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  #221  
Old Posted Sep 22, 2009, 2:33 AM
aspiringArchitect aspiringArchitect is offline
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So what was this one torn down for?

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  #222  
Old Posted Sep 23, 2009, 2:55 AM
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2 N. Lasalle - a 20-something-story modernist office box, also to the lot lines. Sorry, don't have a picture handy.

Would also note that everything in that picture on the west side of Lasalle St is gone.
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  #223  
Old Posted Sep 23, 2009, 4:10 PM
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2 N. LaSalle: http://www.emporis.com/application/?...ng=3&id=117306

Very bland and banal - but bland enough and short enough to be a potential future redevelopment site someday, with few mourning it's loss. I'm a fierce defender of quality modernism - and this one sure ain't.
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  #224  
Old Posted Sep 23, 2009, 8:51 PM
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1912 Republican National Convention held at the Chicago Coliseum, Chicago, Illinois, June 18-22.













www.retrosnapshots.com
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  #225  
Old Posted Sep 23, 2009, 9:15 PM
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The S.S. Eastland was a passenger ship based in Chicago and used for tours. On 24 July 1915 the ship rolled over while tied to a dock in the Chicago River. A total of 845 passengers and crew were killed in what was to become the largest loss of life disaster from a single shipwreck on the Great Lakes.
Following the disaster, the Eastland was salvaged and sold to the United States Navy. After restorations and modifications the Eastland was designated as a gunboat and renamed the USS Wilmette. She was used primarily as a training vessel on the Great Lakes and was scrapped following World War II.




Aldine Square Vincennes Ave




Springer Block, 126-146 N. State St. 1963



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  #226  
Old Posted Sep 23, 2009, 9:34 PM
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^ So, those are actually taller than the 4-story retail base of Block 37 that's there now, right?

Then, of course, there were the south and west sides of that block...
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  #227  
Old Posted Sep 23, 2009, 9:41 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by VivaLFuego View Post
2 N. LaSalle: http://www.emporis.com/application/?...ng=3&id=117306

Very bland and banal - but bland enough and short enough to be a potential future redevelopment site someday, with few mourning it's loss. I'm a fierce defender of quality modernism - and this one sure ain't.
What about Syd Jerome?
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  #228  
Old Posted Sep 23, 2009, 10:02 PM
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Originally Posted by VivaLFuego View Post
^ So, those are actually taller than the 4-story retail base of Block 37 that's there now, right?

Then, of course, there were the south and west sides of that block...
You're right, that's hilarious & sad... the new corner does look shorter. Here's the corner now, which we've all grown to love. Ha.


Last edited by george; Sep 30, 2009 at 7:12 PM.
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  #229  
Old Posted Sep 28, 2009, 11:28 PM
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Check out these two Flickr sets. (Apologies if these were posted earlier in the thread, I don't remember seeing them.) Lots of great stuff.

By the way, credit for finding these to the excellent Dumpsite.
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Last edited by obt; Sep 28, 2009 at 11:43 PM.
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  #230  
Old Posted Sep 29, 2009, 4:03 PM
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Thanks for the links obt. I'll post some later from home (with accreditation) - but anyone who complains about River North or the Near North Side now should see what it looked like in 1974: west of Wabash, it's amazing to see photographic evidence of the desolate parking lot warzone I remember from childhood, a useful reminder of how far it's come in re-establishing urbanity.

The flipside is seeing what the area looked like in 1950. Those intervening 25 years took quite a toll on the building stock. If you think about it, River North was the ideal place for vast seas of parking lots at that time (given the entertainment/leisure districts along Michigan & Rush and the employment district south of the river, the latter where no parking garages were allowed from the late 1960s to 1983 due to the Clean Air Act), so the lack of any historical preservation protection meant the destruction of low-rise substandard housing was rather inevitable.
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  #231  
Old Posted Sep 29, 2009, 11:45 PM
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yes...THANKS obt. The two links are fantastic.
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  #232  
Old Posted Oct 6, 2009, 7:14 PM
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State St.




Palmolive Building




Marina Towers




Conrad Hilton for any Mad Men fans.



Life photos from images.google.com/images?q=chicago+il&q=source%3Alife
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  #233  
Old Posted Oct 6, 2009, 7:49 PM
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^That second shot is raw.
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  #234  
Old Posted Oct 6, 2009, 8:16 PM
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Palmolive Building

Amazing find. Thus putting lie to the notion many have that urban renewal and the construction of the projects (Cabrini rowhomes and southern towers, in this case) were somehow self-evidently wrong and stupid given the context of the area circa 1950.
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  #235  
Old Posted Oct 7, 2009, 1:25 PM
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^This location looks to be between Oak St. & Walton St. just west of Orleans. Before WWII, this area, better known as the Cabrini-Green complexes was a ghetto of the worst kind known as "Little Sicily" an Italian slum, also dubbed "Little Hell." So at the time the new C.G.high rise projects were a great improvement, little did they know what they had created.^

Last edited by george; Oct 7, 2009 at 6:11 PM.
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  #236  
Old Posted Oct 7, 2009, 2:39 PM
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Originally Posted by VivaLFuego View Post
Amazing find. Thus putting lie to the notion many have that urban renewal and the construction of the projects (Cabrini rowhomes and southern towers, in this case) were somehow self-evidently wrong and stupid given the context of the area circa 1950.
The notion of replacing this area with housing projects was not "wrong and stupid." It was wrought from good intentions. The towers-in-the-park design, the concentration of poor blacks in high-rise buildings, the maladministration, the neglect... That was "wrong and stupid."
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  #237  
Old Posted Oct 7, 2009, 3:07 PM
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Originally Posted by i_am_hydrogen View Post
The notion of replacing this area with housing projects was not "wrong and stupid." It was wrought from good intentions. The towers-in-the-park design, the concentration of poor blacks in high-rise buildings, the maladministration, the neglect... That was "wrong and stupid."
It's really only the latter two (bolded). New York City public housing is, relatively speaking, fine and desirable with huge waiting lists, despite exhibiting the first two characteristics you deem 'wrong and stupid'
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  #238  
Old Posted Oct 8, 2009, 6:55 AM
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The towers were also designed as cheaply as possible. That seems self-evident, but in an era of loose building codes, SOM designed the towers and specified materials of poor quality that were bound to need replacing quickly, placing a huge maintenance responsibility on CHA at a time when they weren't equipped to handle it.

Other towers-in-a-park in Chicago haven't needed demolition - look at Prairie Shores or Lake Meadows (and ignore Draper and Kramer's idiotic replacement plan).

The NYC projects at least seem to have solid brick construction. Here in Chicago, the comparison would be Dearborn Homes, which CHA is preserving rather than demolishing.
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Last edited by ardecila; Oct 8, 2009 at 7:05 AM.
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  #239  
Old Posted Oct 8, 2009, 10:50 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by obt View Post
Check out these two Flickr sets. (Apologies if these were posted earlier in the thread, I don't remember seeing them.) Lots of great stuff.

By the way, credit for finding these to the excellent Dumpsite.
Here's smaller versions of goodies from one of those links - for full size plus many more follow the link to the "jarchie" collection. First, Near North, viewed looking North-Northwest from the Wrigley Building, in 1950:


Same general area, south from John Hancock Center in 1974.


Very illustrative of how far the Near North Side has come over the past 35 years, and how far it had fallen in the years before. West of State Street looked like a warzone by the 1970s.

I also conjured some magic to show the following chart, which I think is a decent barometer of what was going on in the area:
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  #240  
Old Posted Oct 9, 2009, 12:27 AM
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chicago looks so much nicer now then it did then.
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