833 North Clark renderings courtesy of Antunovich Associates
It’s been a long time since we heard a peep from the corner of West Chicago Avenue and North Clark Street. But suddenly out of the silence came the scrape of ceremonial shovels in ceremonial dirt followed by the sound of polite applause.
Ryan Companies broke ground on 833 North Clark Street this morning in an invitation-only ceremony. Near North Spy Tim sent in these pictures of things getting underway. As you can see, 833 is going to eliminate yet another surface parking lot in downtown Chicago. This one is part of the U.S. Bank on the corner, formerly the Cosmopolitan State Bank.
The building was designed by Schmidt, Garden & Martin and built in 1920. While most bank buildings of the time were designed to look like The Parthenon in Greece in order to impart a sense of permanency, this bank is in the Georgian Revival style, more in keeping with the Chicago of the time, where art, artists and independent thought were more widely embraced than they are today. The city made it a landmark in 2008.
As part of the deal to build a 380-foot-tall skyscraper deigned by Antunovich Associates next door, the developer has to preserve and maintain the landmark bank, so that’s not going anywhere.
