014 5.67mb 11 – 1041 Forest Avenue, 1873. Masked by later additions, this house was originally Italianate whose hooded windows and small square attic window remain on the façade. 6/2014 4.20mb12- 1020 Forest Avenue, Community Church of Wilmette, 1920, has massing of large rubble ashlar walls with broad arches and a porch. 6/2014 3.57mb12- 1020 Forest Avenue, Community Church of Wilmette, 1920, was a pioneer for a large building tucked unobtrusively onto a residential street that in terms of stance was replicated by other churches that were built later in the suburb. 6/2014 6.05mb
13 – 932 Forest Avenue, 1890s. A grand two-story Classical Revival house with a high hipped roof and ionic pilasters at the corners as well as sides and pediment of the projecting entrance. Ionic columns also support the porch. 6/2014 4.86mb14 – 922 Forest Avenue pre-1873 and c. 1900. The house was originally built in the Italianate style evident in the cornice with double brackets in the front and single brackets on the side of the house along with pedimented windows. The third-floor gables were added around 1900 as well as the broad bow façade. These changes worked to add space and mask the original style. The front porch is even more recent. 6/2014 5.61mbGeorge Washington Maher (1864-1926), born in West Virginia, was an American architect in the Prairie School style who was known for blending with the Arts& Crafts style. According to H. Allen Brooks in The Prairie School – Frank Lloyd Wright and his Midwest Contemporaries (1972) “[Maher’s] influence on the Midwest was profound and prolonged and, in its time, was certainly as great as was [Frank Lloyd] Wright’s. Compared with the conventional architecture of the day, his work showed considerable freedom and originality, and his interiors were notable for their open and flowing…space.” By the time of his death, G.W. Maher had designed over 270 projects; from houses to parks to public buildings. Public Domain. 15 – 804 Forest Avenue, 1906. The Prairie style house was built in 1906. The architect was George Washington Maher (1864-1926). 6/2014 3.95mb15 – 804 Forest Avenue, 1906, by G.W. Maher is a solid 4-square house that is modest compared to a similar-styled project the Prairie-school architect completed in 1899 in Oak Park, IL , known as Pleasant Home. 6/2014 4.85mb
Sources:
A Guide to Chicago’s Historic Suburbs on Wheels and on Foot, Ira J. Bach, Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 1981, pp. 534-547.
The Prairie School – Frank Lloyd Wright and his Midwest Contemporaries. Brooks, H. Allen New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1972, p. 330.
FEATURE image: 946 N. Sheridan Road, Waukegan, Illinois 1876. A fuller description of this house whose appearance is almost out of a 19th century novel is found in the post below. All text & photographs by author.
INTRODUCTION.
Waukegan, Illinois, is an historic community on Lake Michigan about 40 miles north of downtown Chicago. It is one of the oldest settlements in Illinois. The site of the city was visited by French explorers Louis Jolliet (1645-1700) and Père Jacques Marquette, S.J. (1637-1675) in 1673 where Waukegan began as a French trading post and Potawatomie village.
Inside the Kiva (c.1905-1912), oil on canvas. 20 in. x 30.25 in., Kate Cory (1861-1958), Waukegan Historical Society. Waukegan photographer, sculptor, painter and muralist Kate Cory moved to Newark, New Jersey, with her family as a child. Between 1905 and 1912 she lived among the Hopi of the Oraibi Mesa in Arizona where this painting was made. Public Domain.
Waukegan’s origins as “Little Fort.”
“Little Fort” was the first name for the environs of Waukegan. It started around 1700 as a log building overlooking the Waukegan River on its southwestern shore as it drained into Lake Michigan. This point marked the portage from the Lake to the Des Plaines River as it traveled west. The state of Illinois was established in 1818. Over the next quarter century, the Illinois volunteer army fought local native American tribes and forced them to sign treaties and migrate west of the Mississippi. The Potawatomie left Waukegan by 1829 as they ceded their land in this area and throughout northeastern Illinois to the U.S. Government. The 1830s brought vast changes to the area with opportunities for development. In addition to the land transfer, the building of the Erie Canal in 1830 brought boatloads of settlers from New England and New York State into the Illinois and the Midwest region.
Along with other communities which developed on Chicago portage routes, the history of Waukegan’s founding and development shares a similar time frame as well as personalities and activities. In 1835 Thomas Jenkins was the first settler at “Little Fort.” Jenkins was followed in quick succession by other enterprising and hard-working New Englanders who settled much of northern Illinois in the 1830s which was the edge of the Western wilderness. Like Marquette and Jolliet in the 17th century, these newcomers recognized the potential monumental impact that access to Lake Michigan had for transport of goods in and out of the region and what that commercial activity and subsequent settlement would have on the surrounding real estate. As more people arrived, the creation of a village emerged. The area was platted and streets designated, and in a contested election in 1841, “Little Fort,” became the governmental center for a recently formed Lake County.
Little Fort Becomes Waukegan.
Between 1844 and 1846 the town’s population multiplied from 150 to 750 persons. In 1849 the community changed its name from “Little Fort” to Waukegan. By 1859, when the town was incorporated as a city, Waukegan boasted a population of 2,500 people. Chicago, by comparison, had a population of 112,172 denizens in the 1860 census. Waukegan is an English alliteration that closely approximated the word for “fort” or “trading post” in the Algonquin language. In the 2020 census Waukegan reported a population of 89,321 people.
Growing population in the port city. Coming of the railroad.
Waukegan had a natural deep harbor and was a port city. This feature attracted merchants and farmers who could readily ship their goods, produce, and grain from Lake and McHenry County businesses and farms to Chicago –- and, from that point, to the Midwest and the world. Waukegan soon became one of the busiest ports on the lake. When the railroad came to Waukegan in 1855 (today’s Chicago and North Western Railway), it stimulated interest in Waukegan as a manufacturing town that included ship and wagon building, flour milling, sheep raising, pork packing, beer brewing and dairy farming (Hawthorne-Melody Farms). The railroads made it feasible for the establishment of larger industries which appeared in Waukegan at the end of the 19th century such as U.S. Sugar Refinery, Washburn and Moen Wire Mill (U.S. Steel Corporation), U.S. Starch Works, and Thomas Brass and Iron Works, among others. This mercantile and agricultural activity generated sufficient wealth for its citizens to build big houses along Waukegan’s main streets. These residences expressed the current tastes in residential styles from Greek revival and Italianate styles to the Victorian and Prairie School.
1890-1930: Population boom fueled by immigration.
Between 1890 and 1930 Waukegan experienced a population boom fueled by European immigrants and, in the 1920’s, Black Americans during the Great Migration. Waukegan thrived though by the end of the 20th century, the city suffered from an exodus of its population to farther west suburbs. This was accompanied by a shuttering of industries as management sought cheaper labor in other countries. At the same time, Waukegan was welcoming a new influx of immigrants from Latin America.
Famous residents.
A few of Waukegan’s most famous residents in history include comedian Jack Benny (1894-1974), science fiction writer Ray Bradbury (1920-2012), World War II combat photographer under Colonel Darryl F. Zanuck (Twentieth Century Fox) Albert Klein, the aforementioned fine artist Kate Cory and NFL quarterback for the Cleveland Browns Otto Graham (1921-2003).
Even after he became famous, Jack Benny never forgot his hometown of Waukegan.
Science Fiction writer Ray Bradbury said he had a sign over his typewriter for 25 years as advice to himself and other writers: “DON’T THINK.”
When Otto Graham played for the Cleveland Browns the team played in 10 consecutive title games, 4 all American Conference and 3 NFL championships. In Waukegan, Otto Graham’s father was a music teacher who taught Jack Benny to play the violin.
PHOTOGRAPHS:
408 N. Sheridan Road, 1875. Built in the Italianate style in 1875. The set of four symmetrical bay windows on the first and second floors have 12 tall thin windows. The moldings have scroll cut, incised, and cut out brackets with heavy decorative surrounds with keystones. In the center above the canopied main entrance are a second floor and gable windows with heavy shoulders for its surrounds. Above the gable window is punched out, playfully decorative bargeboard. The two story porch to the south (left) while integrated to the Italianate building is a later turn-of-the-century addition.414 N. Sheridan Road, 1847. The strict Greek Revival-style modest building dates from 1847. Built by John H. Swartout, the frame house has a portico with a perfect classical pediment with Doric columns holding up a blank entablature. The façade hosts three identical openings – two being windows with shouldered moldings and a door with a transom. It is a simple and relatively small building that was in need of repair in 2014 when this photograph was taken by the author. 438 N. Sheridan Road, 1840s. The house was built up around a small 1840s Greek revival Style house. The Italian Villa style with its tall central tower, porch and columns, double brackets under the eaves and pediments above the windows, dates from the middle 1850s. the central door starts with the rope molding around the double doors and ascends to double arched windows on the second and third floors. 438 N. Sheridan Road, 1840s. Same house as above, southern exposure. The tower’s windows are replicated on each side at the same level as the front view. 505 N. Sheridan Road, 1850s. A central tower with a double window and a peaked arched pediment and a steep pitched roof marks this house from the 1850s as Greek Revival style. The door has heavy shoulders for its surrounds.526 N. Sheridan, late 1840s. A Greek revival style house prevalent in the state of Ohio. The Greek Revival gable has short returns with the second-floor windows extending into the gable area. This is a construction short cut for these upper story rooms. The porch with its octagonal columns and front door entry with its heavily bracketed canopy are later additions although no later than the mid1870s.619 N. Sheridan Road, 1840s. The present house was built around an earlier house erected in the 1840s. It is in the Victorian Gothic style. There are steep gables for the central tower and dormers. The central doors and windows have simple and neat surrounds.Detail of same house above, 619 N. Sheridan Road, 1840s.710 N. Sheridan Road, 1872. A restored Second Empire and Italianate Victorian mansion. The frame house features a double door entrance with glass panes and a veranda-like columnar front porch. A square-shaped second-floor porch is above the front entrance in the central section of the house and below its double bracketed cornice and Mansard roof.Detail of double bracketed cornice of restored 1872 Second Empire and Italianate Victorian mansion at 710 N. Sheridan Road in Waukegan, Illinois.837 N. Sheridan Road, 1858. The front porch and polygonal bay window were added to this late-1850s Italianate brick house more than 60 years later, around 1910.907 N. Sheridan Road, early 1930s. Made of Lannon stone from Wisconsin, the buff-colored, blocky, sedimentary dolomite rock house is designed in the English Tudor style. It has a slate roof. The tall wide chimney is integrated into the façade of the solid stone wall building flanked by casement windows in gabled wall dormers.Another view of same house above, 907 N. Sheridan Road, early 1930s. The well-designed monolithic stone and slate fortress was erected during the Great Depression.946 N. Sheridan Road, 1876. An Italianate house has a central tower with notable openings – a ground floor heavy doorway; above that, a pair of windows under a semi-circular pediment; and finally, at the top, a triplet of windows under a triangle pediment. The second floor carries the semi-circular pediment design across three more of its windows and there are double brackets under the eaves. The porch is likely an early 20th century addition.1004 N. Sheridan Road, late 1890s.
SOURCES:
A Guide to Chicago’s Historic Suburbs on Wheels and on Foot, Ira J. Bach, Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 1981, pp. 97-111.
FEATURE Image: Signage of Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church, Chicago. The church is known as “the birthplace of Gospel music” since Thomas A. Dorsey (1899-1993) started his first modern gospel choir here in 1931. Author’s photograph, 10/2016 6.06 mb
Built as one of Chicago’s early Reform Judaism synagogue in 1898, the Classical Revival style golden brick and stone building is the last one designed by Dankmar Adler (1844-1900). The building with its form distinctive to other Adler buildings as well as its fine acoustics, was purchased by Ebenezer Church in 1921.In the heart of the Bronzeville neighborhood on Chicago’s Southside, Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church was formed in 1902. During the Great Migration, African-Americans made Ebenezer their church home in the early 1920’s.Ebenezer developed a reputation as a center for gospel music. Under the direction of Theodore R. Frye, Roberta Martin and, the “Father of Gospel Music,” Thomas A. Dorsey (1899-1993), the church’s groundbreaking gospel choir introduced a blend of Christian praise and blues at Ebenezer that established the careers of the “Mother of Gospel,” Sallie Martin (1895-1988), Mahalia Jackson (1911-1972) and Dinah Washington (1924-1963) who was inducted into the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.
I’ll Tell It Wherever I Go – Sallie Martin. Sallie Martin helped popularize the songs of Thomas A. Dorsey. Martin also worked with Cora Martin-Moore (1927-2005), Dinah Washington and Brother Joe May (1912-1972), the “Thunderbolt of the Midwest,” when Sallie Martin formed the Sallie Martin Singers. Sallie Martin was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 1991. Sanctuary. During the 30-year pastorate of Rev. Frank K. Sims, distinguished guests of the church included Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968), Ralph Metcalfe (1910-1978), Adam Clayton Powell (1908-1972) and Mahalia Jackson.
“A voice like this comes only once in a millennium,” so said Dr. King about Mahalia Jackson. During the Chicago Freedom Movement in 1966, Mahalia Jackson, who lived in Chicago, joined her friend Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., when he was visited a church to preach a sermon about justice and equality. Like Dr. King, Mahalia Jackson was a devout Christian and Civil Rights activist. At the August 28, 1963 March on Washington, she sang “How I Got Over” and was on the Lincoln Memorial platform behind King while he was pronouncing his “I Have a Dream” speech.In 1966 a banquet honoring Dr. Frank Kentworth Sims on the 7th anniversary of his pastorate of Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church featured Nobel Peace Prize recipient the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as the guest speaker and Mahalia Jackson as guest vocalist.
Though there were literally as many church choirs as there were churches, Dinah Washington (1924-1963), then Ruth Jones, made a name for herself as a teenage gospel singer in Chicago. In 1940 Ruth gave a recital that included “Precious Lord Take My Hand,” one of Thomas A. Dorsey’s most popular songs. The music for this version of the Christian prayer, “The Lord’s Prayer,” was written by Albert Hay Malotte (1895-1964) in 1935. It was released in 2010 on the compilation album, The Fabulous Miss D! (The Keynote, Decca & Mercury Singles 1943–1953), which traces the first decade of Dinah Washington’s recording career on 78s and 45s, starting with her stint with Lionel Hampton (1908-2002) and continuing through the early years of her solo career.
SOURCES:
Alice Sinkevitch, AIA Guide to Chicago, 2nd Edition, Harcourt, Inc., Orlando, 2004, p. 417.
FEATURE image: Detail of wood, stone and brick used by architect Joseph Emil Hosek for his 1951 Prairie-style house at 8958 S. Hamilton Avenue in Northern Beverly. See a fuller description and another photograph of the house in this post.
Text & photographs by John P. Walsh.
INTRODUCTION.
The Beverly/Morgan Park community owes its charm and uniqueness to the variety of architecture styles and the plan for residential areas that were laid out in the late 19th century. Historic districts were established to help preserve that ambience.
Prairie School founder Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) designed a handful of houses in Beverly/Morgan Park (4) between 1900 and 1917 as did Walter Burley Griffin who boasts an historic district on 104th Place. Today there are four historic districts – (1) the Ridge Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places, and Chicago Landmark Districts (2) covering historic homes and churches on sections of Longwood Drive and Seeley Avenue, (3) Prairie-style houses designed by architect Walter Burley Griffin, and (4) the train stations along the old Rock Island line.
The architect Walter Burley Griffin (1876-1937) has one of the historic districts in Beverly/Morgan Park named after him for his work designing Prairie-style houses. Griffin went on to become internationally famous as the designer of the new Australian capital city of Canberra in 1913. Public Domain.
The Ridge Historic District is an extensive area and one of the largest urban historic districts in the U.S. Boundaries include a substantial amount of historic Beverly and Morgan Park with architectural styles from the 1870s to the 1930s. More homes of historic value that are not in the historic district find designation and protection in the Chicago Landmark Districts.
The Beverly-Morgan Park area is a former homeland of the Potawatomi peoples. In 1833, the Native Americans ceded their land rights to this area to the U.S. government. In 1839, John Blackstone purchased 300 acres encompassing land known as the Ridge, a heavily wooded highland. Chicago and Fort Dearborn were accessible by an indigenous trail, also called the Vincennes Trail.
The area has mature trees, long, winding streets and old houses set back and nestled into hilly green plots. Morgan Park is the older community started in 1844 and later annexed to Chicago in 1914. Its original land tract was bought from John Blackstone by Englishman Thomas Morgan, between 91st and 119th street along the west side of Longwood Drive (the Blue Island Ridge). The area was a farming community until, after the Civil War, Morgan’s children sold the land to the Blue Island Building and Land Company, and, in 1869, Thomas F. Nichols planned a picturesque subdivision with winding streets, small parks, and roundabouts that evoke images of an English country town. Although the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific railroad laid tracks through the area in 1852, commuter service to downtown was established over 35 years later, in 1888, which was six years after Morgan Park incorporated as a suburban village.
Map of Morgan Park, IL, as laid out by Thomas F. Nichols for the Blue Island Land and Building Company, 1870. Public Domain.
Following the Chicago fire, Morgan Park developed quickly in the 1870s including Morgan Park Military Academy (1873), Baptist Union Theological Seminary (1877), and Chicago Female College (1875). The seminary was run by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed (1842-1927) and William Rainey Harper (1856-1906) who established The University of Chicago in Hyde Park in 1890. The seminary left Morgan Park at that time to become the University’s Divinity School. The political battle for Morgan Park’s annexation to Chicago resulted in its suburban women voting overwhelmingly for annexation in 1914 because it meant better city services and schools.
The Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific railroad had opened a station at 91st Street in 1889 and called it Beverly Hills which became the name for the whole area north of 107th along the Ridge. Beverly’s churches and schools reflected the community’s growth from east to west. Beverly (or Beverly Hills) developed along similar lines as adjacent Morgan Park though annexed to Chicago a quarter of century earlier in 1890. Beverly was originally part of the village of Washington Heights to the east which was also annexed to Chicago in 1890.
Notable Buildings in Beverly/Morgan Park.
J.T. Blake House, 2023 W. 108th Place, 1894, H.H. Waterman.
H.H. Waterman (1869-1948), a Wisconsin native, was a Wright contemporary. Waterman was known as Morgan Park’s “Village Architect” because he designed so many buildings in the community (no less than 15) even as Waterman also built houses out-of-state. Waterman’s architecture is vibrantly creative yet stately and recognizable by their charming and irregular designs. The J.T.Blake House is from the early mid 1890’s, a fecund building period for Waterman. It has a steeply pitched and swooping gabled roof that is asymmetrical and a jutting angled stairway bay. The house materials are stone, wood, and stucco.
Another H.H. Waterman confection is the so-called “Honeymoon Cottage” (above) nestled onto a broad, hilly corner Ridge lot, built in 1892. Waterman built this house for his young wife, Ida May Vierling (1872-1896), who died at 24 years old in 1896, leaving the talented architect alone to raise their baby daughter, Louise Hale Waterman (1895-1953). The house has a pretty terraced entrance with an exaggerated gabled entry porch. There is a high hipped roof that adds to the English cottage style whimsy and disproportion that is the architect’s own home. The Harry H. Waterman House, at 10838 S. Longwood Dr., built in 1892, is part of both the Ridge Historic District and the Longwood Drive District.
Morgan Park Methodist Episcopal, 11000 S. Longwood Drive, 1913, H.H. Waterman and addition, 1926, Perkins, Fellows & Hamilton.Dwight H. Perkins (1867-1941) was Prairie School architect and contemporary of Frank Lloyd Wright.Public Domain.
The original office of Perkins, Fellows and Hamilton who designed Morgan Park Methodist Episcopal church’s 1926 addition, was on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue and briefly shared with Frank Lloyd Wright. Perkins, Fellows and Hamilton became known for designing schools and civic buildings with prolific output in the Chicagoland area. Project designs included the Bowen High School, Carl Shurz High School—considered one of the most beautiful high schools in the area—as well as Evanston Township and Winnetka’s New Trier high schools. The firm also designed park facilities such as the Lincoln Park Boat House and the Lincoln Park Zoo’s famed Lion House.
Chicago Public Library, George C. Walker Branch, 11071 S Hoyne Avenue, 1890, Charles S Frost. Additions in 1933 and 1995.
George C. Walker was president of the Blue Island Land and Building Company. The original portion of the library building was designed by Charles Sumner Frost (1856-1931), cost $12,000, and opened on April 22, 1890. In 1929 its space was quadrupled and, in 1995, it received a major renovation. When Chicago Public Library, George C. Walker Branch, was built, Frost was 34 years old and at the beginning of a new stage in his early mid-career. The low-rise stone building is greatly influenced by the Richardsonian-Romanesque style which was prevalent among young architects in the 1880’s and 1890’s before the onset of the Beaux-Arts revival.
Charles Sumner Frost (1856-1931) was born in Maine and trained as an architect in Boston, Frost moved to Chicago in 1882. The partnership of Cobb and Frost designed and began construction of the Potter Palmer mansion (1882-1885) at 1350 N. Lake Shore Drive (demolished in 1951). Public Domain. Entrance towers, Chicago Public Library, George C. Walker Branch, 1892.
Adapted to a residential-commercial street in a middleclass neighborhood outside downtown Chicago, the building shows the characteristics associated with the Richardsonian Romanesque style, including strong picturesque massing, round-headed arches, clusters of short squat columns, recessed entrances, richly varied rustication, blank stretches of walling contrasting with bands of windows, and cylindrical towers with conical caps embedded in the walling.
Bryson B. Hill House, 9800 S. Longwood Drive, 1909, Albert G. Ferree.
Bryson B. Hill House (above) is a classically-inspired mansion with two-story tall Doric columns helping form the front entrance. While Prairie style of architecture was new and modern, the Chicago “Great House” did not go out of style, at least until the onset of the Great Depression in 1929 which necessitated downsizing of many house plans. Albert G. Ferree (1848-1919/1924) also built two and three flats in Chicago in the same period.
Beverly Unitarian Church (Robert C. Givins House), 10244 S. Longwood Drive, 1886, architect unknown.
Part of the Longwood Drive Historic District, the Robert S. Givins House, at 103rd Street and Longwood Drive, is also known as the Givins Beverly Castle (above). Built by an early developer, the castle-like keep is built of Joliet limestone that attracts attention for its crenellated battlement and towers with arrow-slit windows. The gatehouse entrance is a traditional Richardsonian Romanesque rounded arch. This late 19th century castle on its hill is probably the community’s best-known landmark.
Robert W. Evans House, 9914 S Longwood Drive, 1908, Frank Lloyd Wright.Frank Lloyd Wright. Public Domain.
The Evans House (above) with a low hipped roof is built atop the Blue Island Ridge and not into it. There is a central fireplace around which the expansive house pinwheels. The original stucco exterior was later covered with flagstone. The earliest Wright house in the area is the Jessie Mae and William Adams House (9326 South Pleasant) completed in 1901. Robert and Alberta Evans had been married for 12 years when Wright built this home. Robert Evans was a sales manager and treasurer for the Picher Lead Company and Alberta Wetzel Evans was an award-winning botanist.
Headmaster’s House, 2203 W 111th Street, 1872, architect unknown.
The T-stem Victorian Gothic with stone foundation has a front porch on brick supports with thick square doric columns. There is a steeply pitched roof with brackets under the roof line.
The Berry House, 9750 S. Walden Parkway, 1922. Regular commuter service from Beverly/Morgan Park to Downtown Chicago has been in place since 1888. Train station: Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad – Morgan Park Station (111th St. Metra Station), 1891, John T. Long.
The first floor of the station (above) is faced entirely in wood advertising the woodsy ambience of its then-suburban setting. A waiting room fireplace survives.
Hiland A. Parker House, 10340 S Longwood Drive, 1894, Harry Hale Waterman.
The H.A. Parker House sits on a dramatic hill site met by a base of Richardsonian huge rusticated brownstone stone blocks to form a large semicircular porch and tower at the back. The tall roof with steeply pitched gabled dormers on this helps exaggerate the house’s height.
Setting and landscape are an integral aspect of residences in curvaceous and hilly Beverly and Morgan Park. Normand Smith Patton (1852– 1915) whose firm designed the Morgan Parak Congregational Church began practicing architecture in Chicago in 1874. He left for for Washington DC two years later where he remained until 1883. Patton returned to Chicagoand opened a practice with another architect, C.E. Randall. Randall died in 1885 but Patton’s firm survived under various forms as Patton & Fisher, Patton, Fisher and Miller, Patton & Miller, and Patton, Holmes & Flinn until his death in 1915.Patton & Miller designed scores of Carnegie libraries.Morgan Park Congregational Church, 11153 S. Hoyne, Chicago, 1916, Patton, Holmes & Flinn.Morgan Park Congregational Church, 11153 S. Hoyne, Chicago, 1916, Patton, Holmes & Flinn.
Blended with Mission style, Morgan Park Congregational Church is a handsome red brick Craftsman building that has been identified as the best preserved in Chicago. The church was designed by Patton, Holmes & Flinn. Normand Smith Patton (1852– 1915) was an American architect based in Chicago and Washington, D.C. Patton’s firm specialized in public buildings, particularly Chicago public schools as well as libraries and chapels.
Clarke House, 11156 S. Longwood Drive, 1892, John Gavin.
The Sarah D. Clarke House (or W.S. Kiskaddon House) is a miniature Queen Anne-style house with an Italianate corner tower.
James R. McKee House, 10415 S Seeley, 1908, John M. Schroeder.
The simple front entrance of the J.R. McKee House is on the side hidden by an oblong triangular brick wall. A projecting sunroom that faces the street is encased by a broken arch.
Frederick C. Sawyer House, 9822 S Longwood Drive, 1908, Horatio R. Wilson.
The Sawyer House is a mansion with many windows, three floors of solid red brick from 1908. The fashionable traditional Beaux-Arts style was built in a time of new Prairie style architecture in ascendance.
Horatio R. Wilson started as a draftsman in 1877. In 1889 he was in partnership with another Chicago architect and, in the 1900’s established an independent office. In this early 20th century period Wilson planned and built many important buildings, including the Illinois Theatre in Chicago, the L. C. Case Office Building in Racine, Wisconsin (1905), the Sharp Office Building in Kansas City, Missouri, and the Railroad Station at Wheaton, Illinois, for the Aurora, Elgin & Chicago Railroad. After 1910 he was associated with John A. Armstrong in organizing the firm of H. R. Wilson & Company of which he remained the head until his death. During this later period important examples of his firm’s works were the Macmillan Publishing Company’s Office Building and Warehouse (1911) in Chicago, erected at Prairie Avenue and 20th Street, including its addition in 1916. Wilson also designed the Raymond Apartment House on North Michigan Avenue, and the Surf and Sisson Hotels in Chicago. Architect Horatio R. Wilson also designed the South Michigan Avenue building that would later house Chess Records and the Milwaukee mansion that holds today’s Wisconsin Conservatory of Music.
Howard Hyde House, 10410 S Hoyne Avenue, 1917, Frank Lloyd Wright.
The Howard Hyde House is an American System Built home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built in 1917. The client was a cashier at International Harvester. Like the era’s popular Sears Catalog homes. Wright designs were prepackaged and ready to build. Wright had a long-term concern for affordable housing and he worked in short term partnerships with builders such as Milwaukee-based Richard Bros. and Burhans-Ellinwood & Co. The Hyde House was built as a model for a proposed subdivision that the U.S. entry into World War One halted. The only other house Wright built under this plan was 10521 S. Hoyne across the street.
Frank Lloyd Wright in 1926. Public Domain. 10541 S Hoyne, 1917, Frank Lloyd Wright.Horace Horton House, 10200 S Longwood, 1890, J.T. Long.
The H. Horton House (above) is Colonial Revival style.
Chicago State University, President’s House/Frank Anderson House, 10400 S. Longwood Drive, 1924, Oscar L. McMurry.
The CSU President’s House is Italian Renaissance Revival with Classical pediments.
Russell L Blount House (2), 1950 W 102nd Street, Chicago, 1912, William Burley Griffin.
The Russell L. Blount House (2) was designed by architect Walter Burley Griffin (1876-1937) in 1912. The house has the same floor plan as the Blount House (1) also built by Griffin in 1911 at 1724 W. Griffin Place. The 1912 house has a cathedral ceiling which is intimated in the façade trim. Russell L. Blount, a real estate manager for a bank, and lived with his family in and out of Griffin houses as Blount built and sold them for considerable profit.
Walter Burley Griffin, 1912. Public domain. Born in Maywood, Illinois, Griffin grew up in Oak Park and Elmhurst, Illinois. Graduating as an architect from University of Illinois, Griffin was influenced by the Chicago-based Prairie School in ascendency at the turn of the 20th century. Griffin began working in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Oak Park studios and oversaw the construction of several noted houses by Wright and supplied landscape plans for Wright’s buildings. Griffin’s own architectural designs began in these years. Griffin developed his own modern style and, working in partnership with Marion Griffith (née Mahony) after 1911, they designed over 350 buildings, landscape and urban-design projects as well as designing construction materials, interiors, furniture and other household items. Marion Mahony was the first woman to be licensed to practice architecture in Illinois as well as Frank Lloyd Wright’s first employee in the mid 1890’s in Chicago. In 1913, upon winning the competition to design Canberra, Australia, Walter Burley Griffin, relocated there with his wife for the next 20 years. Griffin is credited with being the first architect to use reinforced concrete, originating the carport, and developing the L-shaped floor plan.9332 South Damen Avenue, Chicago, 1894, is the childhood home of U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens (1920-2019).
The childhood home of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens (1920-2019) who used to sleep and spend time on this front porch is at 9332 S. Damen Avenue (above). The Waid-Coleman home was built in 1894 and retains its original stained glass, hardwood floors, pocket doors, and beamed ceilings. The exterior was stripped and painted in 2003 which Justice Stevens later commented made the house look now than he remembered.
On September 12, 1992, MAE JEMISON, engineer, physician and astronaut, made history as the first African American woman to travel in space when she took off as part of a NASA crew on the Space Shuttle Endeavor for 8 days in space.
“You’re the Inspiration” was written by PETER CETERA and David Foster. Cetera sang lead vocals for the 1984 album, Chicago 17. The song reached no.3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1985. Peter Cetera, bassist and founding member of Chicago, is from Morgan Park and grew up on Vincennes Avenue.
AJA EVANS, Olympic bobsled bronze medalist in 2014 and World Championships Bobsled Bronze medalist in 2017, is from Morgan Park.BRIAN PICCOLO in 1967. Public Domain. Brian Piccolo played for the Chicago Bears for four years before his death from cancer at age 26 on June 16, 1970. The Piccolo family lived in two different Beverly homes in that time. Signed by the Bears in 1965, the Piccolo family moved into a home in the 9200 block of Vanderpoel Street and later to a home in the 2000 block of West Hunt Avenue. In 1964 Piccolo led the nation in rushing at Wake Forest in North Carolina and was named Atlantic Coast Conference Player of the Year. Piccolo was born in Massachusetts and grew up in Florida. His wife, Joy, came from Georgia. While Piccolo was passed over in the 1965 draft, the Bears did pick up running back Gale Sayers and linebacker Dick Butkus. In 1965 Piccolo tried out for the Bears as a free agent and made the practice squad. In 1966 he was on the main roster playing on special teams. In 1967 and 1968 Piccolo got more playing time backing up Gale Sayers. His best season statistically is 1968 when he gained 450 running yards on 123 carries, a pair of touchdowns, and 291 yards on 28 receptions. In August 1969 Piccolo was made starting fullback next to Gale Sayers in the backfield. It was during the Bears-Falcons football game in Atlanta in November 1969 that Piccolo took himself out of the game because of chest pain and a persistent cough. A couple of days later an X-ray showed a tumor in his lungs. Piccolo was diagnosed with embryonal cell carcinoma, an aggressive form of testicular cancer that had metastasized. Piccolo began chemotherapy and while today the cure rate for this form of cancer can be upwards of 90%, in 1970 it was virtually incurable. Gale Sayers playing. Public domain. In Sayers’ rookie NFL season, he set a league record by scoring 22 touchdowns—including a record-tying six in one game—and gained 2,272 yards and named the NFL’s Rookie of the Year. In his first five seasons, Sayers was in four Pro Bowls and was selected All-Pro first team five times. In 1968 a right knee injury forced Sayers to miss the last five games of season but he returned in 1969 to lead the NFL in rushing yards and was named NFL Comeback Player of the Year. An injury to his left knee in the 1970 preseason and subsequent injuries kept him sidelined for most of his final two seasons.
In 1967, Gale Sayers and Chicago Bears teammate Brian Piccolo became the first interracial roommates in NFL history. Their friendship, which ended with Brian Piccolo’s death at 26 years old in 1970 following a battle with cancer, inspired Sayers to write his autobiography, “I Am Third,” which became the basis for the 1971 made-for-TV movie Brian’s Song. Sayers, who had recovered from a serious knee injury with the help and grit of his team-mate and friend, Brian Piccolo, saw Sayers lead the NFL in rushing in 1969 (1032 yards on 236 carries; 8 touchdowns). For his successful efforts, Sayers won the George S. Halas Most Courageous Player award. Typically awarded in August, Sayers asked for the award presentation to take place at a May 25, 1970 dinner. His reason was that Brian Piccolo, who had been diagnosed with cancer in November 1969, was seriously ill. Just a couple weeks later, on June 16, 1970, Brian Piccolo died. The following year, when Brian’s Song debuted on ABC on November 30, 1971, it became the most-watched made-for-TV movie in history. Brian’s Song, starring Billy Dee Williams as Sayers and James Caan as Piccolo, included that award presentation in its drama that had taken place in real life just one year before. “You flatter me by giving me this award, but I say to you here and now Brian Piccolo is the man of courage who should receive the George S. Halas Award. It is mine tonight, it is Brian Piccolo’s tomorrow. “I love Brian Piccolo, and I’d like all of you to love him, too. And tonight, when you hit your knees, please ask God to love him.” Visiting the gravesite of Brian Piccolo, St. Mary’s Cemetery, Evergreen Park, Illinois, July 2017. Chambers House, 10330 S. Seeley, Chicago, 1874.
The Chambers House (above) has a well-preserved French Tower. The architect is unknown who built this suburban villa from the 1870s and which boasts plenty of style and details.
Louis A. Tanner House, 9640 S. Longwood drive, 1909, Tallmadge & Watson.Ignatius Chap House, 8831 S. Pleasant Avenue, 1928, Homer G. Sailor.
This modest late 1920’s home dressed in a Spanish Revival (or southern California hacienda) style has a central miniature tower and blind arches. Its colorful decorative tiles embedded into the stucco are original. The architect of the Ignatius Chap House (above) was Homer Grant Sailor (1887-1968) who was one of the last draftsmen for Louis Sullivan. In 1917 Sailor established his private practice, designing small Prairie School residences, low-rise commercial buildings and churches in the Chicago area. His work drew upon Sullivan’s simple massing and exhibits a program of applied terra cotta ornament more restrained than that of Sullivan.
Along with small parks and winding streets, roundabouts were part of the original plats of Beverly and Morgan Park. Along Longwood Drive. George W. Reed House, 2122 W. Hopkins Place, 1929, James Roy Allen.
The G.W. Reed House (above) is a massive building with irregular massing and that has 4 wings which pinwheel around a central core. With its assortment of beams, arches, and crenellations, the style is an amalgam of medieval, late medieval/early Renaissance, and with some Classical details. Built in 1929, the brick and limestone mansion on a Beverly hillside suggests a Tudor mansion added onto over different time periods. The house is one of two known extant works in Chicagoland of its architect, James Roy Allen (the other is the main gate of the Lake Forest cemetery at Lake Road). Allen designed the home for an executive of the Peabody Coal Company. The house has 19 rooms—plus a servants’ residence with three more rooms—and stands on one acre in the Dan Ryan Woods section of north Beverly. The interior is carved oak and walnut moldings set off by leaded glass windows, with four fireplaces and the original sterling silver andirons, as well as sterling silver sconces.
Magdalen H. Phillips House and Studio, 8910 S. Pleasant Avenue, 1954, William G. Carnegie.
The M.H. Phillips House (above) is a sprawling Late Prairie style single-story house on a northern Beverly hillside. It is by architect and engineer William G, Carnegie (1888-1969) who reiterates in the house design the popular idiom of Walter Burley Griffin with its deep eaves and patterned wooden muntins on the windows.
Everett Robert Brewer House, 2078 W. Hopkins Place, 1924, Murray D. Hetherington.
Beverly/Morgan Park displays work by generations of Hetherington family architects. This family’s architectural legacy began with John Todd (J.T.) Hetherington (1858-1936) who designed residences, churches, banks, and parks in Chicagoland. His son, Murray D. Hetherington (1891-1972) designed the Brewer House (above). He was the most prolific of the Hetherington architects to design in Beverly/Morgan Park and worked in the English Manor style, which is Tudor Revival sans half timbering. The Brewer House is a prime example of his work, many of these elegant residences designed in the booming 1920s into the 1930s. Hetherington paid close attention to the landscape settings of his houses as the Brewer House also conveys set atop hills and nestled by the Dan Ryan Woods. Using materials such as clinker brick and limestone the architect added texture and contrast to his designs and gave each house an individual character. The Brewer House’s irregular roofline with its variegated slate and random sized slabs are a case in point for this well-designed and constructed individuality. Hetherington interiors are also well designed and appointed with the modern design of large windows.
Murray D. Hetherington House, 8919 S. Hamilton Avenue, 1924, Murray D. Hetherington.This is the second generation Beverly/Morgan Park architect’s house. James Alex Brough House, 8929 S. Hamilton Avenue, 1927, Murray D. Hetherington.
J.A Brough House (above) is a stucco Spanish Revival house on a corner lot by Murray D. Hetherington in 1927. It sits across from the architect’s own home built in 1924.
8958 S. Hamilton Avenue, 1951, Joseph Emil Hosek.
Joseph E. Hosek (1907-1993) was based in the Chicago area who did buildings for various clients, primarily in southwestern Chicago and suburbs. This large Prairie-style multi-level home at 8958 S. Hamilton Avenue has 5-feet wide eaves and, in a nod to a popular post-war style, variegated facing stones.
Wood, stone and brick used by Joseph Emil Hosek for his house at 8958 S. Hamilton Avenue in Northern Beverly.S.P. Balzekas House, 9000 S. Bell Avenue, 1935, William Sevic.
S.P. Balzekas House (above) is a stylish Prairie and Modernist mid1930’s house. William Sevic was an American architect, active in Illinois.
Garden, Beverly/Morgan Park. William G. Ferguson House, 10934 S. Prospect Avenue, 1873, architect unknown.Ingersoll-Blackwelder House, 10910 S. Prospect Avenue, 1874; and addition, 1887. Architect (s) unknown.Luther S. Dickey, Jr. House, 10990 S. Prospect Avenue, 1912, Chatten & Hammond.
The L.S. Dickey, Jr. House is a successful example of the eclectic Arts & Crafts style. Seen here is its half-timbered double gable. Chatten & Hammond were a prolific architectural partnership. In 1907, Charles (C.) Herrick Hammond (1882–1969) formed a partnership with Melville Clarke Chatten, a firm that expanded to become Perkins, Chatten & Hammond in 1933. The partnership lasted until the early 1950s.
Dr. William H. German House, 10924 S. Prospect Avenue, 1884, Frederick G. German.
The Dr. W.H. German house is a catalog of the decorative power of wood sheathing, clapboards, patterned shingles, fretwood, and half timbers. Frederick G. German (1836-1937) was a Canadian-American architect with offices in the 1880s in Duluth, Minnesota.
Montague, M.L. (1901). Biographical Record of the Alumni and Non-Graduates of Amherst College (’72-’96) – The Third Quarter-Century. Amherst: Carpenter and Morehouse, Printers. p. 26.
Montague, M.L. (1901). Biographical Record of the Alumni and Non-Graduates of Amherst College (’72-’96) – The Third Quarter-Century. Amherst: Carpenter and Morehouse, Printers. p. 458.
FEATURE image: FISHER BUILDING, 343 S. Dearborn Street, view from the south. Author’s photograph, December 2017.
The success of the Reliance Building at 32 N. State Street built by Daniel H. Burnham (1846-1912) and John Wellborn Root (1850-1891) in 1890-91 and Burnham & Co. in 1894-95 led directly to the construction of the Fisher Building in 1895.
Daniel Hudson Burnham, c. 1890. In 1873 Burnham and Root entered into partnership in Chicago. In 1894 Burnham reorganized his office to include, among other partners, Charles B. Atwood who designed the Fisher Building.
The Fisher Building was also designed for Burnham & Co. by Charles B. Atwood (1849-1895). The Fisher Building was three stories taller than the Reliance Building and possessed even more flamboyant Gothic detailing as it is sheathed in golden terra cotta on its visible façades.
Charles B. Atwood c.1880. Public Domain.
The Fisher Building’s façade with its depictions of sea creatures in homage to the building’s namesake, Lucius G. Fisher (1843-1916), an Illinois paper company magnate and architect, was painstakingly restored and adapted for contemporary use in 2001. The rectangular prism with its Gothicized ornamentation sits on 25-foot piles under spread foundations engineered by Edward Clapp Shankland (1854-1924).
Ed Shankland was Daniel Burnham’s structural engineer through 1898 and worked on the Reliance Building and the Fisher Building.
In the mid 1890’s, the skyscraper was erected quickly with pride. The steel frame’s first 13 stories were erected in two weeks. The building has oriel windows and engaged colonettes at its corner piers. In 1907, a 20-story addition was built to the north by architect Peter J. Weber with Shankland also as structural engineer.
Lucius Fisher (1843-1916). Born in Wisconsin, Fisher was an Illinois paper magnate who commissioned the Daniel Burnham and Company to build the 20 story, 275 foot tall Fisher Building in the Chicago Loop in 1895. Completed in 1896, the landmark Fisher Building is the oldest extant 20 story building in Chicago. Public Domain. In 2002 the main entries on Dearborn Street and Plymouth Court were recreated. At the same time, over 1000 wood-frame windows were replaced or repaired and over 6000 terra-cotta pieces were replaced. Author’s photograph, May 2015. Fisher Building (1895-1896), looking east. To the left is Burnham & Root and Holabird & Roche’s Monadnock Building (1891-1893) and to the right is Holabird and Roche’s Old Colony Building (1893-1894). In the background is Graham, Anderson, Probst & White’s bright red international style CNA Center (1972). Author’s photograph, September 2015.Fisher Building (1895-86) at Plymouth Court and Van Buren Street, looking northwest. Author’s photograph, October 2017.
SOURCES:
AIA Guide to Chicago, 2nd Edition, Alice Sinkevitch, Harcourt, Inc., Orlando, 2004, pps. 62-63.
The Sky’s The Limit: A Century of Chicago Skyscrapers, Jane H. Clarke, Pauline A. Saliga, John Zukowsky, New York: Rizzoli, 1990, pps. 33-35.
Chicago’s Famous Buildings, 5th Edition, Franze Schulze and Kevin Harrington, The University of Chicago Press, 2003, pp. 82-83.
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, pps. 37 and 164-65.
FEATURE Image: 124 Scottswood Road, Riverside, Illinois, 1871, by William LeBaron Jenney (1832-1907). There is a full description of this house in the post below.
Text & photographs by John P. Walsh.
INTRODUCTION.
The location of today’s Riverside, Illinois, has been an active and important historical area since before the 17th century. It was part of an active trading route and the center for Native American Indian settlements – The Green Bay, Barry Point, Portage Trails, and numerous smaller Indian trails, all passed through the area. It was only a couple of miles from the so-called Chicago Portage which connected Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River centuries prior to the building of the I&M Canal before 1850. French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet passed by Riverside in 1673 when they were shown the portage by Native Americans. The Chicago Portage is a National Historic Site because it opened the western continent to trade and settlement as well as became the key to the founding and development of Chicago, just 11 miles away.
Riverside was originally inhabited by the Illinois and Miami Indians. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries the Potawatomi became the dominant tribe together with the Chippewa and Ottawa and formed an alliance called the “Council of Three Fires.” These tribes lived on wild game and roots, but later adapted to farming, with fields of corn, beans, and squash.
During these many centuries, Indian burial grounds and encampments were located in Riverside on grounds besides the Des Plaines River and towards the east to today’s Fairbank Road.
The state of Illinois was founded in 1818. For the next 24 years, the Illinois volunteer army fought local native American tribes and forced them to sign treaties and migrate west of the Mississippi.
After the Indians were first forced off their land by treaty in the early 1800’s, brothers David and Barney Lawton (or Laughton) came to the area from Michigan and established an outpost in Riverside in 1827 or 1828. Into the 1840s Illinois was the edge of the wilderness. These fur traders chose the area for similar reasons that the Native Americans had – its proximity to the Chicago Portage and the convergence of established trails whose traffic made it conducive to a thriving trading business.
In July 1832 the U.S. Government sent General Winfield Scott (1786-1866) to help with the Black Hawk War that started in April of that year and ended in August. That short war also involved a young 23-year-old captain from New Salem, Illinois, named Abraham Lincoln. Upon leaving Chicago, Scott and his army camped in Riverside along the Des Plaines River for several days and then marched further west. Scottswood Road, one of Riverside’s primary residential arteries, is named after the general.
In 1831, the first white permanent settlers came to Lawtons’ Tavern in Aux Plaines (the name for Riverside then) and settled in the first houses west of Chicago. Once Gen. Scott’s military campaign was over, he returned to Chicago and dispersed the volunteers. Federal law required the state to have a standing army, so the state legislature passed a law requiring counties to form militia. In 1834, Cook County formed the first militia when Stephen Forbes, Cook County’s first sheriff, called up volunteers to Laughton Tavern. Over 1000 enterprising men assembled in Riverside and elected Jean Baptiste Beaubien (1787-1864) the first colonel of the Cook County Militia.
The first stage of modern transit development was the Southwest Plank Road (later Route 66) completed from Chicago to Riverside in 1849. The road, called Ogden Avenue today, was eventually extended to Naperville, Illinois. It was operated as a toll road whose proceeds went to the private concerns that built it. Toll amounts depended on whether the traveler was a four-horse vehicle or a single horse and rider. Since its installation, the plank road has been a successful endeavor as it was the only road through areas that were often inaccessible.
Commercial enterprises in this period included additional taverns that offered lodging and board for travelers and their horses. There was also a brewery and distillery.
A bend of the Des Plaines River in Riverside, Illinois.
Riverside was mostly wooded tracts and farmland until the Civil War when the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad built a rail line through the area in 1863. With the rail a group of businessmen in 1869 formed the Riverside Improvement Company and set out to develop “a perfect village in a perfect setting.”
These Riverside businessmen hired landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) and Calvert Vaux (1824-1895), who had previously designed Manhattan’s Central Park, to design one of America’s first planned suburban communities. Their innovative plan set a template for suburban community planning such as curvilinear streets and modern amenities. Their vision was to design a mostly rural community with the conveniences of urban life such as utilities and broad streets. Whereas these curvilinear streets were utilized to fit an expansive community into limited open space it was also inspired by the community’s relationship to its natural environment, particularly the curves of the abutting Des Plaines River.
Portrait of Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903). Public Domain. Calvert Vaux (1824-1895). Public Domain.
The design of Riverside included important public spaces including a central square and park system that contained several large parks and scores of small triangular parks scattered through the village.
General Plan of Riverside · Olmsted, Vaux & Co. Landscape Architects 1869. Public Domain.
By 1871, Riverside had several larger homes, the water tower, and one of the country’s first multi-shop arcade buildings. There was a church, train depot, and grand hotel. Following the Chicago Fire in October 1871 there was a time of regional financial panic accompanied by frenzied renewed building. In the wake of Riverside Improvement Company going out of business, local Riverside residents came together to see Olmsted and Vaux’s design plan completed and built upon.
The Wesencraft residence is Riverside’s oldest home. It is located at 78 Pine Avenue on the north side of the railroad tracks. Public Domain.
Riverside grew slowly in its first decades but by the 1920s and 1930s had doubled and tripled its population of mostly middle class and upper middle Chicago commuters. This bedroom community grew steadily until its peak in 1970 (10,357 residents). Since then, Riverside’s population has dropped slightly and leveled off to a lower growth number so that by 2020 there were nearly 9,300 residents. (See – https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census.html – retrieved 3.3.23)
Since its incorporation as a village in 1875, Riverside also attracted increasing numbers of eminent architects to contribute to the diversity of Riverside’s historic architecture. These include Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), William Le Baron Jenney (1832-1907), Charles Frederick Whittlesey (1867-1941), Joseph Lyman Silsbee (1848-1913), R. Harold Zook (1889-1949), Frederick Clarke Withers (1828-1901), Howard Van Doren Shaw (1869-1926), and William Eugene Drummond (1876-1948). Much of their work remains today evident in scores of historic landmark structures in Riverside.
Frank Lloyd Wright in 1903, likely a self-portrait. Public Domain.William Le Baron Jenney (1832-1907). Public Domain.Charles Frederick Whittlesey (1867-1941). Public Domain.Joseph Lyman Silsbee (1848-1913). Public Domain.
Frederick Clarke Withers (1828-1901). Public Domain.William Eugene Drummond (1876-1948). Public Domain.Howard Van Doren Shaw (1869-1926). Public Domain.OLD WATER TOWER, 1869, 10 Pine Avenue. Designed and built by William Le Baron Jenney of Jenney, Schermerhor & Bogart, Architects and Engineers.
The original Water Tower had a Gothic Revival wooden tank. The tower is accompanied by two round stone well houses built in 1898 and designed by George William Ashby. When the original tank was destroyed by fire in 1913, a steel tank was installed and the tower was raised 20 feet. It was topped by a canopy designed by William Mann.
Riverside Railroad Depot, c. 1901, 90 Bloomingbank Road and 15 Pine Avenue. Designed and built by the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad.
A railroad through Riverside came in 1863, 6 years before the Olmsted/Vaux plan and 12 years before the village’s incorporation. William Le Baron Jenney designed the first depot in 1871. This main depot with open covered extensions on the south side of the tracks was connected by a tunnel to the north platform.
The view above shows the expansive tile roof-covered main entrance. The two large columns with variegated brick gives columns design and texture. There are many windows to allow natural light from its south exposure and a view of the tracks to the north.
Looking east, the orange-brick-colored main depot has open covered extensions for commuters to be protected from the elements during their wait outdoors for a train connection.
Looking west, a view of the train depot with one of its open covered extensions and peaked snow-covered tile roof. The northern platform is visible across the railroad tracks on the right. Author’s photograph taken in February 2023.
The same view as above over 100 years ago. Riverside Train Depot, 1919. Public Domain.Interior, Riverside Train Depot, c. 1901, includes a waiting room and, at right, ticket agent window. The ceiling has wainscotting and there are period light fixtures to accent the natural light pouring in from the series of encased large rectangular windows.On the brick-paved platform, another of the train depot’s open covered extensions.
The Lake House, a 2006 fantasy romance film from Warner Brothers, was shot in Riverside, Illinois. A doctor (Sandra Bullock) who occupied a lakeside home exchanges letters with its newest resident, an architect (Keanu Reeves). When they discover that they’re actually living two years apart, they must try to unravel the mystery behind their romance before it’s lost in the midst of time.Riverside Town Hall, 27 Riverside Road, Riverside, Illinois, 1895, designed by George Ashby.
In 1891, the Village of Riverside and Riverside Township reached an agreement so that the village donated the land for a town hall and the township paid for its construction.
In 1893 the township authorized $15,000 for construction (about $500,000 today) and this picturesque and stately building, designed by George Ashby, was completed in 1895. The clock was added to the main tower in 1941.
The building is Richardsonian Romanesque at a time when that style, very popular in the 1880’s, had begun to wane among contemporary architects in preference for the Beaux-Arts.
There is a steeply pitched hipped roof with brick for the top floor and rough faced stone for the ground floor. The turret is polygonal and the windows are of various sizes on all three floors. There are many delicate design elements such as copper cornices, colonettes, stringcourses and dressed stone.
Arcade Building, 1 Riverside Road, Designed and built c. 1871, Frederick C. Withers.
The Arcade Building is the first commercial building built in Riverside following Olmsted and Vaux’s plan and is associated with the village’s original developers, the Riverside Improvement Company.
The Arcade Building – a multi-color brick and limestone building with pointed arches and projecting cornices and stringcourses – is High Victorian Gothic. It was designed by architect Fredrick C. Withers, an associate of Olmsted and Vaux. With its mansard windows between tower pavilions, the simple building references the elaborate and decorative Second Empire architecture.
Riverside Presbyterian Church, 116 Barrypoint, 1872, Frederick C. Withers.
The church building was designed by Fredrick C. Withers who designed the Arcade Building at around the same time. Like that early commercial building the church is an amalgam of styles and forms, including Gothic Revival and Italianate.
The stone building has a series of pitched gable roofs that cover and form the transepts and chancel. The corner tower rises to a timber belfry with moldings and pointed arch openings whose original manual pull bell as well as modern chimes still mark the hours. Extensions to the left and right are mid-20th century additions done in harmony with the original design.
100 Fairbank Road, 1869, by Calvert Vaux.
This clapboard Carpenter Gothic style house was designed as a model home for the Riverside Plan by that plan’s designer, Calvert Vaux. It is an example of East Coast architecture transplanted into the heart of the Midwest. The ground floor is higher than the second floor. The low-pitched roof is punctuated by a projecting porch with Gothic Revival carpentry supported by struts and a gabled roof.
Two other second floor porches are on the short sides of the building extending across that width above a ground-floor projecting bay. The clapboard sheathings are meticulously and variedly cut for decorative effects throughout the building’s exterior.
Curved sidewalks do not always follow the streets but their own direction along and across a mostly wooded landscape.107 Bloomingbank Road and 111 Bloomingbank Road, both c. 1890.
This neighboring pair of Queen Anne style homes are variations of the same building design. The buildings’ design shares a porch across the entire front, arched enclosed second floor porch, and front-facing attic windows. Both share the same kind of clapboard and shingle sheathing.
Houses on Bloomingbank Road face the Des Plaines River.Des Plaines RIver.143 Bloomingbank Road, c. 1869.
This house is set back from the road and built in 1869 which was the year that Olmsted and Vaux were commissioned to design the suburb. The Italianate-style house has tall windows and large brackets with feet and shoulders for their jambs and segmental points. The second-floor windows are met by a first-floor transomed window. A steeped pitched roof and complex massing is Gothic Revival. A subdued color palette blends into the natural surroundings. The porch veranda is original.
201 Bloomingbank Road at Scottswood, c. 1870.
The above 1870 house is a T-shaped Gothic revival with the stem of the “T” facing the street. The stem is surrounded by a veranda whose porch columns are Italianate with Gothic style “carpenter” capitals. The tall windows and lintels are Italianate. The façade’s windows are under a hood molding and the attic has a small window with a pointed lintel. The T-stem’s pitched roof in the Gothic Revival style is slightly lower than the T-cross’s pitched roof behind it.
213 Bloomingbank Road, c. 1905.
A frame clapboard and shingled 4-square cube from 1905. There is a front porch held up by four huge piers with ornamental moldings that cover expansive first-floor polygonal bay windows. Below the hipped roof are two center windows with round heads. The painted dark green and yellow mix is stately and blends into the nature setting.
253 Bloomingbank Road, c.1890.
The Queen Anne house from 1890 has a lot of windows. It is a basic cube with a gambrel roof with a wing that also has a gambrel roof. The front porch is covered on one side with a flared roof and on the other side with a pitched gable roof. The second floor has an open porch that looks over the Des Plaines River. The original clapboard and shingles have been covered on the first floor by later stucco.
281 Bloomingbank Road, 1909.Avery Coonley House, 300 Scottswood Road, 281 Bloomingbank Road, Riverside (Cook County, Illinois), 1910. Public Domain.281 Bloomingbank Road, 1909. From the street.
What became the nationally-recognized Avery Coonley School was founded in 1906 to promote the progressive education theories of John Dewey (1859-1952). It was founded as The Cottage School by Queene Ferry Coonley (1874-1958) on her estate in Riverside, Illinois, for her 4-year-old daughter.
The school, which continues to thrive today, has occupied several structures in its history. This included a literal small cottage on the Coonley Estate in Riverside to larger buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1909. The school moved to Downers Grove in 1916 and, on a 11-acre campus there designed by landscape architect Jens Jensen (1860-1951), became the Avery Coonley School in 1929.
This section of Wright’s 1909 design is set back well off the street and mostly hidden by trees. Behind an iron fence, it is difficult for the public to perceive the full extent of the estate. Wright’s design begins at the street with a low stone urn.
On June 11, 1978, the courtyard’s swimming pool heater exploded and started a fire. The fire destroyed the main house’s living room and a bedroom. The exterior was later meticulously restored to its original appearance which included the school’s stucco walls, simple board trim and multi-color tile façade, all beneath a broad, tiled, hipped roof. At the time of the restoration the swimming pool was re-converted to its original function as a lily pond.
A free-standing L-shaped domestic structure with a broad hipped roof, the house was added sometime after 1909. Within its setting in the highly-designed suburb of Riverside, this Prairie style house sets a template and direction for much of what would be 20th century suburban development across the country.
300 Scottswood Road, 1909.
This is the main block of the Avery Coonley estate. The house is the epitome of the Prairie School style of broad horizontals, here using stucco boards, tile and glass beneath a low hipped roof. Wright’s design starts at the street with the low stone urn.
Avery Coonley Playhouse, 350 Fairbank Road, Riverside, Illinois, 1909, by Frank Lloyd Wright. Avery Coonley Playhouse, 350 Fairbank Road, 1909, by F. L. Wright in winter.
Basic plan of the playhouse (above) is a T-shaped building with higher T-stem to the street. A simple stucco structure, the playhouse’s flat roof and lower wings provide the Prairie style’s broad horizontality. Flat roof of the T-stem extends over three elongated windows while lower wings have clerestory windows.
William E. Drummond (1876–1948).308 Fairbank Road, Riverside, Illinois, c. 1910, Guenzel and Drummond.
Drummond began his career working for architect Louis Sullivan (1856-1924). Later, working for Frank Lloyd Wright, Drummond became the chief draftsman for many of Wright’s well-known commissions. In 1912 Drummond went into partnership with Louis Guenzel who had been a draftsman for Dankmar Adler (1844-1900) and Louis Sullivan (1856-1924).
The house is a one story hipped roofed cube or block with a broad brow of stucco soffits with eaves. The original casement windows include three in the front for the living room with geometric Prairie patterns. The lower portion of the façade is board siding and the top section is stucco.
The simple stone house in an English country cottage style was built in 1897. It has diamond-patterned casement windows and a single half-timbered gable poking out of a gambrel roof. The timber entrance porch that abuts stone achieves an overall craftsman effect.
144 Scottswood Road, c. 1870, William LeBaron Jenney.
Attributed to William LeBaron Jenney, the house is an early building in Riverside. It is a fusion of two styles – the Stick Style and Gothic Revival. The carpentry is solidly masterful. The roof has a low pitch and is punctuated with a massive chimney, dormers and gables with filets, spars and kingposts. The spurs or brackets supporting the overhanging eaves rest on boards intersecting with the clapboard. There is a broad veranda with turned posts supporting a lintel that supports small pointed arches with struts. The porch railing has tightly aligned balusters extending to a below-porch skirt with complementary cut-out patterns. The veranda roof extends over the angled main entrance to become a porte-cochère for the driveway.
124 Scottswood Road, 1871, William LeBaron Jenney.
In the Gothic Revival style, the design and board-and-batten construction of the house is grand and appealing. With steeply pitched roofs, there are several gabled wings of varying distances and directional faces from the building’s core. Windows include long tabernacle windows and others with more elaborate extending jerkinhead roofs that are supported by boards incised with decorative cuts. There are pointed head windows on the second floor over the main entrance while the veranda stretches across two sides of the house supported by slope cut square posts with milled brackets. These and other rare trim and other details, including two massive chimneys, have survived in this house that is today over 150 years old.
FEATURE image: 562 Keystone Avenue, River Forest, Illinois, is a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1909. It is an excellent example of Wright’s mature Prairie style including its original Prairie-style glass.
River Forest, Illinois is a suburb of Chicago in Cook County. River Forest is perhaps best known for its diversity of 19th and early 20th century American residential architecture. House designs and styles include those by Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) and others in the Prairie School. Nestled near the Des Plaines River to the west, along heritage lands of the Menominee, Chippewa and, later, Potowatomi Native American tribes, today River Forest is an affluent residential suburb closely tied to its adjacent neighbor to the east, the suburb of Oak Park, Illinois. These communities share several affinities including its high school, namely, Oak Park and River Forest High School that is in Oak Park and was founded in 1871. River Forest’s population today approaches 12,000 residents and the suburb is home of two universities, including Dominican University founded in 1848 and Concordia University Chicago founded in 1864. River Forest’s train station is on Metra’s Union Pacific/West Line with service into nearby downtown Chicago, about 12 miles away.
These are my photographs of some of the residential architectural highlights to be seen in River Forest and were taken in June 2022.
603 Edgewood Place, River Forest, Illinois, 1908, Frank Lloyd Wright. Known as the Isabel Roberts House, it was remodeled in the 1950s. 69% 7.99 mb
Frank Lloyd Wright in 1903, likely a self-portrait. Public Domain.559 Edgewood Place, River Forest, Illinois, 1911, William Drummond (1876-1948). Drummond began his career working for architect Louis Sullivan (1856-1924). Working for Frank Lloyd Wright, Drummond became the chief draftsman for many of Wright’s well-known commissions. 89% 7.92mb559 Edgewood Place, River Forest, Illinois, 1911, William Drummond. 560 Edgewood Place, River Forest, Illinois, 1910, William Drummond. 98% 7.89 mbWilliam Drummond about 1901. Drummond was born in New Jersey into a family in the building trades. He moved to Chicago as a boy and later studied architecture at the University of Illinois but didn’t finish. At 23 years old he joined Frank Lloyd Wright’s studio and became his chief draftsman. Drummond obtained his architect’s license in 1901 and, while working part time for Wright, worked full time for Richard E. Schmidt (1865-1958) in 1901 and 1902 and for Daniel H. Burnham (1846-1912) in 1903 to 1905. In 1905 Drummond returned to working full-time for Wright until 1909 when Drummond went into private practice. Public Domain. 511 Edgewood Place, River Forest, Illinois, 1858, architect unknown. This early Italianate house was moved to its present location in1880 from a few blocks away. 77% 7.86 mb515 Auvergne Place, River Forest, Illinois, 1893, Frank Lloyd Wright. Known as the William H. Winslow House, this residence for an important industrialist is one of Wright’s earliest mature expressions of the Prairie style. 66% 7.90 mb344 Keystone Avenue, River Forest, Illinois, 1870, architect unknown. Fine and grandiose example of the Italianate style. 95% 7.85 mb517 Keystone Avenue, River Forest, Illinois, 1915, William Drummond. A simplified version of the expansive basic square house with a pitched roof and elaborated in the Prairie style.530 Keystone Avenue, River Forest, Illinois, 1915, Robert Spencer (1864-1953). Robert Spencer was born in Milwaukee, studied engineering at the University of Wisconsin and architecture at M.I.T. He practiced in Boston, married, and studied in Europe. At his return he relocated to Chicago through Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge. In 1895 Spencer established his own firm and located in the Schiller Building next to Frank Lloyd Wright. In 1905 Spencer partnered with Chicagoan Horace S. Powers, who studied at today’s I.I.T. The partnership built this house in River Forest which is a fine brick example of the Prairie School within a traditional framework. 97% 7.85 mbRobert Spencer (1864-1953). Unlike his slightly younger competitor, Frank Lloyd Wright, Spencer was a trained mechanical engineer and architect. Public Domain.
INTERLUDE: OTHER PERIOD HOMES in RIVER FOREST, ILLINOIS.
306 Keystone Avenue, River Forest, Illinois. A smaller second floor porch is fitted above the main ground entrance. 70% 7.90 mb.236 Keystone Avenue, River Forest, Illinois. Corner tower, multi-level wrap-around front porch. 73% 7.92 mb Row of late 19th/early 20th century houses, River Forest, Illinois. 78% 7.78 mb136 Keystone Avenue, River Forest, Illinois. The facade’s design elements are complex with intricate details. 90% 7.80 mb146 Keystone Avenue, River Forest, Illinois. Two big chimneys and a front porch swing makes for a timeless scene on a nice day. 90% 7.83 mb558 Keystone Avenue, River Forest, Illinois, 1860, architect unknown, This is an excellent example of a large Victorian Gothic cottage. 82% 7.62 mbFrank Lloyd Wright. Public Domain. 562 Keystone Avenue, River Forest, Illinois, 1909, Frank Lloyd Wright. The house’s projecting second-floor balcony and Prairie glass in a stucco surface is in evidence. 83% 7.93 mb.562 Keystone Avenue, River Forest, Illinois, 1909, Frank Lloyd Wright. The house’s prominent hipped roof with its simple fascia and stuccoed soffits are evident. Wright’s house design is characterized by the early, mature restraint and discipline of the Prairie School. 75% 7.91 mb.
SOURCES:
A Guide to Chicago’s Historic Suburbs on Wheels and on Foot, Ira J. Bach, Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 1981, pp. 605-622.
FEATURE image: Flanders House (1841), 24044 Main Street, Plainfield, Illinois. See a fuller description below.
Jason and Lucy Flanders House, 1841, Plainfield, Illinois.
Jason and Lucy Flanders House, 1841, 24044 Main Street, Plainfield, Illinois. Author’s photograph (August 11, 2013).
Plainfield was settled at the end of the 1820’s when James Walker constructed a sawmill on the DuPage River. The mill attracted settlers to the region and created Will County’s first permanent community. Located about halfway on the Chicago-Ottawa stagecoach line, Plainfield developed commercially, including a booming lumber trade. Jason and Lucy Flanders married in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1833 (they were both 23 years old). Jason Flanders, born in Vermont, had worked in Boston, Massachusetts since 1830. Lucy Ann Clark Flanders was born in New Hampshire. The Flanders arrived into Will County in 1833 and after seven years of farming, moved to Plainfield in 1840. The Flanders had six children.
Built in 1841, Flanders House exhibits characteristics of both the Federal and Greek revival styles. This includes symmetrically arranged windows and a central entrance overlaid by a porch of the 1920’s. Also known as Mapleview Farm and Bragaw-Klomhaus House, The Flanders’ Place has had only a handful of owners in its 180-year history. There is no record of the house ever being used for any non-residential purpose though it may have served in a commercial capacity, perhaps serving travelers on the Dr. Temple Stage Line Chicago-Ottawa route.
The two-story, side gabled rectangular building is approximately 30 x 40 feet in dimension and with later additions. Jason Flanders built the house with hewn logs and sided it with walnut, its original siding hidden by later exterior finishes. The house was finished on the inside also with walnut. Walnut was abundant in the Plainfield area which may explain partly why the Flanders did not hesitate to whitewash the house exterior.
Jason Flanders was the town constable (Plainfield’s first) and at his death had amassed many hundreds of acres of land. The Flanders and their descendants retained control of the property until 1974. While it is recorded that Jason Flanders was a Methodist, his late-20th-century descendant sold the house to a Lutheran church for use as a parsonage. It was sold again in the early 1990s and restored to emulate its original appearance. Flanders House remains one the oldest extant houses in Plainfield, Illinois, today.
FEATURE image: St. Francis Xavier Church was erected in 1939 in an established well-maintained residential neighborhood in Wilmette, Illinois, just blocks inland from Lake Michigan. The attempt was made by the area’s Roman Catholics to fit in unobtrusively and harmonize with its neighbors on Chicago’s Northshore. 6/2014 3.56mb
The English Gothic-style church is usually associated with establishment mainline Protestants. The church is built to be sophisticated and simple. 12/2018 11.6mb
Built by the firm of McCarthy, Smith & Eppig, St. Francis Xavier Church is built in the style of a sturdy country church. It is characterized by low walls, massive external buttresses, and a sloped, elongated roof. 6/2014 4.64mb
WHO IS ST. FRANCIS XAVIER (1506-1552), FIRST JESUIT MISSIONARY TO THE FAR EAST AND CO-PATRON OF CHURCH MISSIONS?
St. Francis Xavier. 6/2014 4.05 mb
Depicted in marble at the entrance to the sanctuary in Wilmette, Illinois, is St. Francis Xavier, S.J. (1506-1552), the parish church’s patron and namesake. Holding a crucifix, the Basque Jesuit priest is dressed in a black cassock draped by an alb and stole.
St. Francis Xavier’s feast day of December 3 marks his death day in 1552 at 46 years old on a lonely island off mainland China. In 1927 Pope Pius XI (1857-1939) named him co-patron with St. Thérèse of Lisieux of all foreign missions. (see – https://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius11/P11APOST.htm). In life Francis Xavier came from a good family and had a naturally magnanimous personality. He was a student in Paris whose room-mate happened to be the older and wiser Ignatius of Loyola who patiently turned Francis’s thoughts and desires heavenward. Francis Xavier became the first Roman Catholic missionary to the Far East and as if by happenstance, since Ignatius’s first choice fell ill and was unavailable. When Francis set out for Asia, Loyola’s Jesuit Order had been officially approved by St. Pope Paul III (1468-1549) only a couple years before.
It was by sheer audacity that Francis Xavier established a template for the Jesuit missionary and evangelizer – prayerful, prepared to go where need was greatest, friendly, sincere, personally austere, hard-working, and joyful in the adventure of doing God’s will.
Leaving by ship from Lisbon, Portugal, in 1542 St. Francis Xavier became the first Jesuit missionary to India in 1545 and, in 1549, to Japan – 300 years before Commander Matthew Perry’s first American expedition to China and Japan in 1853. For one hundred years, the Jesuits were the only Roman Catholic missionaries in Asia. The long physical distances Francis Xavier traveled in the 1540s were remarkable. In his last days, on the return trip to India from Japan – almost 6000 km by air – St. Francis Xavier found his ship thrown off course in a sea storm and stopping at an island near Guangzhou, Guangdong, China.
Once back in India, St. Francis Xavier immediately wanted to return to China. After some delays, he reached Shangchuan Island, about 15 miles from the mainland and to which 46-year-old Francis Xavier had made arrangements to sail. While awaiting permission on the island to cross the inlet to enter mainland China, Francis died, without the benefit of the sacraments, of the fever. He was buried on Shangchuan in quicklime, a chemical compound normally used which worked to speedily consume the flesh so to leave just bones for health concerns and safer and easier transport. Francis was known on his journeys to live in a most austere manner insisting only on a good pair of boots for moving on foot over long distances in difficult terrain. Seeking the approval of local rulers, Francis occupied his days meeting the needs of the poor and sick, often in sweltering or frigid conditions. Over ten years Francis Xavier worked hard to bring the Christian faith to the greater part of the Far East.
Two months later, In February 1553, when the saint’s remains were exhumed, the witnesses were met by the body of Francis Xavier that, despite being buried in quicklime, had not rotted. His remains were taken to Portuguese Malacca and, a year after his death in December 1553, taken to Goa in India which had been the saint’s headquarters. In Goa, Francis received a hero’s welcome. Today St. Francis Xavier is still buried in Goa’s basilica. Reports of miracles were made in India and Japan following his death. Pope Paul V beatified St. Francis Xavier In 1619 and he was made saint on March 12, 1622, by Pope Gregory XV.
WHO IS ST. IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA (1491-1556), FOUNDER OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS (JESUITS)?
St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), after 1600, Jan Dammeszoon de Hoey (c.1545-1615), Stiftsmuseum Xanten (Germany). The artist was a Netherlandish painter who worked at the court of French king Henry IV (reign, 1589-1610) and is associated with the School of Fontainebleau. He is best known for his history paintings. St. Ignatius, before he became the founder of the Jesuits, was given a lives of saints when he was recovering from a bullet wound in the leg he received in 1521 during combat as a soldier in Pamplona in Spain. Though he naturally asked for “novels” to pass the time, it is sometimes related or implied that he may have had reason to be disappointed with the saints’ lives though it may actually have been a pleasant development for him since he took to the stories quite readily. As a knight from a prominent noble family in Spain, he latched onto and appreciated those various lives of peace and religious glory displayed in the Christian saints, and responded concretely to it. Where to trace this trail of grace to this point of life-changing conversion is of existential purpose. Ignatius, whether he knew it or not, learned now more fully how his soul desired to emulate the Christian heroes. The result was immediate and profound. Like St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) centuries earlier who the manly Ignatius deeply admired – Francis was another rich soldier boy who by experience in war of capture and prison moved from knight to penitent – Ignatius went and did the same. Ignatius would co-operate with God’s grace for whom he had met his match and hung up his sword in noble surrender. He started a pilgrimage from shrine to shrine. His natural self of elegant dress, excellent manners, and a measure of violent force in his personality, he channeled towards religion. As a youngster he had a mature bearing beyond his years so that the adult Ignatius continued to be a risk taker, as well as disciplined, prudent, despising greed, and persevering. The wonder of Ignatius is that he took his innate qualities and delivered them from the power of darkness and transferred them into the kingdom of God’s Light. Ignatius’s famous Spiritual Exercises (1548) were written early in the life of the Jesuit Order and communicated for others his own sublime ascetic character in action. Again, like the Poverello, Ignatius would be wrapped for days in prayer’s contemplative ecstasy. Also, like Francis in his early days as a pilgrim, he journeyed to the Holy Land in September 1523. Not yet a Jesuit as he had not founded them, he departed the Holy Land on September 23 and returned to Europe. He studied first in Barcelona and then in Paris where he met and gathered around him six companions: Spaniards Alfonso Salmeron (1515-1585), Diego Laynez (1512-1565), Francis Xavier (1506-1552) and Nicholas Bobadilla (c. 1509-1590), Portuguese Simão Rodrigues (1510-1579) and Savoyard Peter Faber (1506-1546). As the “Society of Jesus” the seven left for Rome in 1537 to obtain the pope’s approval for a new religious order. On the way there Christ, wrapped in His light and carrying his cross, said to Ignatius – in Latin – Ego vobis Romae propitious ero (“I will be good to you in Rome”) for which Jesuits then and now share that promise of accompanied mission in the Roman Catholic Church. It was while Pope Paul III (reign, 1534-1549) was on summer retreat from the heat of Rome at the Tivoli gardens that he further considered and ruminated over Ignatius’s group of six companions who had come to the Eternal City. One hot summer day the pope declared, reading Ignatius’s writings, – “The finger of God is here!” and then, in Latin, he said, “”Societatem hanc, id temporis…afflictis Ecclesiae rebus, non levi presidio atque ornamento fore.” (“This Society of Jesus [Jesuits] would prove an invaluable auxiliary and splendid ornament to the Church in these eventful times…”) The Jesuits were officially approved in 1540. Ignatius sent his companions across Europe and around the globe to create schools, colleges, seminaries and Christian missions that had an exhilaratingly mainly positive impact on society and culture.
Nave looking to main altar. There are no columns to obstruct the view to the marble altar with a crucifix above. With Vatican II reforms, the tabernacle was set in a niche to the right. Originally the tabernacle was on the main altar below the crucifix. An extra-wide altar rail with cross legs whose form served as “being at table with Christ” for the communicant was also removed. Though St. Francis Xavier Church is traditional in its architecture, its design elements are modern, chic, and streamlined, which makes the sanctuary flexible and adaptable to change.The ceiling is constructed like an upside barque. This evokes the missionary journeys of St. Francis Xavier, by sea to and in the Far East. 6/2014 5.99 mb
July 2014. 5.85 mb Interior of St. Francis Xavier Church from the altar looking towards the main entrance. McCarthy, Smith & Eppig was a design firm that worked in the 1930’s extensively with Chicago Cardinal George Mundelein (1872-1939). Architect Joseph W. McCarthy (1884-1965), had been a young architect under Daniel Burnham (1846-1912), a major design force in Chicago. McCarthy built, under his own name and with various firms, churches and other church-related structures in the Chicago area from the 1910s to 1930s. In 1939, for instance, McCarthy built St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church and the more grandiose St. Joseph Catholic Church, both in Wilmette, about one mile apart. The design of St. Francis Xavier Church was handled by the firm’s younger partners, David Smith and Arthur Eppig (1909-1982). The church building’s simple architecture with its fine details cost $200,000 to construct in the waning years of the Great Depression – about $4 million in 2022 (see- https://www.dollartimes.com/inflation/). While the majority of McCarthy’s church buildings were built in the Chicago area, some of his important church projects included the cathedral church in Springfield, Illinois, (1928) and the parish church (1918) of what became the diocese of Joliet, Illinois.
December 2017. Organ loft. 7.90 mb 77%
There are 8 major stained-glass windows in St. Francis Xavier Church: four in the west wall and four in the east wall.
October 2015. detail of panels of three different windows.
Smaller stained-glass oculi and panels are scattered throughout the interior. These stained-glass windows were designed by Henry Schmidt, a parishioner. They are quite beautiful, scintillating in their pseudo-English Tudor style, illumined in usually soft eastern and tree-obscured western exposures, although their subject matter is somewhat chaotic and a hodge-podge in its traditional and idiosyncratic admixture of hagiography, scripture, and popular piety. One aspect of their enduring appeal is that the glass can be seen close up and at eye level.
ST. PETER WINDOW.
CENTER PANEL: Saint Peter, leader of the apostles, holds the keys of the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 16:19). Peter holds a book, a representation of St. Peter’s New Testament letters (1 and 2 Peter) and sermons (Acts). Below is St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City in Rome with its famous dome.
LEFT PANEL: Crowning of Mary as Queen of Heaven by Triune God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit). From the Council of Ephesus in 431, depicting the Blessed Virgin Mary wearing a regal crown was used in Christendom.
RIGHT PANEL: Assumption of Mary into Heaven is not in the New Testament though biblical texts point to the doctrine of Mary as Theotokos (Mother of God), taken (“assumed”) body and soul into heaven at death. Going “up” to heaven is imagery used to express the spiritual and related to Jesus’ Ascension (Acts 1:6-17 and Luke 24:50-53). The assumption phenomenon occurred in the Old Testament with Moses and Elijah who were also present at Christ’s Transfiguration (Matt 17:1-9; Mk 9:2-10: Lk 9:28-36; and 2 Peter 1:16-21). Below the panels are identical angel figures. 6/2014 4.98 mb
October 2015. Detail St Peter 4.81mb DSC_0504 (1)
ST. BONIFACE WINDOW.
CENTER PANEL: St. Boniface (675-754) is the St. Patrick of Germany. He was a bishop who lived during Europe’s Dark Ages. Boniface was responsible for organizing the church in western Germany and established the bishoprics of Cologne and Mainz. On direction by the Roman pope, Boniface anointed Pepin the Short (714-768) — son of Charles Martel (c. 688-741) and father of Charlemagne (747-814) — as king of the Franks. Pepin’s coronation became the model for future royal coronations and the beginning of the modern European state.
LEFT PANEL: Jesus meets his mother is the fourth station of the cross. The Holy Face, below, is a devotion proclaimed by Pope Leo XIII in 1885.
RIGHT PANEL: Jesus mocked and crowned with thorns (Luke 22:63-65 and John 19:2-3) is the sixth station of the cross and an important marker of the suffering of Jesus. 6/2014 3.93 mb
ST. PATRICK WINDOW.
CENTER PANEL: St. Patrick (418-493) is one of the patron saints of Ireland (St. Brigid (c. 451–525) and St. Columba (540-615) are the others). In Wilmette, IL, St. Joseph Church was established in 1847 for German immigrants and St. Francis Xavier Church for Irish. The depiction of Patrick as the archetypal Irish bearded bishop — dressed in green with miter and staff – emerged in late 1700’s. St. Patrick’s symbology includes a book, refering to the Holy Scriptures and his own writings: the Confessio and Epistola to Coroticus, both in Latin. Patrick holds the legendary 3-leafed clover which he used to teach the Irish about the Holy Trinity. Below is the harp which is Ireland’s national emblem and one of the world’s oldest musical instruments.
LEFT PANEL: Jesus Christ’s Resurrection from the dead is the cornerstone of the Christian faith (1 Corinthians 15:17). His empty tomb is proof of Christ’s deity (John 5:26; Romans 1:4). By rising from the dead, Jesus Christ saved us from our sins (Romans 4:24–25; Hebrews 7:25), gave hope for our future resurrection (John 14:19; 1 Corinthians 15:20–23), and provides believers with spiritual power (Romans 6:3–4; Ephesians 1:19–21). The window depicts the resurrected Jesus holding the banner of victory over death as a Roman guard cowers in the dazzling light of a Risen Christ with an angel in attendance. Christ’s cruciform halo (elaborated in three parts) usually contains three Greek letters that in translation spell out “I Am Who Am,” again, a reference to Christ’s Divinity. All four gospels contain passages pertaining to the resurrection, but none of them describe the moment or essence of resurrection itself.
RIGHT PANEL: Crucifixion of Jesus with his mother Mary and John the Apostle at the foot of the cross. Above Christ’s head are the letters INRI, an acronym for Jesus Nazarenus, rex Judæorum. This was the charge against jesus written in Latin by Pontius Pilate who condemned him to death. It translates as “Jesus Nazarene, King of the Jews.” The title appears in the Passion narrative of John’s Gospel (19:19). Below each side panel are identical angel figures. 7/2014 7.58 mb
The altar design includes tall candlesticks and compact, detailed baldacchino. 6/2014 4.61 mb
A depiction of the crucifixion in basswood stands atop a rood beam at the ceiling line above the main altar. The scene includes the figure of a crucified Jesus, half-naked, wearing a crown of thorns, and the INRI inscription overhead. Three figures at the foot of the cross are (at left) his mother Mary and (at right) John, the Apostle. The bowed middle figure could represent the other named and unnamed women present at the crucifixion (John 19:25; Luke 23:27 and 49). The artwork is by Fritz Mullhauser. 12/2018 8.47 mb
MARY QUEEN OF HEAVEN WITH INFANT JESUS WINDOW.
CENTER PANEL: The Queen of Heaven who reigns from the right hand of her son, is depicted in her role as mother of Jesus Christ. Below a crown hovers above what may be a heart-shaped letter “M” for Mary’s first initial and/or her sacred heart.
LEFT PANEL: Presentation of Jesus by Mary and Joseph in the Temple and meeting with Simeon, the “just and devout” man of Jerusalem (Luke 2:25–35). The Presentation is the Fourth Joyful Mystery of the Rosary. In Luke, 40 days after Jesus’s birth, Mary and Joseph took the baby to the Temple in Jerusalem to complete Mary’s ritual purification after childbirth, and to perform the redemption of the firstborn, as prescribed by Mosaic Law (Leviticus 12 and Exodus 13:12-15).
RIGHT PANEL: Nativity of Jesus in Bethlehem (Luke 2: 1-7 and Matthew 1: 18-25) is the Third Joyful Mystery of the Rosary. Below each side panel are identical Angel figures. 12/2018 12.5 mb
ST. ANNE AND THE CHILD VIRGIN MARY WINDOW.
CENTER PANEL: Child Mary with Saint Anne, her mother. Nothing is known about Mary’s mother though early apocryphal writings provide information for stories about Mary’s lineage and early life that have resulted in a legendary tradition.
LEFT PANEL: Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary to her cousin Elizabeth (Luke 1: 39-45). After the Annunciation, Mary set out into the hill country to stay in the house of Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah for three months. Both women were miraculously pregnant at the time–-Mary with Jesus by virgin birth and Elizabeth with John the Baptist in her old age. Depicted is the moment when John the Baptist leapt with joy in Elizabeth’s womb at hearing Mary’s voice (Luke 1:41). The Visitation is the Second Joyful Mystery of the Rosary. Below is an ark (or tabernacle). Luke structured his narrative passages of the Visitation on stories in 2 Samuel and 1 Kings about the ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament. The Catechism of the Catholic Church identifies Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant (2276): “Mary, in whom the Lord himself has just made his dwelling, is the daughter of Zion in person, the Ark of the Covenant, the place where the glory of the Lord dwells. She is ‘the dwelling of God . . . with men.”
RIGHT PANEL: Annunciation to Mary by the angel Gabriel aanouncing that she would bear the Son of God, Jesus Christ. “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you!” It is by Mary’s joyful acceptance of God’s will – “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:26-38) – that the Incarnation takes place. The Annunciation is the First Joyful Mystery of the Rosary. Below, the two angel figures are distinct. 12/2018 16.24 mb
ST. JOSEPH WINDOW.
CENTER PANEL: St. Joseph was the foster father of Jesus and served as Jesus’ guardian protector. Jospeh’s symbology includes his holding a carpenter’s square (Mt 13:55) and holds a white lily to symbolize his faithfulness and chastity to Mary (MT 1: 25) as well as his holiness and obedience to God (Mt 1:24; Mt 2:14, 21, 22). An angel figure Is below St. Joseph.
LEFT PANEL: Holy Family in Nazareth. Jesus was obedient to Mary and Joseph and “progressed steadily in wisdom, age and grace before God and men” (Lk 2:52). Jesus was instructed by St. Joseph in the carpenter trade and holds a wooden cross on his knees. Flowering grass below is decorative and could indicate the flowering staff of St. Joseph which symbolized that he was specially chosen by God to be Mary’s husband. That imagery was drawn from the Old Testament when Aaron’s staff, placed before the Ten Commandments, sprouted with almond blossoms as a sign that he was chosen by God (Num 17:22-23).
RIGHT PANEL: Mary and St. Joseph find Jesus at 12 years old in the Temple with the doctors of the Law (Luke 2:41-52). It is the Fifth Joyful Mystery of the Rosary. The event is the only time in the New Testament where Jesus makes a public appearance before His baptism in the Jordan by John the Baptist and the start of his public ministry at 30 years old (Matthew 3:3-17, Mark 1:9-11; Luke 3:21-23; John 1:29-33). Below the scene are the tablets of the Ten Commandments with a symbol of the Trinity, including the sacred eye, hovering above. 12/2018 12.34 mb
ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE WINDOW.
CENTER PANEL: St. Paul is depicted holding a sword, a symbol for this Apostle to the Gentiles. Describing spiritual warfare in his letter to the Ephesians, Paul writes, “Take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:17). In symbology of martyrs, they are traditionally depicted with the instrument of their death. Paul is a known martyr (c. 64-68 CE), though its details are not. Early Christian writers said St. Paul was beheaded using a sword.
LEFT PANEL: The Pentecost (Acts 2: 1-13) followed the Ascension, It is where the 12 Apostles with Mary, the Mother of Jesus Christ, gathered together to receive the Holy Spirit symbolized by a dove from Heaven.
RIGHT PANEL: Ascension of Jesus into Heaven is mentioned many times in the New Testament and primarily in Luke and Acts (Luke 24:50-53, Acts 1: 6-12, John 3:13, John 6:62, John 20:17, Romans 8:34, Ephesians 1:19-20, Colossians 3:1, Philippians 2:9-11, 1 Timothy 3:16, and 1 Peter 3:21-22). The Ascension is where the Resurrected Christ physically departed from Earth by rising into Heaven which was witnessed by eleven of his apostles (Judas betrayed Jesus). Heaven incorporates the resurrected fleshly body of Christ as the divine humanity of Christ enters into the intimacy of the Father and becomes the perfect God-Man. 6/2014 4.28 mb
October 2015 detail St. Paul window. 4.48mb DSC_0505 (1).ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE WINDOW in situ on the east wall.
THE GOOD SHEPHERD WINDOW.
CENTER PANEL: Jesus called himself “the good shepherd” (John 10). In the Old Testament there is a prophecy about shepherds who are overseers for the sheep who are the people of God. Ezekiel prophesies of a shepherd to come who is the Messiah of Israel (Ezekiel 34:23-24 and 37:24-25). Jesus is claiming to be the Messiah that the scriptures foretold. Christ’s cruciform halo (in three parts) contains three Greek letters that spell out “I Am Who Am,” a reference to Christ’s Divinity. Jesus holds the shepherd’s staff and has a lamb slung over his shoulders referring to the people of God he cares for. A lamb in a bramble below refers to Jesus as “the lamb of God,” a title found in John’s Gospel (John 1:29; 36). It also alludes to the Old Testament when God sent a ram caught in a bramble to change places with Isaac who God called to be sacrificed as a burnt offering (Genesis 22:13). This Old Testament story foretold the sacrifice of the Son of God at Calvary.
LEFT PANEL: Scourging of Christ is the 4th Station of the Cross (John 19:1-3). It is part of the brutalities that Jesus endured in his Passion. Jesus was slapped, beaten, punctured by thorns, and whipped with a reed stick. Two of these torture instruments are depicted below the pillar. An angel figure is below that.
RIGHT PANEL: Jesus is depicted in the garden of Gethsemane being consoled by an angel (Luke 22:43). It followed the Last Supper where, knowing of Judas’s betrayal, Jesus in the garden prayed: “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me. Yet not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). With his prayer, “an angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him” (Luke 22:43). At the foot of the Mount of Olives outside Jerusalem all four Gospels relate that Jesus underwent an agony in the garden of Gethsemane where he was betrayed and arrested the night before his crucifixion. Below is an angel figure. 12/2018 12.6 mb
December 2018. Organ loft. St. Francis Xavier Church, Wilmette, IL. 446 kb 25%
SOURCES:
Heavenly City: The Architectural Tradition of Catholic Chicago, Denis Robert McNamara, James Morris, Liturgy Training Publications, Chicago, Illinois, 2005, pp. 138-140 Chicago Churches and Synagogues: An Architectural Pilgrimage, George Lane, S.J., and Algimantas Kezys, Loyola University Press, Chicago, 1981. Saint Ignatius and His First Companions, Chas. Constantine Pise, P.J. Kenedy & Sons, New York, 1892, pp.105-151. The Saints: A Concise Biographical Dictionary, edited by John Coulson, Guild Press, New York, 1957. The New American Bible, Catholic Book Publishing Corp, New York, 1993. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd Edition, Doubleday, New York, 1997.
WINDOW DETAIL An angel figure graces one of the stained-glass windows in St. Francis Xavier Church. There are several different angel figures throughout the church’s stained glass panels.
FEATURE image: Iron Block, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, following its extensive restoration in 2014. Photograph by author taken in September 2016.
Milwaukee. Iron Block building. 1861 and 1899. 9/2016 6.21 mb
The Iron Block at 205 East Wisconsin Avenue on the corner of busy Water and Wisconsin in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was erected in 1861. The architect was George H. Johnson (1830-1879) of New York City and is a landmark of special architectural significance.
The Iron Block building was financed and built by James B. Martin (1814-1878), a businessman and Baltimore native, who relocated to Milwaukee in the mid1840s. Martin established an early mill, for a short time a successful bank, traded on the grain and livestock futures markets, and bought and sold real estate. In 1849 Martin constructed “Martin’s Block” and, on the downtown real estate Martin purchased in 1860, built Iron Block.
James B. Martin mansion where the businessman and prominent builder of the Iron Block lived from 1852 to 1858 in downtown Milwaukee. The residence was demolished in 1963 and the block has been redeveloped with modern steel-and-glass corporate structures. (Fair Use).
The Iron Block building sat less than a half mile from Martin’s former downtown mansion at 742 N. Jackson where the proprietor of the Reliance Flouring Mills (1869-1878) and president of the Wisconsin State Bank in Milwaukee (1866-1868) is recorded to have once lived from 1852 to 1858.
Some of the Iron Block’s first commercial tenants were a bank, several stores, numerous offices, and a legal library. Cast-iron structures proved quintessentially functional for manufacturers, warehouses and office use.
ARCHITECTURAL IRON WORKS, NEW YORK CITY, WAS BUILDING DESIGNER AND MANUFACTURER
George H. Johnson was the chief designer for the foundry, metallurgy, and iron construction business of Daniel D. Badger (1806-1884) who had relocated from Boston to New York City in 1848. Badger established Architectural Iron Works, on Manhattan’s East 14th Street. With James Bogardus (1800-1874), Badger was a pioneer in the prefabrication and use of cast-iron building technology. In 1848 James Bogardus had built the world’s first prefabricated cast iron building in Manhattan. George H. Johnson had emigrated from England in 1852 and went on in the 1850s and 1860s to design iron-fronted buildings in Chicago, Memphis, New Orleans, and elsewhere, including Milwaukee’s Iron Block.
Daniel D. Badger (1806–1884) was an American foundry innovator, working in New York City under the name Architectural Iron Works. With James Bogardus, Badger was one of the major forces in creating a cast-iron architecture in the U.S. in the mid-to-late-19th century. Badger’s chief designer for his foundry, metallurgy, and iron construction business was George H. Johnson, the architect for the Iron Block in Milwaukee. James Bogardus (1800-1874). Bogardus was an American inventor and architect who was a pioneer of American cast-iron architecture for which he took out a patent in 1850.
ENTIRE EXTERIOR MADE OF MASS-PRODUCED, PRE-FAB CAST IRON
The Iron Block’s entire façade is composed of cast iron and is a direct connection to the age of mass production and prefabrication, and high-end craftsmanship that characterized mid19th century industry from the railroad to the skyscraper. Erected during the first shots of the U.S. Civil War, the Iron Block is an integral part of the mechanized culture which the Industrial Revolution had thrust upon all aspects of modern society – from the workplace to the battlefield – to increasingly mark the age.
The Iron Block’s neo-Renaissance decoration is superbly delineated so to make for a cutting-edge Civil War-era grandiose building that is stylistically stunning and that has been renewed in and for the 21st century. The Northern Italian mode of the Renaissance Revival style first appeared in the United States around 1850 and is markedly displayed in the Iron Block’s sculptural ornament of lion heads and serpentine vines manifested in powerful contrasts of natural light and shadow.
The Iron Block in its first decade. The building was owned by its original Milwaukee builder’s family for 100 years.
When the Iron Block (originally Excelsior Building) was built in mid19th-century Milwaukee, it was the largest office building in the city. Today’s Iron Block is actually two buildings built next to one another about 40 years apart. Faced in brick, the southern annex was completed in 1899 and brought under one roof with the original 1861 building. Where the addition to the south meets the original 1861 building, there is an atrium with a skylight. A glass floor in the lobby which once allowed natural light into the basement is now gone.
IRON BLOCK LIKELY LAST SURVIVING CAST IRON BUILDING IN WISCONSIN
The Iron Block is Milwaukee’s only surviving cast-iron-fronted building and may be the last surviving example of this construction type in Wisconsin. In New York City—the origin of cast iron materials that came to Milwaukee—there remain about 250 such building types in Manhattan alone. More specific to the Iron Block, the Cary Building in Lower Manhattan (105–107 Chambers Street) designed by King & Kellum and completed in 1857 could have been an inspiration for the Milwaukee building’s own design and appearance.
Iron Block building in the 1970’s. (Fair Use).
CONSTRUCTION PROCESS
The interior of the building is made of brick and timber with three-foot thick load-bearing walls. The façade is made of entirely prefabricated cast-iron modules that were bolted together to give the appearance of a sixteenth-century Venetian palazzo. Piers, columns, beams, and spandrels were all cast in a foundry. During various renovations, the original ground floor had been removed and the cornice diminished. The elevator installed in 1879 is still in use. The relatively lighter interior supporting columns allowed for spacious rooms and floorplans and for optimum daylight through expansive window openings. While possibly more fireproof than other materials, in a serious fire cast iron warped and even collapsed.
After the building’s timber and brick underlying structure was in place—the foundation is composed of inverted semi-circular arches of brick between courses of stone whose function worked to reinforce walls and distribute vertical load over a greater area—its prefab iron modules— numbered and ordered to their location on the building’s façade—were bolted into place following transport to the site by horse and wagon. Starting at the ground floor and going up its five floors, the assembly of the façade (painted creamy white) was erected quickly compared to the construction of the underlying structure.
Decoration included fluted Corinthian columns, pediments, dentils, balustrades, and series of bas-relief ovals alternating with narrow, pointed carvings. Spandrels and piers were made to look like stone blocks with lion heads glaring downwards. Since cast iron was easier to install and maintain than stone facing, owners and builders could create their own façade designs by selecting from catalogs of cast iron architectural elements.
SPECTACULAR RENOVATION COMPLETED IN 2014
In consultation with historical design experts, patterns and molds were created from historic photographs and pieces of the original building. Over 4,200 new pieces were cast in Wisconsin foundries. Some weighed ounces; others, such as columns at the original entrance on Water Street, weighed over 1,200 pounds. The entire iron façade was sandblasted down to raw steel and a paint system was used to chemically bond with the iron surfaces. A new cornice and pediments were molded from fiberglass-reinforced polyester to match originals. The 1899 south addition was stripped of its paint to reveal the Cream City brick. The renovated building was unveiled on June 17, 2013 and completely finished in 2014.
The Iron Block has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1973. Dental Associates purchased the building as its Wisconsin headquarters in January 2012. Using private funds, the building underwent extensive and detailed reconstructive work that was completed in 2014. This multi-year restoration earned Dental Associates the 2014 “Cream of the Cream City” award from the City of Milwaukee’s Historic Preservation Commission, the Common Council and the Mayor. Although the Iron Block had local designation and National Register status, the building had begun to rust and its architectural details, replicated in substitute materials during a 1983 renovation, were deteriorated with its ornament falling off the building. The 2014 renovation accurately recreated the heritage building’s missing details.
SOURCES: Milwaukee Architecture: A Guide to Notable Buildings, Joseph Korom, Madison, WI: Prairie Oak Press, 1995.
The Heritage Guidebook (Landmarks and Historical Sites in Southeastern Wisconsin), Russell Zimmermann, Heritage Banks, Inland Heritage Corp., 1976.
Source book of American architecture: 500 notable buildings, G.E. Kidder Smith, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996.
