These occurred even with growing historic preservation awareness and municipal measures and ordinances in place to “protect” Chicago’s vulnerable historic architecture. Twenty-five years later in 2015, I have been able to identify 21 surviving buildings, displayed in the map below. Fourteen years later, a new survey was done (prompted by the highly controversial “un-landmarking” and demolition of the McCarthy Building for Block 37 development) and showed less than 25 remaining: a staggering number of 50 had been demolished in just a decade and a half, during the “dark ages” of decay in Chicago’s downtown area.
According to City of Chicago’s Landmarks Commission surveys, 75 of these buildings still remained in 1975. Many were demolished within decades of their creation, to make way for larger, more efficient and spacious office-style buildings utilizing a steel and skeleton framework method.Įxcerpt of an October 1989 Chicago Tribune article detailing the City of Chicago’s landmarking process for collections of Post-Fire era buildings in the Loop. However, within a decade or two after they were built, these 4- and 5-story Victorian-era buildings quickly fell out of style, regarded as old-fashioned and obsolete in the rapid evolution of Chicago’s commercial architecture. Functionally, the majority of the buildings served as wholesale commercial lofts, with each floor housing a different manufacturer of products appropriate for the era: leather goods, textiles, household amenities like pianos, steam heaters and boilers, and iron & woodworking machinery. This is significant as it aesthetically forms a portal to the look of the “Pre-Fire” downtown Chicago building stock before it was completely obliterated. Post-Fire buildings’ architectural style is typically Italianate in varying degrees, and virtually identical to those destroyed in the fire.
These unprecedented approaches to commercial architecture facilitated the birth of the multi-story “skyscraper” in the early-mid 1880s, notably William Le Baron Jenney’s Home Insurance Building erected in 1883. These are commonly referred to as the “Post-Fire” era buildings, built from 1872 up until the advent of modern building materials and advanced construction techniques. Within Chicago’s Loop neighborhood, among the urban canyons of soaring glass & steel office buildings, there is a unique and rare collection of architecture: the commercial buildings erected in the aftermath of the Great Chicago Fire. Lake-Franklin Group, viewed from northwest corner of Lake and Franklin Streets.
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