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Home of Carl Sandburg

Posted by Rav Ens Wood on March 27, 2013
Posted in: A Walking Tour of Old Ravenswood. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , .

4646 North Hermitage Avenue

The modest house you are looking at was an early home of the poet Carl Sandburg.

4646 N Hermitage, the former home Carl Sandburg.

4646 N Hermitage, the former home Carl Sandburg. Credit: Jane Rickard

Sandburg moved to Chicago in 1912, living in a second floor apartment in this building. He was a  reporter for the Chicago Daily News and a member of All Saints Episcopal Church. Here he composed among the best known of his poems, Chicago, published in 1915.
He lived here with his wife Lillian and his daughter Margaret, then two years old.
On locating the apartment Sandburg wrote Lillian he had found “our really, truly home.”
The Sandburgs moved to Maywood in 1914.
The building itself has been ‘marred,’ according to a 1994 writer, by poor choices in window replacement, aluminum siding and the removal of the front porch.

This undated photo from the Sulzer Library's Ravenswood Lake View Historical collection shows the Sandburg home some years ago.

This undated photo from the Sulzer Library’s Ravenswood Lake View Historical collection shows the Sandburg home some years ago.

It was built between 1891 and 1894.

Listen to Roy Trumbull read the poem Chicago

Chicago

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people, Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.
&nbsp

WALKING DIRECTIONS TO NEXT LOCATION

Continue the tour to 4611 North Hermitage Avenue.

  1. Continue south along Hermitage for about 364′. The building will be on your left, across the street and before the next corner.
  2. Click the ‘Continue the Tour’ button below when you’ve reached your destination.

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Jenson Building

Posted by Rav Ens Wood on March 27, 2013
Posted in: A Walking Tour of Old Ravenswood. Tagged: , , , , , , , .

4606 North Hermitage Avenue

Fanciful quarter–turret, bay parapet, console, round–arched dormer surround, balcony grilles, weathervane, shaped brick chimney and carved stone door surround. Highly picturesque.

HISTORICAL FEATURES

Jens Jensen, a building architect with the same name as the more famous landscape architect, specialized in apartment buildings. He built a number of them in the 1920’s.

4604 N Hermitage. Credit: Cook County Assessor

4604 N Hermitage. Credit: Cook County Assessor

WALKING DIRECTIONS TO NEXT LOCATION

Continue the tour to the mansion across Hermitage, 4605 North Hermitage.

  1. The next building is across the street, about 25′ from you.
  2. Click the ‘Continue the Tour’ button below when you’ve reached your destination.

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Abbott Mansion

Posted by Rav Ens Wood on March 27, 2013
Posted in: A Walking Tour of Old Ravenswood. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , .

4605 North Hermitage Avenue

Masterful use corner site, including corner turret, wraparound porch and porte cochere, make this Queen Anne house look much larger than it really is. Note on the alley the matching coach house which still has original stable doors and central tower, increasing its apparent size. Beautiful art nouveau stained-glass window on west side of second story. Additions of north dormer, modern window sashes, rear balcony, and ornament.

HISTORICAL FEATURES

This corner lot was used by the community for Independence Day picnics from 1875. However, in 1888 it was purchased by Dr. Wallace Abbott, a local doctor and pharmacist. He commissioned Rudolph Dahlgren and Oscar Livendahl to design the current home. It was completed in 1891.

The Abbott Mansion during the years it struggled. Credit: Ravenswood Lake View collection, Sulzer Library

The Abbott Mansion during the years it struggled. Credit: Ravenswood Lake View collection, Sulzer Library


Dr. Abbott had gotten his start in his pharmacy and medical office, located on Ravenswood Avenue, manufacturing the first medications in his kitchen apartment. The company he founded, Abbott Labs, moved with the family to this location in 1891, then the company moved to the first of several properties on Ravenswood.
The company sites were known for several spectacular fires as well as industrial accidents leading it to move in 1925 to rural North Chicago.
Dr. Abbott could boast of owning an early telephone, among the first on the North Side. It’s simple number was Lake View 143.
The 1900 Census notes Dr. Abbott, his wife Clara, their daughter, Dr. Abbott’s father, a cook a nurse girl and a stableman.
The Abbott Mansion during the years it struggled.

The Abbott Mansion during the years it struggled. Credit: Ravenswood Lake View collection, Sulzer Library


Dr. Abbott died on his way home from the office one day in July 1921.
The Abbotts moved in 1925, selling the building to the Maginot family. They used the building as the Maginot Funeral Home for many years.
A 1983 story in Crain’s Chicago Business notes the then owners, not the Maginot’s, had purchased the mansion after it had gone through several owners. They had, the story notes, spent six years and $100,000 to attempt to restore the building.
“The Abbott House contains 15 rooms and seven bathrooms and boasts a 1,300 square foot front room,” the story notes.
A Chicago Magazine story has more information, noting the Maginot family had sold the property in the 1970’s. In 2004 Abbott Labs took possession of the property for $1.5 million.
Crain's Chicago Business Article from October 31, 1983

Crain’s Chicago Business Article from October 31, 1983


Abbott Labs cloned the property, according to Chicago Magazine, removing the front door, a fireplace mantel, some stained glass and a stepping stone engraved with the name Wallace Abbott.
The second Abbott mansion exists on the company’s campus in North Chicago.
After being awarded a Chicago Landmark Award for Preservation Excellence by the Commission on Chicago Landmarks in 2006, the home was sold by Abbott Labs for $1.95 million.
The home was last sold in 2011 for $1,606,000.
Abbott 4605

A view of the mansion as it is today. Credit Patrick Boylan

WALKING DIRECTIONS TO NEXT LOCATION

Continue the tour to the corner of North Hermitage Avenue and West Wilson Avenue.

  1. The next location is about 33′ from you.
  2. Click the ‘Continue the Tour’ button below when you’ve reached your destination.

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All Saints Episcopal Church

Posted by Rav Ens Wood on March 26, 2013
Posted in: A Walking Tour of Old Ravenswood. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

4550 N Hermitage Ave

This 1883 church is an outstanding example of stick style architecture in which the vertical and horizontal protrude from the clapboard voids between them, and are painted differently from the clapboards to accentuate the structure of the building. It was stuccoed in the 1920’s, covering highly decorative clapboard and shingle work. Note the many diagonal elements still visible, which add a sense of vigor to the rest of the structure. The original entrance was at the northeast corner of the church, under the bell tower. This door has now been sealed and has a window in its place. Most windows are original.
The architect, John Cochrane (1835-1887), is best known for winning, at age 32, the design competition in 1867 for the new Illinois State Capitol Building in Springfield. Between winning the prize and signing the contract he formed a partnership with Alfred H. Piquenard. Cochrane & Piquenard are the architects of record for that building. He also designed a number of other important buildings, including parts of Cook County Hospital and Rush Medical College, as well as Jefferson Park Presbyterian Church. He died at the age of 52 only four years after designing All Saints.

An early photo of All Saints Church, Credit: The 1883 Project

An early photo of All Saints Church, Credit: The 1883 Project


The rectory was designed in a Tudor style by a parishioner, John Hulla, and built in either 1908 or 1905. The passageway connecting the rectory and the church was built in the 1920’s and detracts from the overall composition. The Parish Hall, on Wilson Avenue, was completed in 1936. The funds used for the parish house were collected in the 1920’s toward the goal of a new Gothic stone church on the site of the 1883 frame structure. Were it not for the 1929 crash, this wooden church would not exist.

HISTORICAL FEATURES

Former parishioners include Carl Sandburg, who lived nearby, and Grace Sulzer, granddaughter of the first European settlers of Lake View Township.

SOURCES

CCL Survey; Parish Records; Lane, George: Chicago Churches and Synagogues. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1981. Permits #11802 (8/12/1908) and 18222 (4/26/1905). No permit for original construction. Historical records.

WALKING DIRECTIONS TO NEXT LOCATION

Continue the tour to 4542 North Hermitage Avenue.

  1. The next building is across the street, about 121′ south along Hermitage.
  2. Click the ‘Continue the Tour’ button below when you’ve reached your destination.

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Galloway House

Posted by Rav Ens Wood on March 24, 2013
Posted in: A Walking Tour of Old Ravenswood. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , .

4542 North Hermitage Avenue

The house was built for Edgar Galloway and his wife, Helen. They bought the land in 1874 from Thomas A Cosgrove, a member of the Ravenswood Land Company.
Edgar’s brother Albert bought the lot just north of this one in the same year. The Galloways, like other early residents, then began acquiring additional property in Ravenswood.

4542 N Hermitage from a 2008 photo. Credit: Cook County Assessor

4542 N Hermitage from a 2008 photo. Credit: Cook County Assessor


For example, between 1874 and 1880 they purchased or had financial connections to every lot on this side of Hermitage between Wilson and Sunnyside except the church property and the two end lots at Sunnyside.
Their holdings made the Galloway brothers particularly interested in community improvement projects. Edgar, who was a pluumber, was active in the movement ot bring sewers to Ravenswood. In 1884 the movement gained momentum and engineers were consulted.
They recommended running a line down Montrose to the Chicago River to take advantage of the natural drainage this route offered. But the river was in Jefferson Township, and Jefferson objected to a sewer line at Montrose and the river.
For its part, Lake View, which ended at Western Avenue, would not allow Jefferson to run a water main through Lake View to Lake Michigan.
Ravenswood was forced to use an alternate route: it built a sewer main down Damen from Lawrence to Belmont, then over to Western and the river, which at that point was part of Lake View.
Like many large projects, construction of the sewers fell behind schedule. Collection of the homeowners’ special assessment, however, continued on schedule. In 1888 this led several homeowners on Commercial Avenue to petition Lake View City Council to suspend collection of their assessments. The petition was denied. The sewer was eventually built.

SOURCES

Office of Deeds early maps; 1880 Census.

WALKING DIRECTIONS TO NEXT LOCATION

Continue the tour to 4541 North Hermitage Avenue.

  1. The next building is across the street, about 20′ from you.
  2. Click the ‘Continue the Tour’ button below when you’ve reached your destination.

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Ravenswood YMCA

Posted by Rav Ens Wood on March 23, 2013
Posted in: A Walking Tour of Old Ravenswood. Tagged: , , , , .

Townhouses at 4541-4555 North Hermitage Avenue and contiguous lots on Paulina Street

1985-1988
These townhouses, designed by the firm of Environ, Inc., were built on the site of the Ravenswood YMCA, a large 1905 building which by the late 1970’s had failed to meet increasingly stringent standards for access for the disabled. As a result, the building had either to be razed or retrofitted at an expense which turned out to be prohibitive.
The YMCA building was demolished and the site remained vacant for several years, monitored closely by UPRAVE and other community groups.
Finally in the mid-1980’s a developer bought the lot and subdivided it into townhouses.
While the architectural quality of these townhouses may not equal that of some of the older buildings in the neighborhood, the developer and architect made a good effort to integrate this project with the neighborhood, yet add something fresh and innovative.
Note the Prairie Style of the Hermitage Avenue townhouses, which is replicated on some the Paulina Street houses.
Most of the Paulina Street houses are, by contrast, gabled and decorated with window and door ornaments similar to those used in the 1880’s. While these decorative differences add some variety to the street, they conceal the fact that all the townhouses are based on one prototype, rotated and slightly changed into a total of four models.

SOURCES

Galley Proofs from AIA Guide to Chicago Architecture, 1993.

WALKING DIRECTIONS TO NEXT LOCATION

Continue the tour to 4533 North Hermitage Avenue.

  1. The next building is south 79′ from you.
  2. Click the ‘Continue the Tour’ button below when you’ve reached your destination.

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19th Century Rentals

Posted by Rav Ens Wood on March 22, 2013
Posted in: A Walking Tour of Old Ravenswood. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , .

4533 & 4529 North Hermitage Avenue

 

4533 N Hermitage

4533 N Hermitage in 2008. Credit: Cook County Assessor

4533 and 4529 Hermitage are sister houses. In April 1885 James and Frances Stewart entered into an agreement with John Williams to purchase three consecutive lots. 4529, 4533, and 4537 for $750, and to build houses at 4529 and 4533 within 90 days. Construction costs on each house were to reach at least $2,000. Because the agreement survives we have an example of construction practices of one 1880’s developer: the Stewarts had to pay the contractor $500 when the lumber, “exclusive of millwork,” was delivered. For his part, Williams agreed to lend the Stewarts $1,500 on each house costs: $500 when the frame was up and the roof was on; $500 when the chimneys were up and the house was plastered; and $500 when the house was finished.

4529 N Hermitage Ave in 2008. Credit: Cook County Assessor

4529 N Hermitage Ave in 2008. Credit: Cook County Assessor

Unlike most of the houses on the tour, at least one and possibly both houses were rental homes until early in the 20th Century. To give an idea of rents for similar houses in East Ravenswood in the mid–l880’s: Tebbetts Company a local realty firm. offered a 6-room cottage for $17 a month and an 8-room cottage with bath for $20.
The firm also sold houses and offered a 6-room cottage for $2,000 and an 8-room house for $2,800. These homes, depending on the terms of financing, were certainly within reach of families with annual incomes of $1,0000. For example, in the 1880’s clerks in insurance firms might have a salary of $1,500 to $1,800, while an attorney in a small firm might earn $4,000 by 1890. (Gwendolyn Wright, Moralism and the Model Home [1980])

SOURCES

Recorder of Deeds Office. No permit. Sundry permit issued for remodeling on 3/25/1925. 1900 Census. 1887 and 1891 fire atlases.

WALKING DIRECTIONS TO NEXT LOCATION

Continue the tour to 4517 North Hermitage Avenue.

  1. The next building is about 33′ south from you.
  2. Click the ‘Continue the Tour’ button below when you’ve reached your destination.

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Andrews House

Posted by Rav Ens Wood on March 21, 2013
Posted in: A Walking Tour of Old Ravenswood. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , .

4517 North Hermitage Avenue

Several features of this house are typical of houses of the 1870’s: note the deeply recessed, coffered front door and curved first-floor windows. First floor openings are all elongated. Roofline slopes gently. Many of its original features remain despite several siding efforts, including asphalt meant to simulate brick. Few such old houses survive on the North Side.

FEATURES (INCLUDING OWNERSHIP)

The James Andrews family was one of the earliest to settle in Ravenswood. Mr. Andrews joined the Congregational Church one block south in September 1873 and was one of the leaders in the effort to build a firehouse, later built at the corner of Ravenswood Avenue and Wilson, perhaps not coincidentally close to the homes of Andrews and the Galloway brothers, who were particularly active in organizing it. The firehouse stood just east of the railroad tracks (which then ran at ground level), across East Ravenswood Avenue from the site of the Pickard Building. The firehouse and its equipment cost $1,200, of which $1,000 came from assessments on local property owners. The remaining $200 was raised from a dance and from the sale of ice cream in the summer months.

4517 N Hermitage. Credit: Google Street View

4517 N Hermitage. Credit: Google Street View


It was the only firehouse in Ravenswood, and, of course, was operated by volunteers. Fire was a particular concern in Ravenswood because of the many wooden buildings. Although at least as early as 1879 Lake View Township restricted construction of wooden buildings in the southern part of the township, there were no restrictions in Ravenswood.
The City of Lake View later bought the firehouse for $800. Lake View offered to refund the money to the contributors, but, with their consent, it went instead toward a local public library.
Like his neighbors, the Galloways, Andrews purchased other property in Ravenswood. He also was president of the Ravenswood Loan & Building Association. Andrews’ primary business, however, was not real estate, but hardware. He was a long-time partner in the ventilator manufacturing firm of Andrews & Johnson.

SOURCES

CCL Survey; Recorder of Deeds Office, 1880 Census. No permit. Historical records.

WALKING DIRECTIONS TO NEXT LOCATION

Continue the tour to 4501 North Hermitage Avenue, the Ravenswood United Methodist Church.

  1. The next building is across the street, about 174’south from you.
  2. Click the ‘Continue the Tour’ button below when you’ve reached your destination.

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Ravenswood United Methodist Church

Posted by Rav Ens Wood on March 20, 2013
Posted in: A Walking Tour of Old Ravenswood. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

4501 North Hermitage Avenue

The church was built in 1890. The parish house was added in 1912.
John S Woollacott designed this church with its restrained rustication of stone-work. Note, too, the colorful floral and geometric stained–glass windows, which were brought from another church and installed here. The belfry appears to be covered in an attempt to restrain the traffic of pigeons.

HISTORICAL FEATURES

This was the second building for the Ravenswood Methodist Church. The first was originally built downtown, as a temporary structure for the First Methodist Church, which was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire. That first building was given to the Ravenswood Methodist church in 1873, and was moved from downtown to a lot three blocks west of this location for the newly organized congregation. In 1879, it
was moved again, to this site, and stood at the back of the lot next to the alley. It may not have been particularly beautiful; one neighbor, John McLauchlan, described it as “a big drygoods box.”

Ravenswood United Methodist Church. Credit: Ravenswood UMC

Ravenswood United Methodist Church. Credit: Ravenswood UMC

The present building, which cost $26,000, was built some 11 years later; its architect, John Woollacott, also designed the Lincoln Park Presbyterian Church at 600 West Fullerton, built in l888.
G.M. Turnbull designed the parish house in 1912; the parsonage, replacing one built in the late 1880s, was built in 1963 through a bequest from Eleanor Abbott Ford, a daughter of Dr. Wallace Abbott. Dr. Abbott, founder of Abbott Laboratories, donated the original organ for the church, which is still in use and fills a monumental arch on the east wall.
Early parishioners include Martin Van Allen, the secretary of the Ravenswood Land Company- and Mary McDowell, the founder of the settlement house of the University of Chicago near the stockyards. Berry Memorial Methodist Church on Leavitt Street grew out of this church.

SOURCES

CCL Survey; Parish Records; Recorder of Deeds Office. Parish Hall Permit is A 6001; N 1; Page 304: File 18075, on 7/13/12 (G. M. Turnbull, architect}. American_Contractor. 7/20/1912.

WALKING DIRECTIONS TO NEXT LOCATION

Continue the tour to 4447 North Hermitage Avenue.

  1. The next building is across the street, about 194′ south from you.
  2. Click the ‘Continue the Tour’ button below when you’ve reached your destination.

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Sinclair House (The Hudson House)

Posted by Rav Ens Wood on March 19, 2013
Posted in: A Walking Tour of Old Ravenswood. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , .

4447 North Hermitage Avenue

Excellent shingle style house, employing a variety of different shingle and clapboard materials. Also note the stained glass and the delicate, restrained front porch. The elegance and sophistication of this building’s design suggests that it was designed by an architect, but we have not been able to identify him.

HISTORICAL FEATURES

Although an upstairs wall was signed by a painter in 1890, this house appears to be one of seventeen Levi C. Pitner built in Ravenswood between 1884 and 1886. Pitner was a real estate developer from Evanston. A local newspaper recorded the prices for Pitner’s homes at $3,000 to $5,000, but Pitner charged more for this elegant home: $5,400. He sold it to Albert Sinclair, a depot master of the Chicago Northwestern Railroad, in November 1884.

4447 N Hermitage in 2008. Credit: Cook County Assessor

4447 N Hermitage in 2008. Credit: Cook County Assessor

The local train depot was just south of the firehouse on Ravenswood Avenue between Wilson and Sunnyside. In the 1870’s the trains were the most efficient transportation to Chicago, but not the only transportation. A small steam engine with a single car ran on Clark Street between Graceland Cemetery and Fullerton Avenue where passengers could transfer to a street car. If residents had a carriage, they could drive down Lincoln Avenue or Clark Street to Chicago. By 1887 the North Chicago Street Railway had laid a double line of street car tracks on Clark Street from Diversey to Lawrence. Other improvements followed, but it was not until 1907 that what is now called the Brown Line was opened.

In addition to his work at for the railroad, Sinclair found time for politics. After Lake View became a city in 1887 he ran for and was elected alderman of this ward.

A long-time owner was A. Melville Hudson a dentist with offices in the area. Owners of the house still had signs for Hudson’s office in the 1990’s.

The kitchen (little changed since construction) was used in the 1992 film “The Babe,” for which outdoor filming was done on the 4100 block of Paulina Street.

SOURCES

Recorder of Deeds Office;  1900,  1910 Censuses. No permit. Historical records.

WALKING DIRECTIONS TO NEXT LOCATION

Continue the tour to 4424 North Hermitage Avenue.

  1. The next building is across the street, about 223′ south from you.
  2. Click the ‘Continue the Tour’ button below when you’ve reached your destination.

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