I think I’m becoming obsessed with these weird and depressing real estate signs.
In case you were wondering, this photo is over a week old. The “2-Flat-$15K Cash 1 Week Only” offer is proably probably over by now. Sorry.
(edit: Yea, my spelling sucks sometimes. Sorry about that.)
Maybe you have already seen these, but if not they’re worth a look: two bits of video from WTTW’s Chicago Tonight that deal with parts of the city’s underground infrastructure like the old freight tunnels and the Metropolitan Water Reclaimation District’s “Deep Tunnel” project. The segments, hosted by Geoffrey Baer, are short (about 8 minutes each) and don’t go into a lot of detail, but still…
part 1, from 8/12/09: http://video.wttw.com/video/1213974541
part 2, from 8/19/09: http://video.wttw.com/video/1220626736
Confused about the national debate over health care reform?
I may have found a solution that will please both ends of the political spectrum.
In preparation for what is probably the inevitable demolition of the Michael Reese Hospital complex, the entire campus is now surrounded by a chain link fence. Anyone hoping to wander the grounds to get a last look at the place is now pretty much out of luck. Read the rest of this entry »
I keep on telling myself that I will continue to photograph this place until it is nothing but an empty lot. At the rate the demo crew is going, that’ll probably be in a month or so.
Then I can finally stop dragging myself down here every weekend, and you no longer have to read my constant blathering about this former trade school. Everyone wins. Or loses, depending on how you look at it.
The abandoned Palace Theatre, Gary Indiana. 2004, I think.
“When the Miss USA pageant was held in Gary in 2002, Donald Trump renovated the front of the theater. The windows were painted to depict a false interior, and an external marquee was mounted, declaring “Jackson Five Tonite”. Though the Jackson 5 are originally from Gary, they never actually performed in the Palace Theater.” (via)
These have been online for a while now, so maybe you’ve already seen these. Or, maybe not: archive photos from the World’s Columbian Exposition Chicago of 1893, on flickr. The image on the left, titled Ferris Wheel, Chicago, United States, 1893 [View of girders of] Ferris Wheel [from inside gondola], is courtesy the Brooklyn Museum, which has 96 more photos from the fair posted on their flickr page. The photo on the right, Interior of Machinery Hall, is from the Field Museum of Chicago’s flickr page. Their photo set of the fair, which includes 303 photos and illustrations, is pretty amazing.
Sort of related: via The Morning News, a photos by Jade Duskow of former World’s Fair sites, including a couple of Chicago images. Click HERE to see the photos and read an interview with Duskow about the project. Good stuff.
Washburne Trade School cafeteria, 2005–click on the images in this post to make them big.
One of the more prominent features of Washburne Trade School was this mural in the cafeteria, presumably a project for the student sign painters who trained here. My first trip inside the building (back in…2004?) was a blur–so much, almost too much, to see–but this painting really stuck in my head. Since then, I had to get a photo of that wall every time I went to Washburne. Now that summer is upon us and much of the building is gone, I thought I would present the last photos I took of this mural while the building around it was being demolished. Read the rest of this entry »
Whenever I take one of my cats to the vet via the #49 Western bus, I always notice this small factory building and it’s whimsical terra-cotta sign. The name “Parisian Novelty”, more evocative of turn-of-the-century Europe than modern Chicago, makes me think of men in top hats and women carrying parasols strolling down the un-Parisian boulevard that runs through the working class neighborhood of McKinley Park. Recently, after dropping Waggs off for a tooth extraction, I walked a few blocks north to get some photos.
Parisian Novelty Co., which has been making promotional knickknacks such as tape measures (?) and buttons since 1898, recently closed it’s doors, and the circa 1928 building is for sale. Doing some half-assed online research I found a post on the Busy Beaver Button Blog that described a recent tour of Parisian, the “oldest button company in the USA”, with more photos of the interior posted on the Busy Beaver flickr page. Some of the furniture and tools from the factory are now listed at the Urban Remains website.
Since the sign is an integral part of the terra-cotta around the door, there is a decent chance that it will be preserved. Unless whoever buys the building decides to tear it down, of course.
