Night in Chicago--part 3 of 3

It's been a nice visit to Old Chicago via these postcards. These three complete the series.

The Encyclopedia of Chicago online has this to say about the Siegel, Cooper & Co. building:

This discount department store, located on State Street in Chicago's Loop, was established in 1887 by Henry Siegel, Frank H. Cooper, and Isaac Keim. In 1891, the company moved into the Siegel, Cooper & Co. Building on State and Van Buren Streets. The eight-story building, designed by William Le Baron Jenney and internationally recognized as one of the early “Chicago School” skyscrapers, was however not nearly as opulent as the company's New York store, designed by DeLemos & Cordes and located on Sixth Avenue on what was known as the “Ladies' Mile.” By 1900, the “Big Store,” as Siegel was popularly known, employed about 2,000 people. In 1913–14 Siegel's stores, along with those of other merchants, were reorganized into the Associated Dry Goods Corp. with the help of J. P. Morgan. The Chicago store closed around 1930, its building soon occupied by Sears & Roebuck's flagship store.

Of the building under the Sears & Roebuck's name the encyclopedia says:

In 1932, the company moved into its famous flagship store on State and Van Buren Streets in Chicago's Loop, where it would remain until 1986.

I found that the building is also known as The Leiter II Building and read good news at Chicago Landmarks: it was designated an historic landmark in 1997 and is the city's oldest surviving department store!


In an article about the Hotel LaSalle, Jazz Age Chicago contributes links to pictures and offers interesting information, including:

During the first half of the twentieth century, few Chicago hotels rivalled the grand Hotel LaSalle in the heart of Chicago's government and financial district. The twenty-two story structure, located on the northwest corner of LaSalle and Madison Streets, was built in 1909. It was touted as the finest, safest, and most modern hotel anywhere outside New York City.

. . . hotels such as the LaSalle increasingly catered to female guests as much as male guests. Nineteenth-century hotels had traditionally been male-dominated public spaces, where politicians, financiers, salesmen, and newspapermen gathered to smoke cigars, have a drink, and socialize with one another. After the turn of the century, however, middle-class prosperity and transportation improvements afforded women greater mobility, both within the city and between major cities. In response to these trends, major hotels looked for ways to replace their smoke-filled, male-only image with one that women would find sufficiently respectable to earn their patronage.

The LaSalle suffered a devastating blow to its prestige in 1946, however. On the night of June 5, a raging fire swept though much of the hotel and claimed the lives of sixty-one persons, including many children.

The LaSalle, still structurally sound, was quickly refurbished, though not quite to its former splendor. It remained in operation until July of 1976. The hotel was demolished soon thereafter. The site is now occupied by the Two North LaSalle office building.

I'm sorry to use Wikipedia's description of the New Federal Building because of all the indexing it includes, but it's the best condensed information I could find:

The Chicago Federal Building in Chicago, Illinois was constructed from 1898-1905 for the purpose of housing the midwest's federal courts, main post office, and other government bureaus. On the location of the Chicago Federal Building stood a 1879 government building which was demolished to make way for the new building.[1]

The building was designed in the Beaux-Arts[1] style by architect Henry Ives Cobb. . . The Chicago Federal Building consisted of a total of 16 floors[3] (a height of 297 ft (100 m)), 8 of which were housed in its massive dome, and a basement. The foundation was supported by wooden pile driven 72 feet below street level.[4]

More than $2,000,000 were spent on the interior decoration of the Chicago Federal Building.[2] The interior was topped off with a 300 ft (100 m) high octagonal rotunda, inspired by Imperial Roman architecture[4] covered with a large Romanesque-style dome. The rotunda's 100 ft (30.48 m) diameter made it larger than that of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.[2] The federal building was also the tallest capitol-style building constructed in Chicago, with the exception of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition buildings, all of which were demolished.[5] Under the dome, there was a large public space with separate floors around the perimeter.[5] The building was demolished in 1965, and the 45-floor Kluczynski Federal Building, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, was built in its place.

There's a lot to appreciate about the historic buildings that have survived in small towns and large cities in the U.S. I wish Americans had a higher opinion of old architecture, and I applaud those individuals who are involved in the fight to save these buildings. What do you think future generations would rather have, well-preserved and protected historic buildings -- each unique, and many of them works of art -- or crumbling strip malls and tacky combo KFC/Taco Bell drive-through boxes? Oh, don't even get me started on subdivisions . . .

Night in Chicago--part 2 of 3

It's hard to beat black-and-white for drama, as this Night in Chicago old postcard series demonstrates. I'm having a wonderful time zooming in on them and dreaming in the details.

More online research uncovers fascinating information about these buildings. The entire article about The Fair in Jazz Age Chicago - Urban Leisure from 1893 to 1945 is worth reading, but here are some excerpts for the time-crunched reader:

The Fair
Firm founded 1875, bought out 1957
Loop store: South State Street at Adams Street
Built 1891, demolished 1984

The Fair was one of several major department stores that operated along Chicago's State Street during the early twentieth century and helped transform the city's Loop district into a bustling center of entertainment and leisure. Known for the affordability and practicality of its merchandise, The Fair never attracted the so-called "carriage trade." Instead, it catered primarily to Chicagoans of more modest incomes: middle-class professionals, working-class men and women, and first- and second-generation immigrants. One of the store's most widely dissiminated (sic) marketing slogans promised "'Everything for Everybody under one roof' at a cheap price."

The Rothschild & Co. building is shown in another vintage postcard view here. And another website says:

Maurice L. Rothschild Building, 300 South State Street, Holabird & Roche, 1906, 1910; Alfred S. Alschuler, 1928.

Maurice L. Rothschild, before he hired Holabird & Roche to build this State Street store, operated a successful retail clothing operation in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Taking advantage of the growth potential for department stores on State Street, he erected an eight-story building in 1906, added a section three windows wide along State in 1910, and four more floors in 1928 designed by Alfred S. Alschuler. The building's underlying steel skeleton made this expansion possible. The store kept its State Street operation until 1971.

In 1993, the building was converted by Daniel P. Coffey & Associates into shopping, rental offices, and an expansion of the Loop campus of DePaul University.

Online information concerning The Hearst Building in Chicago is scarce (quite the opposite for the Hearst Tower in New York City). William Randolph Hearst established two newspapers in Chicago, the Chicago American in 1900 and the Chicago Examiner in 1902. Excerpts from a book about Hearst are available at these Google Book Search pages, and include rich and prescient bites including:

In April 1900 Hearst plunged himself "into the vortex of Democratic politics," backing William Jennings Bryan to carry out his agenda. Believing the Democrats needed a major journal in the Midwest, Hearst promised to publish a newspaper in Chicago by July 4 - and the Chicago American was born. The old Steuben Wine Company building at 216 West Madison Street was rented and renovation began using 800 men "working round the-clock in three shifts. . . Soon thereafter Hearst ... arrived, along with **cartoonist Homer Davenport . . . Hearst quickly added to this nucleus by raiding rival papers . . . In this way the job was done. . . That evening (July 4, 1900) at the Democratic National Convention in Kansas City, hundreds of delegates waived Extras of Hearst's Chicago American 'in triumph' while preparing to nominate Bryan for president the next day."

** Coming upon this information was a great surprise for me, in that Homer Davenport is famous in the town where I live. He grew up here, is buried in the cemetery downtown, and each August we celebrate "Homer Davenport Days" with a parade, festival in the park, "davenport" races (yes, couches on wheels!), and great community spirit. I may blog about it later this summer.

Old Post Card Wednesday--Night in Chicago

I know little about Chicago and have only seen it from the air, so can't fully appreciate these scenes. There are nine postcards in a sepia-colored envelope indicating that two cents postage was then required to mail the group. The backs of the cards are stamped V.O. Hammon Publishing Co., Chicago. The company was in business from 1904-1923 according to the information I found online, so that dates these postcards to that time. When I Googled the company to see if I could find out more about it I came across a postcard at Digital Past : Item Viewer titled Michigan Ave South from Art Institute that appears to be from the same series I own. Except mine includes a card featuring Michigan Ave North from Art Institute. Hmmm. Since my group consists of nine cards I wonder if the one I found online might be a lost card from a set of ten. I'll never know.

A bit of history from the Art Institute of Chicago website:

The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879 as both a museum and school, first stood on the southwest corner of State and Monroe Streets. It opened on its present site at Michigan Avenue and Adams Street in 1893. Built on rubble from the 1871 Chicago fire, the museum housed a collection of plaster casts and had a visionary purpose: to acquire and exhibit art of all kinds and to conduct programs of education. The collection now encompasses more than 5,000 years of human expression from cultures around the world, and the school's graduate program is continually ranked as one of the best in the country. Within the next decade, a new complex will continue this process of growth.

The Hotel Congress website really thrilled me! The hotel was built in 1893 and, according to the website, "was once known as The Home of Presidents among Chicago hotels." It concludes:

Viewing the property from a historical perspective will enhance any time spent at the Congress Hotel. From famous architects to Presidential speeches, it has a colorful past. Having existed for more than a century, the hotel is considered by many to be a “Landmark of Chicago Hospitality.”

Rather than spreading these Night in Chicago scenes into additional Wednesdays I am going to finish out the set by publishing three more on Thursday and the final three on Friday. Afterward, we'll be flying to Chicago for the weekend. Just kidding! -- but these postcards and the research they generate have definitely piqued my interest in a visit there sometime.