Building Paranoia in Rogers Park

A few years ago I found a great collection of essays in a book titled, Architecture of Fear (1997), which contained the article “Building Paranoia,” by Steven Flusty.  It was adapted from a paper published for the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture in 1994 and develops a vocabulary for describing the kinds of spaces he saw being created throughout the L.A. region.  I remember reading this chapter, shuddering, and being thankful that I don’t live in L.A. Here's a quick summary:

South side of Estes East of Sheridan

Stealthy Space- Space that is obscured and cannot be found.

Slippery Space- Space that cannot be reached, due to contorted, protracted, or missing paths of approach

Crusty Space- Space that cannot be accessed, due to obstructions such as walls, gates, checkpoints, etc.

Prickly Space- Space that cannot be comfortably occupied.

Jittery Space- Space that cannot be utilized unobserved.

But soon I started to spot the same things in my own neighborhood.  Perfectly nice corners were being transformed into miniature prisons.  Storefronts were installed that could withstand medieval sieges.  Homes and apartments destroyed their beauty in the name of security. 

Chicago’s grid tends to discourage the creation of Stealthy and Slippery Space.  These seem to be more common in suburban areas, or large redeveloped areas.  But I’ll bet anyone can think of a few Crusty, Prickly, and Jittery Spaces in their own neighborhood.  Following are a few examples that I found uncomfortably close to home.

 

North side of Estes, East of Sheridan

What you see here are steel and concrete modifications to eliminate a potential gathering or resting spot.  One set is welded iron, and the other is cast concrete.  In another era maybe they would have set broken glass on the surfaces. I wonder what was going on out here that had to be eliminated.  Noisy kids?  Vagrants?  Criminal activity?  Whatever it was did these devices put an end to it.  I would argue that these actually make the block less safe by removing "eyes-on-the-street".  As Jane Jacobs observed, well-used sidewalks and public places are an important deterrent to crime.

Glenwood and Morse

(This wall has since been replaced, but I wanted to include the graphic.) 

You should see how lush the grass gets behind this wall.  It’s like a shag carpet.  This is a good example of prickly space. But the jokes on them!  You can sit on this wall if you don’t mind straddling the iron spikes.  At least until your legs go numb… Across the street the security gates remind you to walk a little faster.

 

East side of Clark, between Estes and Touhy.

It never occurred to me that people might be hopping from roof to roof illicitly.  Judging from these deterrents it must be common. Did someone break into a storefront through a skylight?  Is that something that's likely to happen again and again?  Sometimes these things are a permanent solution to a rare event. 

 This wins the prize for the most diversity in materials:  chain link, razor wife, and a starburst of sharp steel spikes.

 

Morse and Glenwood

Rogers Park also has plenty of Jittery Space.  This is a video camera in a box at the northwest intersection of Glenwood and Morse.  It has a blue strobe light and the police insignia, in case you were in danger of overlooking it.  Glenwood and Morse has a reputation (not-unearned) of being a trouble-spot.  But cameras can’t see around corners. 

Close-up detail

High tech surveillance never makes me feel safer.  I know that somewhere in an accounting department someone is trying to figure out how many cameras equal one police officer.   



Clark and Greenleaf



 This is one of the older commercial buildings in Rogers Park.   The owners have done everything possible to blind the building to anything happening at ground level.  Glass blocks fill the windows, and the security door is protected with a steel grate.  Just in case, an additional wrought iron gate guards the 3 concrete steps leading to the door.  And it works!  People rush by this building.  I doubt they even see the “No Trespassing” sign posted high on the wall.  This used to be one of Roger Park’s post offices.

The sad part is that there's often reason for these modifications.  How many times can you chase away drug dealers before you fence off your property?   How many times will you have your business or home broken into before the steel door and padlocks go up?  But there needs to be some type of balance at work.  I don't want Rogers Park to become one of those neighborhoods where you can't sit down without being expected to buy something.  Or have those streets where you never see a single human because of all the fences and walls.  We're all in this neighborhood together, even if we don't want to admit it.  And sometimes uncertainty is the price you pay for maintaining community.

Sheridan and Juneway, 1937

There are many collections on CARLI but it's hard to beat the IDOT Chicago Traffic Photographs, which document hundreds of streets and intersections from the 1920s through the 1950s.  And of course there are a few from Rogers Park.  Well, more than a few.  Because the photos relate to traffic I thought it might be interesting to focus on early auto facilities in the neighborhood and see where that might lead.

N. Sheridan Road and Juneway Terrace, 1937

This sign was amazing.  It looks about 4 stories tall.  At this point Sheridan Road makes a sharp right to skirt between Calvalry Cementary and Lake Michigan, so this sign effectively terminated the view north.  In a city of regular grids it's difficult to find elements like this, which are prominent from a long way off.  Bowman Dairy was huge in Chicago, but I had no idea they had their own radio program.  I couldn't find anything online about it, but I believe the Bowman archives are at the Chicago History Museum.

Adapted from the 1937 Sanborn Map

I'm guessing that the Colonial Revival house on the left was built between 1915 and 1920.  This portion of Juneway Terrace developed with single family homes in the 1920s, while the blocks to the west were dominated by large courtyard buildings.  The owners probably were not  pleased to find themselves next to the Rogers Park auto strip, which was fully developed by the time this image was recorded.  This house was demolished some time between 1962 and 1974 and replaced with a multi-family building.

Building #2 is the primary (or at least the largest) gas station/service station in the strip.  Their gas was supplied by Shell (see the sign?) and the building had interior bays for washing and repairs.  The circles represent underground gas tanks.  The national gas chains had been building stations in a variety of traditional styles since the 1920s. These were intended to standardize the experience of the driver and develop their corporate image in a neighborhood-friendly way.  But this design, with its peculiar Mediterranean charm,  seems to be unique.

 Building #3 was an auto-oriented snack shop for hungry drivers making their way to (or from) the North Shore."Demetre from Wilmette" made me think of Plaza del Lago, the formerly unincorporated portion of the lakefront near Wilmette which became a popular entertainment district and watering hole amidst the dry North Shore.  Sure enough, there was a "Villa Demetre" serving barbequed chicken sandwiches at Plaza del Lago (then known as No-Man's Land), although it was apparently destroyed by the 1932 fire which signaled the decline of that area.  Watch the video here! The Villa Demetre sign had the number "2" above it, while this building had the number "1" above its sign.  Did this tiny snack shop come first?  Possibly.  I'm also baffled by the tiny glass enclosure at the front of the building.  Was this so you could eat your lunch and watch the traffic whizz by without choking on the fumes?  Very odd.  Plaza del Lago made use of a Spanish Mission Revival style, and this building seems to make a nod in that direction as well.

Sheridan and Juneway as it looks today.

Building #4 is another service station, this one providing gas from Texaco.  It incorporates the Spanish tile roofs seen on the other structures, and some arched details as well.  Difficult to say if this is brick or stucco. 

There was another gas station just to the east, but it wasn't included in the image from 1937 so I left it out.  But it's interesting that these auto-related businesses began to cluster from the very start.  You could see this early on in Chicago's historic Motor Row and later at the used-car lots and motels strips to be found throughout the city.  They seemed to thrive on proximity and competition.

As a side note, there was still a gas station at this location when my wife moved to an apartment half a block away in 1997.  That night their moving van was broken into and she walked over to that gas station to make a police report from their pay telephone.  Ah, the memories.

Monopoly Houses in Evanston

I don't usually write about the suburbs.  Which is odd, since I find myself there so frequently.  Anyway, this row of houses is near the two major institutions of our life as parents- Felix and Theo's pediatrician and the drive-through Starbucks at Central and Crawford.  There are others, but sadly these two remain constant.


2200 block of Crawford, Evanston, IL

These houses always catch my eye.  There are at least a dozen of them concentrated in this area, built in 1952 and 1953 according to the Cook County Assessor.  The gable form is about the most traditional residential shape possible, but there are some subtle modernist touches.  There's no concern with creating a symmetrical facade.  Instead the architect has located small windows higher where privacy was desirable and opened up the front of the homes with floor to ceiling windows for the primary family spaces. 

Interestingly, these homes have become more traditional-looking over time.  Many of the original undivided windows have been replaced with multi-pane colonial-type windows.  The one on the far right was renovated into a half-timbered Tudor Revival knockoff. 


View of the back of the houses, looking West. Note the various rear additions.

Even though these homes are similar in regard to massing there are significant additions at the back.  The shape of these buildings lend themselves to the traditional ways to add space, such as dormers, porches, and wing additions.  The second house from the right even doubled in size, but it's difficult to see that from Crawford.

The arrangement of the homes is a standard technique of mid-century developers.  Find a profitable design, then flip or rotate the plans until there's an impression of variety.  It doesn't fool anybody, but it still often succeeds in creating a subdivision with an interesting use of space. 

New York Kosher, 2900 W. Devon (originally posted 2/18/10)

Just realized that this sign has been removed!  Sad. According to Jewish News Online it was sold on Ebay and a documentary crew filmed the removal.  The owner received a letter from the city requiring that he get a permit for it.  It had only been hanging there for 40 years... Instead he chose to get rid of it.

The West Ridge neighborhood (also called West Rogers Park) has the unusual distinction of being the center of two types of Jewish communties at different times.  Back in the 50s and 60s this was a heavily conservative/reform Jewish neighborhood.  Now it's the center of an orthodox Jewish community.  But there are a few remnants from the old neighborhood that have remained and seem to function just as they did.  This kosher deli is one of them.  On the opposite corner is Levinson's bakery, which falls into the same category.

It's hard to see with this scan, but there's a number 48 in the oval sign on top. I believe it refers to USDA Establishment 48, which is Best's Kosher inspection designation.  Oddly, Best's Kosher is now owned by Sara Lee.

Backstage Spaces #3 (6954 N. Clark)

Sometimes a vacant lot opens up a window into the interior of a block.  In this case the empty parcel at the northwest corner of Morse and Clark reveals a rear brick building with a gable roof attached to the flat-roofed building fronting on Clark.  This corner has been used as a parking lot for the bank across the street for at least 50 years, so the view is nothing new for Rogers Park residents.

When I first noticed this building I assumed that it must have pre-dated the commercial building at the front of the lot by at least 10 years.  Its setback and design is consistent with early brick residences in the neighborhood. Unfortunately the Sanborn Maps didn't help me to figure out the exact gap in time between the two buildings.  In 1894 there's nothing on the lot, and in 1905 you see both buildings attached as they are today.  It's possible the rear building was built in 1895 and the front building in 1904.  This would give a maximum time spread of 9 years.

It's not really blue.  I added that.

But even if we can assume the maximum spread that's not very long before a major addition was built.  It indicates a commercial district that was rapidly developing.  But this isn't a surprise. After its annexation to Chicago in 1893 Rogers Park could utilize metropolitan utilities and infrastructure.  The neighborhood began attracting more residents and new stores were needed to satisfy the demand.  If you can keep the older building on the lot while catering to that increase why wouldn't you?



Today the little building remains residential, as far as I can tell.  And judging by the attached satellite dishes there are at least 3 units in there.

Here's a tangent.  In the drawing you can see the building has a solid new staircase at the rear.  But in the earlier aerial photo it looks like the rear porch has been enclosed.  Many buildings in Chicago have enclosed their rear porches to add a bit more usable space.  Very few of them received permits to do so.  When someone wants to reconstruct a porch they need to provide a recent survey.  If that survey shows an unpermitted enclosed porch the owners either need to remove it or legalize it with an expanded permit.  Since an addition of space may trigger zoning violations (or would result in a higher assessment) many people just remove the enclosure.  It looks like that's happened here.

6757-6765 N. Sheridan - Apartments of the Better Class

This marks the continuing documentation of the Rogers Park buildings featured in "Directory to Apartments of the Better Class along the North Side of Chicago."  This is entry #6, for those keeping count.

This corner remains mostly unchanged from its 1917 entry.  The more noticeable difference is that Sheridan Road was widened, resulting in a narrower parkway. And of course the car styles have changed.  A little.

At first glance this appears to be a single building using the same dark red face brick, inset geometric stone ornaments and pressed-metal cornice.  But there are some definite differences.  For instance, the sun porches to the right are much more closely spaced than the ones on the left.  And the first floor on the right is clad with stone, rather than brick.  Even the window configurations on the porches are different.  The floorplans confirm that these are two distinct buildings even though they share design similarities.



Click for larger version.  Or just get really close to the screen.



Image from Bing's Bird's Eye Views

This is the first time the floor plans in "Better Apartments" actually give a false impression of a space.  The building below is twice as big as the one above.  I can only assume that they squeezed the plan so it would take up less space on the page.  That would also explain why the room labels in the lower image are nearly illegible.  The oblique aerial photo to the right gives a better impression of the relationship, showing how the rear courts work together to create an complex interior court.  You can see that the two buildings (maybe three?)  form a sort of "L" configuration, with a 1-story garage taking up the space along the alley. 

These are basically two or three bedroom apartments with a few extras, such as reception halls.  Maybe half of the units have a bedrooms labeled as a maid's room.

Click for larger version

According to the blurb they built enough garage space for 16 cars.  Of course the cars were a bit smaller back then, but even in 1917 garage space would have been a big benefit as the density of the neighborhood increased. 

The sun-porches overlook Sheridan rather than Pratt.  In 1917 Sheridan was more of a pleasure road rather than the busy thoroughfare we now know and love.  And like many of the apartments in this publication, mahogany and white enamel was used for the interior scheme.  This must have suggested luxury and cleanliness all in one.  The mahogany was probably stained birch, but let's not split hairs.  For $77.50 a month I'm sold.  

Haymarket Square Map Chronology

Last year I put together a map chronology of Haymarket Square for AREA Chicago.  Normally they publish a small-format newspaper on local issues related to arts and political activism.  I'd contributed illustrations previously, and even an article a few years back.    This edition was to commemorate the 125 year anniversary of the Haymarket Tragedy (otherwise known as the Haymarket Riot).  The graphic was only intended to show how the area changed over the years, and it wasn't presented with any analysis.  But there's no reason I can't remedy that here, right?

Des Plaines and Randolph looking North, 2011

In a nutshell, the Haymarket Tragedy refers to the events of May 4, 1886, where a crowd of workers were demonstrating at Des Plaines and Randolph for an 8-hour day.  As the speeches were winding down 176 police officers marched to disperse the crowd.  At that point someone threw a bomb, killing a police officer.  The police then opened fire.  Sixty officers were wounded and eight died.  It's not clear how many in the crowd were killed or injured. The person responsible for the bombing was never found.  The Haymarket organizers were arrested, and after one of the most unjust trials in American history four of the defendants were hanged.  Another committed suicide in prison.  You can read more about it here and here.

There hasn't been much in the way of commemoration of this area, although there is a plaque, a sculpture, and a Chicago Landmark designation for a portion of Des Plaines and part of the alley to the east.  Nearly all of the buildings associated with that night have been demolished.

A lot has been written about the Haymarket Tragedy, but not much about the physical characteristics of the area where it occurred.  There were five of these open-air markets in Chicago at the time, where workers went to buy food directly from farmers.  You can see that Randolph St. widens to accommodate the market.  The speaker's wagon was north of Randolph (1), in part to avoid interfering with the market and attracting a police presence.  And the police weren't far away.  Their station was just south on Des Plaines (4). 

You can see the vitality of the area in the number and configuration of the buildings. Most of these would have been two or three-stories with commercial uses on the first floor and residential above.  Many of the lots have rear buildings with alley access.  These were often coach houses or businesses.  At that time alleys were much more important in the life of the neighborhood.  And this was a real neighborhood.  There was a complex mix of commercial, retail, industrial and public uses all swirled together. 




By 1906 several of the smaller buildings have been demolished and replaced with larger structures taking up two or more lots.  Many of the rear lot buildings have been removed.  Construction is masonry, as required by Chicago building codes.  The scale of the neighborhood begins to change.










By 1950 the consolidations have continued.  Buildings have been demolished but not replaced.  The Haymarket has fallen on hard times.  There's a more homogenized feel in the area.  Commerce has moved away from the street, and the residential quality of the area has declined.  The map doesn't show it, but the expressway cuts through the Haymarket to the west, severely limiting it's ability to regenerate.  The area is becoming part of Skid Row.

By 2011 surface parking has eaten up large swaths of land.  The lots are empty from 5 p.m. to 8 a.m., giving the intersection the feel of a ghost-town during the after-work hours.  But at the southwest corner is a new 40-story condo building, replacing the second wave of replacement buildings and dwarfing those that remain.  Some of the nearby light industrial buildings have been converted into condos as well.  A high-end restaurant has located on Randolph.  There's a sense that the area's proximity to the downtown may finally be attracting some investment. 

The shouts and gunshots of a cold May night in 1886 feel very far away.

Des Plaines and Randolph looking West, 2011

Backstage Spaces #2 (1429-1431 W. Lunt)

I walk down a lot of alleys in Rogers Park.  I have yet to be mugged and/or murdered.  I suspect that even if you meet a mugger in an alley they might also assume that you're a mugger and leave you alone.  Anyway, in keeping with my series on overlooked conditions at the rear of properties I offer this peculiar situation on the alley between Lunt and Morse, just west of Glenwood.

I spotted this year ago, when my girlfriend (now wife) lived in the 4-flat next door.  Oddly, there was a 2-story single family home attached to the rear of a 3-story apartment building.  There's no gap between the two.  The front of the house actually abuts the larger building.  You can see the remains of the old sun-porch at the juncture between the two.  The front of the house was clad with a yellow face brick, which is visible on the side return. It retains it's half-timbered decorative treatment below the hip-on-gable roof, but a garage door opening was cut into the first floor facing the alley.

My first thought was that this building was probably on the front of the lot and was picked up and moved when the economics of the neighborhood made large apartments viable.  I've seen this a lot in older areas of the city where a more expensive house or apartment displaced the earlier home.  Surprisingly, it was fairly common to relocate buildings in Chicago.

So it's not hard to test this theory.  As I've mentioned, the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps cover much of the neighborhood.  The 1937 map and the 1951 map shows the current conditions.  But the 1914 map shows that there was in fact a smaller building near the front of this lot.  But it wasn't shaped anything like the house now at the rear of the property.  So where did this building come from?  It doesn't seem likely it would have been moved a great distance.  I looked up the permit record (the apartment was built in 1927) but there were no notes relating to a relocated structure. A quick glance at the nearby blocks on the 1914 map doesn't show any footprints similar in size and shape. So this is a bit of a mystery that will have to remain for the time being.

The house itself appears to have been converted into a garage on the first floor while there's residential space on the second floor.  This likely connects to the interior corridor of the apartment building.  Perhaps this is where the building manager or custodian lives.  Not a bad way to create a unique living space attached to an income-producing property.

In general, alleys have become less active spaces over the years. Much of this is due to zoning, which limits accessory uses and prohibits detached living units.  This is unfortunate, since those odd spaces added a lot to the affordability and diversity of the neighborhood.  But there are enough of these uses left that the alleys remain an interesting place to explore.

1311-1313 W. Pratt- Apartments of the Better Class

When I started this project last spring to document the Rogers Park buildings listed in the "Directory to Apartments of the Better Class Along the North Side of Chicago" I had to use scans taken from pages I copied from a deteriorating booklet.  But amazingly, the entire publication is now available for free through Google eBooks.  Heres' a link.  I may have to go back and recreate previous comparison graphics using the better images.

Above are The Boulevard Apartments.  Not sure why Pratt received a boulevard designation.  Maybe it was intended to be boulevarded at some point and never was.  Anyway, this six-flat uses a combination of red face brick and terra cotta trim.  There are two large Sullivanesque ornaments on the front of the sun porches.  They don't stand out very well in either of the photographs.  Simplified (some might say mediocre) vesions of Louis Sullivans terra cotta designs pretty much point to Midland Terra Cotta as the supplier.  This building looks like it's aged fairly well, although of course the windows have been changed.

To the right is the floorplan, which is typical for apartment buildings on long narrow lots.  Which is to say, long narrow apartments.  The circulation depends on a corridor, which is also typical.  The building faces north but the sun porches at the front bring in some light, as do the shallow light courts on the sides.  Probably the most pleasant place to be is on the back deck (which they refer to as the breakfast porch), with its southern exposure. Although maybe not in the winter, since it doesn't appear to be enclosed.  Only the sun porches admit light from more than one direction.

Unlike most of the apartments published in this booklet they didn't label one of the bedrooms as the maid's room.  The two secondary bedrooms share a bath, so perhaps one of those could serve.  Or not, depending on the needs of the tenants.  It's still amazing to me that the typical middle-class apartment dweller would have a live-in maid.

And no entry in the great book of Better Class Apartments is complete without the blurb.  It's interesting that this building had it's own ballroom on the ground floor.  Normally you would only see that in larger buildings.  Not to mention wall safes (really?) and central vacuuming.  And I'm still baffled by the appeal of a heated garage. The parcel receiver in the kitchen is a new one.  I assume this is some sort of pass-through where the mailman or delivery boy could leave a box. All and all a solid, if compartmentalized, building.  Maybe just a little short on natural light.

Click for full page

Backstage Spaces #1 (Estes, Clark, Touhy and the Metra Tracks)

There's a lot to be said for alleys and the hidden spaces behind buildings.  Many times this is where you see the true character of a street and clues about how it's changed over time.  The west side of Clark Street in Rogers Park is especially interesting, maybe because of the trapezoidal blocks created by the viaduct for the Metra tracks and the angle of Clark Street. Nothing like a good diagonal (or two) to shake up the grid.



Above is a panoramic view of the interior of the block bounded by Touhy on the north, Clark on the east, Estes on the south, and the train tracks on the west.  I first noticed this area because of the old residential frame building incorporated into the light industrial buildings behind it (center of image, with gable roof). The windows are all boarded up and it's been covered in tar paper, but there's a certain lingering aura of old Rogers Park.

Since it's difficult to place yourself in the frame for this kind of space I put together a handy "cone of vision" graphic to the left.  The gigantic eye is where the viewer is standing.  Hopefully the viewer will not actually look like a gigantic eye.

If you look carefully you can see that the paving angles up towards Clark Street.  This makes sense, since Clark is located on one of the ancient shorelines of Lake Michigan.  It's easy to overlook this just driving down Clark, but the buildings on either side gain bonus height in the rear due to the slope.

So why is this area so desolate and underutilized?  And why is it paved with gravel?  That's unusual for Rogers Park, which is fairly dense and developed. 

Luckily Rogers Park is well-represented on the old Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, which I used for the graphic above.  The subdividers created an unusually complex alley for this block, probably because the large lot at the top of the block already had a home there and wouldn't agree to allowing the alley right-of-way to cut through to Touhy.   Eventually an alternate alley was inserted on the west edge of the lot.  The home itself was replaced by a filling station some time after 1914.  Up until at least 1905 the area developed residentially.  Most of the single family homes were located away from Clark Street, with its horse-drawn streetcars and later trolleys.

Several of these early residential buildings located on the small lots off the alley but facing Clark Street (shown in red to the right).  For a while  this must have given these small homes a real feeling of spaciousness.  But as Clark developed commercially they were locked away.  As late as 2008 all four of these homes were still there.  Suddenly they're demolished (apparently without a permit), leaving the one frame building which survived only through its earlier conversion into a machine shop.

So what's the next step for this area?  Were these buildings cleared in anticipation of some new development, or is a new parking lot just cheaper than fixing up the homes?  Maybe nothing is next. It seems like this area has been in an awkward transition for about 100 years...