Designed by architect Joseph Murphy of the firm of Hoener, Baume and Froese and opening in 1935, Neighborhood Gardens is a historic public housing project in the Columbus Square neighborhood just north of downtown. It is historic in that is the first example of the wealthy coming in with good intentions, clear-cutting a whole city…
Tag: Near North Side
Fire at the Former Fred J. Swaine Manufacturing Co.
The night after the fire at Jamison Memorial Church, a suspicious fire broke out at the former Fred. J Swaine Manufacturing Co. building on the north side of the vacant lots of what was supposed to be the ill-fated Bottle District. A descendant of the founder, Karen Swaine, was kind enough to share with me…
Green Leaf Market Closed
Perhaps it should come as no surprise, but the Paul McKee grocery store at the intersection of Cass and Tucker has closed (remember when the bridge was just the beginning?) Sitting right at the approaches to the Stan Musial Veterans Bridge, I thought there would at least be some traffic, but I heard that during…
Thomas Street Between North Compton and Leffingwell Avenues
I have no idea if I’ve gone down Thomas Street before. I suspect I have, but I’ve lost track. It happens. But on a bright, sunny Saturday I though these buildings looked really nice, even though they are abandoned, and I feel like someone could come to their rescue. I love this building, having lived…
The Environs Around JeffVanderLou
The theme this summer in many divested neighborhoods seems to be green, where plants and trees have grown up and swallowed buildings. I looked at some of these houses back in May of 2021. I’ve looked at this building before; I think of the story of the three little pigs, and which houses were blown…
True Light Missionary Baptist Church, Former Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ, Latter Day Saints
It’s important to keep an eye out for anomalies, as you might not spot an old stone wall with Gothic lancet windows hiding along an alley, revealing that an older structure has been built into a newer church. In this case, it was an old Church of Latter Day Saints that once sat on the…
3039 Doctor Martin Luther King Drive
I’ve always really liked this house, and how it tells a story through the layers that have been revealed over the years. I’ve photographed it at least once, back in 2012 (fourth picture down) and maybe more than that, but what is most striking about that almost decade-old photo is that the Formstone hasn’t fallen…
James Cool Papa Bell Collapses
When I heard about the collapse of a building on the Near North Side, I went and checked old posts to see if I could figure out which building the news was talking about. The street in question, the 2700 block of James ‘Cool Papa’ Bell Avenue, has deteriorated so badly since I first took…
Outtakes, Spring 2021
They’re cleaning up the ruins of the John Loler House relatively quickly, though I was a little worried to see workers standing on the wood floors now loaded up with the debris of bricks and limestone as they stacked pallets. I had some leftover photographs from when I visited Dunbar Elementary this winter. I’ve always…
Dunbar Elementary School
Originally opened as the William B. Glasgow Elementary School in 1912, this school is now known as Dunbar. Designed by William B. Ittner, and it is a great example of the Tudor Revival period in the architecture firm’s history. It reminds me of the designs for Horace Mann and Mullanphy Elementary schools in the southern…