Forgotten Chicago
Clarke House, 1836
I do several local Chicagoland coach tours each year for the Art Institute of Chicago (as well as an international tour every year or two) and this fall we came up with Forgotten Chicago, which explored northern and southern edges of the city and I tried – mostly successfully – to find sites that most people didn’t know about – or forgot.
First, we went up to the northwest corner of the city near O’Hare airport and drove past one of two old farmhouses in the area, the 1850s Wingert House on Canfield before stopping for a tour of Chicago’s oldest house. Now, most people think Chicago’s oldest house is the Clarke House, a heavy-timber structure built in 1836 and moved twice, most recently in the late 1970s when it was restored near the Glessner House Museum in Prairie Avenue, close to its original location. Continue Reading
For Richer or Poorer
One of the truisms in the heritage conservation field is that buildings are preserved in two economic conditions: wealth and poverty. With wealth you can reinvest in and maintain property in its original state; in poverty you lack the finances to demolish or alter historic property. In the middle, the whims of temporal fashion and a modicum of money lead to constant alterations that destroy a property’s integrity, while the spasms of economic opportunism foster removal and replacement. Continue Reading