The Castle-like Greystone

Last year I wrote about Burnham Shores in Evanston and took photos of the stately homes on that particular block in front of Lake Michigan. I visited again over the weekend ever so briefly and walking past the one house that captivated me the most last year I decided once again to take a nice photo log of it.

It seems as if our friend is a classic Chicago greystone mansion. I have no earthly idea why it is situated in the middle of Evanston amidst all the colonials, Georgians and other less distinct homes, but it is certainly a lovely sight to look at as well as quite the mysterious one.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to find out much about this house and if anyone out there has any info, leaving me a comment or dropping me an email would be much appreciated. For now I prefer to think of it as a castle-like home for some business magnet or another.

Subtle Details Of A Doorway

Last year while taking a late afternoon walk down Milwaukee Avenue east of California, I came across this lovely building. To tell you the truth it wasn't so much the building that struck me because I barely looked at it or even remembered much about it. What hit me was the cool details of the vintage door. Old intercoms aren't so prevalent anymore and details such as these just do not shine through as often they used to. Whatever the case it is still awesome to look at. And if you look closely you see what I fell in love that warm August night a year ago.

Here I was a year later and off on the same walk again. This time I actually had my camera in hand. Next time, maybe I can start the walk early and find more doorways to gaze at.

Wow! Two Years!

This is probably something I should have sat down to write and reflect on last year, but since I was on an Eastern European excursion of Cold War elevators this time a year ago, who really had the time to think about an ordinary anniversary? Two years ago on July 11, 2007, I decided to finally stop being so lazy and jump in and create what I had been wanting to create since the year prior to that. Bright Lights Dim Beauty of Chicago was born on this day with a weak "Welcome" note and a talk about the Edens Theater which still elicits comments two whole years later. I had no idea how to use Blogger and I was operating from an ancient computer that still had Windows '98. I used scanners at work to post the lovely vintage postcards that I relied so much on in the beginning for entertainment as well as historical value. I used two of my favorite blogs at the time as models: Malls of America and the great and witty Stumptown Confidential now known as Lost Oregon. Similar to these two blogs, I know I wanted my blog to be about this great city with various odes to architecture, homes, hotels/motels, retail, interesting places and, of course, interesting people with a sarcastic and sassy sense of humor because I wouldn't be me if I wasn't sarcastic and sassy.

So there I was, signing up for Blogger and learning how to navigate it, picking out a certain motif and some loud colors to go along with it and trying to come up with a name. I didn't want the name to be something uncreative and blatantly obvious and somewhere, somehow in an old set of Chicago Tribune articles from the 1920s I saw one that used the words "bright lights" and another that used the words "dim beauty." Awfully fitting to use the newspaper as a way to come up with a name, considering the Chicago Tribune is one of my main sources that has never let me down. The name came together and while it took a month or two to really get used to it, learn how to write, spell and edit and network the hell out of it by finding some great blogs such as Dave's Pleasant Family Shopping, Uncle Jack's Vintage Vegas and Cliffe's Vintage Seattle, I started to really reap the rewards of my beloved blog almost right away.

Since I was a little girl, I always enjoyed writing and I thought I could be good at painting pictures of a building with Terra cotta or a grand hotel with many secrets hidden within or a home that has character and history behind it or my own treasured memories of a restaurant or two or three or four. While I thought no one would really read the blog I secretly wanted them to because what I really enjoyed most was the comments I would read on other sites. The ones that usually started with "When I was a lad back in 19 something or other, my brother/sister/mother/father/cousin and I used to _______" and fill in the blank there. While it took awhile and didn't come automatically, the comments and the memories started pouring in eventually, and, to me, that is and always will be the most treasured aspect of my blog. From the ice cream visits to Prince Castle and Cock Robin to the views and sounds of the Olson Rug Factory Rock Garden, the comments and the memories almost never cease and two years later that is my favorite aspect of Bright Light Dim Beauty of Chicago.

Like the photo above taken from the beautiful book Chicago The Glamorous Years 1919-1941, I wanted to reflect on my favorite aspects of Chicago and look at it all through the lens of a thing of beauty. The Art Deco goodness of this old ad (click the image to enlarge) is more than just a thing of beauty to me, it's my heart, soul and interest. I love Art Deco. Ever since I was in junior high I was always enthralled with the lavish Art Deco movie sets and clothes of the 1930s Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire era. I love Mid-Century Modern. I never fully appreciated it all until I really started learning more about the history behind it. I find Terra cotta simply gorgeous ever since that Chicago River architectural tour I had to take for my Geometry class in high school. Colored glass blocks are so cool to little ole geeky me, so much so that I incorporate garish orange, lime green and sunny yellow into my wardrobe on a weekly basis. Vintage fashion, furniture and cars rule my life at times. My eyes never cease to ogle at thrift stores and resale shops and they have become really great at spotting a vintage vehicle or two like the early 60s Buick that whizzed by me yesterday. And for some inexplicable reason that to this day I still cannot even begin to fathom why I love the history of retail, no matter whether it is local Chicago icons such as Marshall Fields, Jewel, Dominick's, Goldblatt's or a long gone national or regional businesses such Woolworth's, Zayre, Red Barn, Royal Blue or local, long forgotten favorites such as Davidson's, Marks Brothers, Tango, Franksville, Atkin's Department Store and many others. I truly cannot for the life of me explain my love for it all.

Since starting this blog two years ago I have learned to be excited about many new and alien things to me in my life and I can't wait to continue to be exited for a long time to come and hopefully share it with others so that they in turn can share their knowledge and memories with me.

Ode To The Chicago Two Flat

The Chicago Tribune recently ran an interesting item about two flats written by columnist Dennis Byrne. Give this beautiful little elegy a read.

Giving utilitarian two-flats their due
Dennis Byrne
June 30, 2009

Two-flats get no respect. They're the workhorses of Chicago housing, but the single-family bungalow gets all the attention. Bungalows are celebrated for their distinctive Chicago style; without acclaim two-flats quietly go about their business of sheltering all kinds of families and generating income for the small investor.

Bungalows are cataloged and inventoried, but no one seems to know the number of two-flats gracing Chicago and suburbs. Mayor Richard Daley -- who grew up in a bungalow on South Lowe Avenue -- has put his power and prestige behind the Historic Chicago Bungalow Initiative; two-flats have to make it on their own.

Folks who think they are "authentic" Chicagoans rhapsodize about the glories of bungalows, while two-flats have no cachet. No effort is spared to celebrate and preserve the historic role of the bungalow; the two-flat would be allowed to crumble into the dust, if it were not so dependable, utilitarian and indispensable. That's why I was gratified to see Heidi Stevens' fine story, "Two-flat comeback," in the Sunday Tribune's House & Homes section. They've been "rediscovered" as starter abodes and rehab projects in gentrifying neighborhoods. Buy a two-flat, live on the first floor and rent out the upstairs. Could this mean that they're coming into vogue and will finally receive the honors they deserve?

Actually, two-flats have been discovered by folks who rarely venture into unheralded (non-yuppie) neighborhoods, where the value of two-flats has never been forgotten. One such neighborhood is Nortown (West Rogers Park to those of you who only know Chicago by some demographer's map), where I spent half my childhood growing up in a two-flat in the 6400 block of North Maplewood Avenue. Many of the homes there are two-flats, bestowing on my early childhood a sense of envy of "rich" bungalow folks.

Our two-flat was, I suppose, considered ordinary compared with the more elaborate and earlier styles -- graystone, Richardsonian Romanesque and Italianate -- that you find listed in architectural guides. I don't think our style even had a name. Five-sided front bay, a facade of pale yellow (I think) face brick, uncovered front entryway, little ornamentation, raised basement, castlelike parapets, narrow gangway -- in all, a typical, totally serviceable design that eventually was abandoned by a fresher, more "modern" style. The exact ages of our two-flats always were a matter of great debate among us kids on the block, as we argued over whose building would be the first to fall down. As far as I can tell, none have.

We lived on the first floor and three generations of married couples, all in the same family, lived upstairs. I sometimes think of how they must have been glad they weren't on the first floor, from where they would have been subjected to the constant ruckus of the four flying Byrne kids. Thankfully, the upstairs neighbors were there, helping my mother with her toddlers when she had to walk to Devon Avenue to shop or when she just needed a break. There's something special about a two-flat that prompts neighborliness, even close friendships. Not as impersonal as a six-flat or an apartment building. Not as isolated as a bungalow. In a two-flat, two families share the same front door and back porch, increasing their chances of meeting. We shared the basement and the washing machine (actually an old ringer washer).

In many two-flats, a single, extended family lives together on the first and second floors, as my aunt and her Irish family did on the 4700 block of North Campbell Avenue. At our parish, St. Timothy's, two-flats served as the convent. Sometimes, basements of two-flats were finished as offices and rented out, such as the one in Uptown belonging to our family doctor.

Without two-flats, many Chicago neighborhoods would have a different look and feel, the city would have lower densities and it would have consumed greater amounts of farmland. I don't know who came up with the two-flat idea, and because of the lack of scholarship in this area, we may never know. Maybe this will be the inspiration needed to celebrate and document the two-flat, which if it isn't the backbone of the city, it's close to it.

Hooray for the two-flat.

Barry Byrne's Economy Home

Just before he designed the Francis Kenna Apartment Building on Chicago's South Side, Prairie architect Barry Byrne did a little side project in Winnetka, Illinois. Built in 1914, the Orth House was the sole example of Walter Burley Griffin's planned community entitled "New Trier Neighborhood." Similar to Frank Lloyd Wright's Ravine Bluffs, the New Trier Neighborhood were supposed to be Griffin and Byrne's take on the economy home and they, too, did not completely come together. Unfortunately, only this lone house at 127 Betrling Lane was ever built. Even more bizarrely gloomy is also the fact that this house seems to no longer be standing according to the Google Street View. If it is indeed there, I sure can't spot it beneath the canopy of trees.

The Fourth Quarter 1966 issue of Prairie School Review describes the Orth House as Barry Byrne having been heavily influenced by Wright's style including "The marked horizontals of the mouldings at the borders of the overhanging eaves, the horizontal mass projecting at the rear of the house, the extension of the sunporch to the south, the central fireplace, the denial of the corners and the grouping of the windows in long, horizontal ribbons....."

A Taste of Garden Green Deco

I don't know much about this building except that it is located on Elston somewhere in a photo I snapped months ago. I am sure most everyone is recovering from the long holiday weekend as am I and I thought a simple little post would be appropriate. I love this cute little nondescript beauty in a tasteful garden green color that brings out the deco goodness of it.

I just wish it was in better shape.

Oh, How I LOVE Tastee Freez!

Well, what do you know? It's the Fourth of July weekend, a time for family gatherings, possible road trips, barbecues and fireworks. I can't stand holiday weekends like this as I am not big on celebrations. I love having my quiet time though. Give me a bottle of Jose Cuervo and I'm all good.

Booze aside, the Fourth really implies something else other than the fact that it is our nation's birthday. It simply states that summer is in full swing and it's time for that one American treat and favorite past time. No, I'm not referring to the plethora of recent celebrity deaths, I'm talking about ice cream! Not just any ice cream either, my friends. There are two words in the English language that have never felt more alive for me: Soft serve! Who does soft serve ice cream better than Tastee Freez? Not very many!

This patriotic Tastee Freez is located at 2815 W. Armitage. If you live on the North Side or near Logan Square, this lone location is close enough to become a daily staple. Takes one to know one. I have been coming here non-stop every summer for two years straight.

Growing up in Ohio, I only ever got the chance to visit Dairy Queen, a nice little walk up in the Cleveland suburb of Euclid (that I probably will blog more about when I get to doing another ice cream/holiday feature). Tastee Freez was, unfortunately, very alien to me for many years until I met this cute little stand in the heart of Logan Square. I had often heard of it but it always eluded me. I am very charmed to say that that is the case no more.

Opening up in 1950, Tastee Freez had many old locations as you can see by the early 1950s Chicago Tribune ad (click on the image for a large close up at all locations) in the Chicago area as well as in other states. However, their locations have dwindled over the years including here in Illinois and the Chicago area in particular. While the only surviving North Side location seems to be the one on Armitage, I am happy to report that a few on the South Side still survive in original form, nonetheless, thanks to the peeks from Google Street View!

If you are interested to know about the Tastee Freez buildings that have morphed into other things, Debra Jane's Agility Nut is a great start. Page One is a great collection of locations that still remain intact all throughout their 1950s glory including the one on Armitage and this lovely one located in the suburbs. Page Two gets even more interesting as Debra Jane describes the interesting building prototype the company tried to adopt in later years, perhaps as an expansion of sorts. These A Frame buildings were adopted mostly on the West Coast. What I love the most is that they even had cool signs! Original black and white photos of a Tastee Freez in Rialto, California show another huge vintage sign (scroll down the page to see). In addition, there's also a FlickR photo of the one still open at 103rd and Ewing on the far South Side. If all else fails, you can also drive around the city to find many old locations still intact as something else.

Hmm, I wonder if I can BYOB my own tequila to put in a nice cake battered shake.....

Bersbach House In Wilmette

Born in Oak Park, Illinois, Prairie architect John S. Van Bergen was a student of Frank Lloyd Wright as well as an architect who came into his own using the influence of Wright, Walter Burley Griffin and William Drummond. Van Bergan's genius is seen in the lovely Bersbach House located at 1120 Michigan Avenue in nearby Wilmette, Illinois. These great scanned photographs are courtesy once again of Dixie Legler's wonderful book Prairie Style.

Legler writes that Van Bergen wanted entering one's home to be a simple act of extravaganza and that is what we see here based on the pictures of inside the home. Dark mahogany and tiny amounts of stained glass made to look like a puzzle dot the home and its wonderful atmosphere. It is pretty elaborate and classy and my favorite touch has got to be the grand staircase. This, indeed, is not ordinary home.

The Gardenesque Prowess of Michael Reese Hospital

With the fate of Michael Reese Hospital nearing a sort of Shakespearean tragedy, I thought we could once again take a look at a design we will probably never see again in this lifetime. Hospitals are usually not known for their architectural values let alone their Prairie School style of design, especially if you or your background happens to be from the Eastern European variety. I know that hospitals in the former Yugoslavia are from the Soviet dowdy and the Cold War elevators club (If some even HAVE elevators!). Let me tell you, dear readers, when visiting a foreign country where freedom was lost for a good chunk of the 20th century don't expect anything to be up to Conrad Hilton's standards.

It is refreshing to note that Michael Reese's initial design was nothing like that. Until perusing the First Quarter 1966 issue of Prairie School Review, I hadn't fully realized that Michael Reese even had a Prairie school design. To all you Chicago architecture enthusiasts, yes, my dear friends, I have been living under a rock. Designed by architect Hugh Garden in 1903, it's nice to see the hospital's softer exterior side described as "Gardenesque." Get it? The architect's name and the nice little terra cotta....Oh never mind!

I love this city but I hate its dirty politics from the past as well as the present (I hate big government and just plain ole government in general) and Daley's Olympic circus is bad for us all not because it's costing us big time with our own tax dollars on the line and the dismantlement of Michael Reese and possibly Washington Park, but because it's harmful to those of us who actually reside in every neighborhood that makes this city great and it is costing us a good chunk of our future. Even if the city does get to demolish this treasure, supposedly, the main building, pictured here, will be free of such banishment. Still, none of this comforts me in the least bit.

Francis Kenna Apartments

Being a hometown Chicago girl for the last twenty years and completely sucking at anything aesthetic or mathematical, this city sure is a different place from the early 1900s when one could have walked into an architectural firm with no prior training and beg for an apprenticeship that would lead you to become an influential architect that would have a lasting and powerful effect on this great city well over a hundred years later. There is no way in hell I could be able to pull it off despite my love for design (alas I wasn't meant to be an architect) but Prairie School architect Barry Byrne did in 1902. Even more amazing is the person who's studio he walked into and asked for training was none other than Prairie master Frank Lloyd Wright himself.

Born and raised in Chicago, Bryne studied under Wright's studio in Oak Park. He moved to Seattle (In Cliffe's turf, of course) and with a partner started his own firm, but he never forgot his Chicago roots and came back to design buildings with a mixture of what he learned from Wright and his own keen ideas. His most famous work is, undoubtedly, the grand and gorgeous the Church of Saint Francis Xavier located in Kansas City Missouri. His Chicago work, while not quite on a large scale, was just as memorable and as valued as the lovely Saint Francis Church is.

Located at 2214 E 69th Street, the Francis Kenna Apartments are a prime example of what Byrne learned from Wright joining hands together with his own sense of artistry. Through the miracle of Google Street View (and a non-dial-up Internet connection), we see that the Francis Kenna apartments still stand today, unlike Mahony's All Souls Unitarian Church. Looking at the image via Street View, the Francis Kenna Apartments are obscured by tall trees on the right hand side, trees which do not appear to be present per my photos via the fourth quarter 1966 issue of the journal Prairie School Review. Bryne's design complete with a driveway and some matching garages located in the rear remind me of some apartment buildings I'd see walking on my way to junior high in Rogers Park. Big, spacious, shaded by huge oak trees and luxuriously appealing on the outside and, me, as a junior tyke, imagining the wonders of the inside, but never fully realizing just how far my love for old buildings would come. If I'd have known, I would have tried harder in math!

Built in 1916, this visual beauty wasn't just your ordinary tenement. As the writer, Sally Anderson Chappell states "It is the color and the proportions of the Kenna Apartments that give the warm, strong feeling that strikes the visitor when he first comes upon it. The simplicity of the brickwork creates a broad even plane of wall which is interrupted by the beautifully proportioned windows and by a slight manipulation in the brickwork to mark the angles of the polygonal mass that unites the two rectangular portions of the building. These angular juttings of brick and the chevron and diamond decorations around the reveals are the only adornments of the otherwise uninterrupted envelope of the warm brick walls. Two sculptured panels by Iannelli, a male figure on the left and a female figure on the right, emphasize the entrance. Again, in evidence of his freedom from Wright, Bryne has used simple rectangular masses, more cube-like than horizontal in emphasis, the roof is restrained, and the entrance doorway has been marked in a direct and straightforward manner."

An interesting observation that Chappell makes is that the Francis Kenna Apartments look more modern than its neighbors which came later on in the life span. Scanning the surroundings, I have to agree with Chappell's assessments. Nothing looks more modernized than Bryne's gorgeous and treasured design.

A Pint Sized Southern Gothic Beauty

It has been a chaotic week for me personally the last week or so, but I feel as if I may finally be back on track. Today we present to you the lovely works of famous Prairie architect Marion Mahony. Presented here today courtesy of the 1966 second quarter issue of the journal Prairie School Review Mahony's first commission on her own, the All Souls Unitarian Church once located in Evanston, Illinois. The Prairie School Review is a great journal for all Prairie enthusiasts as it provides vintage photos and profiles the great works of Wright, Mahony, Hugh M. G. Garden, Barry Bryne and many more.

Apparently, Mahony knew the minister of All Souls who asked her to work on a project for the church. They wanted nothing big and nothing fancy but something Gothic inspired. Her first design for the church had definitely more Prairie elements that did not make the congregation happy. I have to admit even if the final design was more Gothic than Prairie it is a still a pretty great structure to look back on.

Built in 1903, David T. Van Zanten, the writer of the article states, "This was a simple rectangular auditorium under a tall gable roof with quarryfaced masonry and pointed windows. The interior was enlivened with arched, sky-lit spaces at the entrance and alter walls as well as with delicate Wrightian lighting fixtures, planter boxes, and leaded glass. Although the building was essentially a Gothic compromise, Marion did manage to imbue it with the exotic flavor of Wright's work through her handling of the skylights with their rich patterns casting a mottled light on the clean forms below."

Unfortunately, I am not sure of the exact location of where in Evanston this Gothic beauty once stood and even more gloomy is that it was torn down in 1960. Not a happy ending and a life cut much too short even if in the end it was just another structure.

Navy Pier All Lit Up

Ah, Navy Pier. I have never much cared for it. I have never much liked it. I have never much seen the big deal about it. It's rich history can be read in lots of places including, of course, trusty (or non-trustworthy for some) Wikipedia. I won't bore anyone with the story of how Navy Pier came to be as it can be easily read anywhere accessible to Googling. Instead, I can tell a tale that stretches back a whole eleven years in this world of ours.

My one and only visit to Navy Pier was on a field trip my senior year of high school in December of 1998. The trip was to visit the quilts made for those who died of AIDS. Great works of art those quilts were but as soon as the quilting wore out I discovered that what was left in terms of shopping ad entertainment was not much of anything. It was the 90s, hanging at the pier for some of my classmates was a big deal. Starved for entertainment, I'm sure, since the Internet was still in the Dial Up age and there was no You Tube, Facebook, My Space or Twitter to distract everyone with. Though for a fee you could download Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, um, errr.....never mind. At that age, I was more of a loner though I had my friends. There were times when I all I wanted was to curl up with a good book or a listen to a CD or two. Sam Goody was still in business. Coconuts still had plenty of locations to spare. Ipods were nonexistent and music downloading was in its infancy. Sam Goody was my second home. Hey, I'm in a place with tons of retail, why not check out the CD store?

Alas, it wasn't meant to be. My friend Kiki mentioned that "The closest to a music store you're gonna get is that Bebop Cafe right there." There she was pointing and laughing at the place that stood before us and looked all devoid of anything teenager-ish. Ugh! On top of that were the extravagantly overpriced churros at $2.50 each. Yep, I just never cared for Navy Pier as Sarah B so eloquently states on Yelp "I should not expect too much from a tourist trap like Navy Pier."

And I haven't wanted to go back since. Though a year later I visited the outside by a family member's boat on Lake Michigan. While boring during the day, it does provide some beautiful nigh shots as you can see through the eyes of some calender photographer's lens.

Ageless Northshore Presents the Art at Plaza Del Lago

The Ageless Northshore is a wonderful website detailing the current and past activities of the North Shore subtitled with the phrase "The Online Guide For People Our Age."

Recently, there was an article about an art fair held at Plaza Del Lago and this great blog along with Robert Shea's great book From No Man's Land to Plaza Del Lago was mentioned with glowing reviews. Check it out!

Chicago For the Tourist

Posting for the next few days will continue to be rather brief so bear with me until I get back on track next week, hopefully.

Here is a picture of a picture found at Al's Italian Beef, a fast food joint that serves up mediocre Italian beef and supposedly the best fries anywhere which really just taste like ordinary fries. Despite the fact that last time I was there I got burned by crappy food quality at outrageous prices I dug the decor of vintage Chicago and Illinois themed pictures and posters hanging around the restaurant at the location on Toughy in Niles. I tell ya, though, this place is no Portillo's even if it may slightly resemble one on the inside.

But in case you are wondering Chicago is definitely a good city for a tourist in any age. Now if I can only transport myself back to the 1920s, I'd be as happy to tangle around as these ladies seem to be.

A Night Shot for A Thursday Night

Taking a break from all the talk of Prairie architecture we have a lovely little photo of the Chicago skyline lit up at night. One of my favorite things when I was a kid was to hope that my dad would drive past the loop skyline late at night so that I could gaze at all the wondrous structures all lit up and shining brightly. It is still amazing to see it like this even today.