Bridgeport’s Spiegel Building Back in Play: People Out, Business In
We’ve spent many a frozen winter’s eve standing at the corner of West 35th Street and South Morgan Street waiting for the #35 bus to carry us home. Being in that place, it’s hard not to look at the handsome, yet abandoned, Spiegel Catalog Administration Building with the same admiration that our mothers had when leafing through the actual catalog way back when. For a building forsaken as long as it has been, Herr...
A Cold Bridgeport Welcomes Studio Gang’s Hot Boathouse
On a cold Sunday morning, Bridgeport and the 11th ward welcomed two firsts: the first snow of the season, and the shiny new Eleanor Boathouse. The metal clad boathouse stands out as a new public icon in the ever-changing South Side neighborhood. Located in a brand new public park, Park 571 (2860 South Eleanor Street), the boathouse is intended to create new connections between the Chicago Parks District, Chicago Public Schools...
A Closer Look at Bronzeville’s New Pedestrian Connection
Editor’s Note: Earlier this month we told you that CDOT opened a new suspension bridge linking Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood with the Lake Michigan shore. For a closer look a the project, we turn to Chicago Architecture’s resident bridge expert, Patrick McBriarty. You’ve probably seen him on TV or heard him on the radio lately, as there are few people who know more about the city’s bridges. The long...
New Boathouse May Be the Beachhead Bridgeport Needs
When any neighborhood starts to turn around in Chicago, it needs a beachhead. A physical symbol of the future of the neighborhood so large and so impressive that it signals a point of no return. Think Aldi and Target in Uptown. Or 1K Fulton in West Town. Or Kingsbury Plaza in River North. In Bridgeport, that beachhead may well be the Studio Gang-designed boathouse now under construction at 2754 South Eleanor Street. It’s the...
White Sox Hang Up on U.S. Cellular, Score Points With Mortgage Company
Four years after U.S. Cellular exited the Chicago market (but still kept its headquarters here), the mobile phone company’s name is going to come off of the White Sox’ ballpark. Effective November first, U.S. Cellular Field becomes Guaranteed Rate Field, named for the mortgage company that ponied up untold millions of dollars for the naming rights to the south side stadium through 2029. Removing the U.S. Cellular...
Another Residential Growth Spurt Coming to Bridgeport
For the last few years we’ve been telling you about the Lexington Homes development in Bridgeport. It’s been taking vacant, formerly industrial, land around West 37th and South Morgan Streets and transforming expanses of concrete slabs and weeds into a very nice looking single-family neighbrohood. This is an area on the edge of what used to be the infamous Chicago Stockyards, and was laid out as block after block of...
Historic, Abandoned Bridgeport Spiegel Building Turns a Page
The former Spiegel Administration Building may get a third shot at redevelopment, according to a recent report in DNAinfo Chicago. We first became interested in the building at 1038 West 35th Street several years ago when we picked up an architecture photography client within sniffing distance of Bubbly Creek. On the way back to the office from long days of shooting we often found ourselves contemplating the building as we stood...
Status Update: Lexington Square 2
It’s been a long time since we checked the progress at Lexington Park phase 2. A really long time. Like two years. So it’s not surprising that the project is done. But the interesting part is that the mini neighborhood across Sangamon Street from Donnovan Playground Park, and just a nose’s sniff away from Bubbly Creek, looks like it’s been there forever. And just like the last time we were here, the place...
Plan Commission Approves Controversial Bridgeport Heliport
Ten years after the last non-hospital downtown Chicago helipad was demolished to make way for a skyscraper, the Chicago Plan Commission has unanimously approved the construction of a new heliport in Bridgeport at 2420 South Halsted Street. Chicago Helicopter Express wants to build the private heliport along the Chicago River, next to the CTA Orange Line Halsted Station. It would have 14 helipads, a terminal building, and a refueling...
Living History In Carved Wood and Plaster Still Humming Away In Bridgeport
Deep in the bowels of a nondescript building at 3610 South Morgan Street in Bridgeport, there’s a room off-limits to visitors. It’s where Decorators Supply Corporation keeps every hand-sculpted oak and walnut carving its ever created. There are 13,000 different designs, dating back to the early 1900’s. They’re used to create new production moulds and from those, composition ornaments. The carving room is a living history of design....
