1919 South Prairie Avenue

Marshall Field, Jr. Mansion. Built by William Murray in 1884, sold to Field in 1890. Marshall Field, Sr., lived next door at 1909 South Prairie. In 1902, Field, Sr., house was demolished to expand Junior's place. In 1905, Junior was killed by a gunshot wound. In 1915, the house was sold to Milton B. Pine for $40,000, who turned it into a rehab center. Then in 1928, the building was given to the Resthaven Home for Convalescent Women and Girls for use as a psychiatric hospital. It fell into serious disrepair after 1977, when the Chicago Architecture Foundation bought it for a short period of time. In 1999, Ed Magnus purchased the home for $62,500, but was forced to sell it because the city wanted the building up to code and Magnus couldn't afford it. In 2003, work began restoring the house.

Field Mansion in 2003.

The house is now split into six condominiums. all of the original charm and vintage woodwork has been taken out.

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/wolves-at-the-door/Content?oid=900149

1909 South Prairie Avenue

this was the Marshall Field, Sr., mansion. it was located right next door to his son, but was demolished in 1902 to make room for more of Junior's home.

1900 South Prairie Avenue

Completed in 1870, the Keith House was built by architect Jonathan Roberts and owned by Elbridge G. Keith. Elbridge, along with his two brothers (O.R. and Edison) opened a very successful millinery business in Chicago. Elbridge Keith later helped found the Metropolitan National Bank and served as its first president.

1811 South Prairie Avenue

Coleman-Ames house, right

Neighboring the Kimball House to the south is the Coleman-Ames House built in 1886. Numerous families have resided in this mansion. Joesph Coleman, the original owner, lived in the home until 1888, when he sold the mansion to Massachusetts coal merchant Miner T. Ames. Ames resided in the house for just two years before he died in 1890. The Coleman-Ames house is home to U.S. Soccer’s coaching and refereeing departments.

1801 South Prairie Avenue

William Wallace Kimball house is located at 1801 South Prairie Avenue. Kimabll was born in 1828, moved to Chicago in 1857 and started his piano business. The house was commissioned in 1892 and built by Solon Beman. It was built in the classic revival style with Gothic building details.

The Kimball House, built of Bedford limestone and topped with a slate roof, has an exterior consisting of numerous large and small turrets, gables, balconies and ornamental iron-railed galleries. The interior of Kimball House is as extravagant as its exterior, with wood abundant throughout. The ceilings are beamed in oak and mahogany, and fireplaces made of onyx warm the parlor.

The building now houses the United States Soccer Federation.

1800 South Prairie Avenue

Glessner house, 25 Dec 2012.

Construction of Prairie Avenue began after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 when Pullman became the first millionaire to move to the area, building the grandest of Prairie Avenue mansions in 1873. Friends of Pullman followed his lead and also built extravagant homes on Prairie Avenue. The Marshall Field House was the first in the neighborhood to be electrically lit.

the Glessner House Museum, is located at 1800 S. Prairie Avenue, Chicago, Illinois. It was designed in 1885-1886 by architect Henry Hobson Richardson and completed in late 1887. Glessner was the vice-president of International Harvester. He commissioned H.H. Richardson to build a house in the Prairie District in the Near South Side of Chicago.

Glessner House being built, approx 1885.

Eager to develop a style of architecture that would reflect what he saw as the musculature of the fast-growing United States, the late-19-century architect Henry Hobson Richardson developed what would be called the Richardsonian Romanesque style. The Richardsonian Romanesque style took elements of European Romanesque architecture from buildings constructed in the 11th and 12th centuries, and adapted them to American idioms.

For example, the heavy, rough-cut facing stones of Romanesque architecture were no longer necessary for engineering reasons. Architects and builders had discovered more efficient ways for walls to distribute and bear a building's weight. Richardson believed that what was no longer necessary for function could be made to serve a new purpose of form, by creating a new visual language of individual separation and privacy.

HABS image

The innovative floorplan and design of the Glessner house rank it as one of the most important residential commissions of the 19th century. The walls of the house are pushed close to the lot lines, allowing for a spacious private courtyard within. The courtyard allowed abundant natural light to enter the main rooms of the house through south-facing windows, and also provided a level of privacy rarely achieved in urban residences. Additionally, a long servant hall is placed along the north side of the house, buffering the family spaces from the noise and dirt of 18th Street as well as the brutal winter winds. The exterior of the house is clad in Braggville granite, laid in courses of various heights, giving the house a strong horizontal appearance.

Ornamentation is minimal, and includes an arch of stylized foliage over the front entrance and a series of carved capitals on the second floor columns. The design was distinctly different from the other houses on Prairie Avenue, and many neighbors did not understand it. Sleeping-car CEO George Pullman, who lived across the street in a traditional Second Empire mansion, said, "I do not know what I have ever done to have that thing staring me in the face every time I go out of my door."

the Glessner House still stands today. (information taken from wikipedia.org)

Chicago Fire

I was driving around the west loop today and i stopped to take a picture of St. Patrick's Catholic Church, one of the few buildings to survive the chicago fire of 1871. i tried to find some old pics of St. Pat's to compare, but couldn't really find any really old ones taken from the same angle. i also didn't look that hard.

so that got me to searching for other buildings that survived the fire. which lead me to Holy Family Catholic Church in the 1000 block of West Roosevelt. i thought that sounded not really in the path of the fire (because who doesn't know exactly where the fire spread. i do. c'mon). turns out that the building didn't SURVIVE the fire, but it's been around since BEFORE the fire. but to find out where the fire spread, i had to find a map. thank god for the internets.

so i got the map. and in trying to find out what year the map was made, i looked into the far corners of the maps and found "Brighton Trotting Park." huh. i wondered what that became? so i went to the maps googles.

the problem with comparing maps that are hundreds of years apart in age is that the street names rarely stay the same through the years. so here are the two maps so you can see how much has changed.

roosevelt used to be called Twelfth St. Ashland used to be called Rueben Street. the south branch of Chicago was filled in the 1920s. and the Brighton Trotting Park? it became McKinley Park in 1902.

and the map was made in 1869.