Overview

Chicago Apartments is a unique examination of nearly 100 elevator structures whose luxurious amenities, generous or unusual interior spaces, architectural features, locations, or innovations have made them significant in the history of Chicago apartment life. An introductory essay traces larger themes in the development of the city and the stories behind the creation of these fabled structures. Brief entries describe every building, such as 1500 North Lake Shore Drive, 209 East Lake Shore Drive, 1301 North Astor, Marina Towers, and the Hancock Tower, as well as less familiar landmarks of Hyde Park, South Shore, and the far north side. Chicago Apartments features work by a number of extraordinary architects of the 1920s, such as Benjamin Marshall, Philip Maher, and Robert DeGolyer, as well as more recent practitioners who include Lucien Lagrange, Bertrand Goldberg, and Solomon Cordwell Buenz. The effects of cooperative and condominium building arrangements, the impact of the Great Depression on apartment house ownership, the changing character of floor plans, the role of the federal government after World War II, and the creative adaptation of other structures to apartment living are just some of the topics touched upon in this volume. Richly illustrated in duotone photographs and floor plans, Chicago Apartments contains a rich variety of archival photographs, some published here for the first time. Included are images from renowned firms such as Hedrich Blessing, as well as images reproduced from the Trowbridge archive of glass negatives, both held by The Chicago Historical Society. Extraordinary aerial shots and vintage photographs from Chicago Architectural Photographing Company give readers views of a disappearing Chicago. Included in the volume are seldom seen drawings and photographs from The Art Institute of Chicago as well as documentary images from the Commission of Chicago Historic Landmarks. Dramatic interiors from some of Chicago's most important architectural firms, such as Booth Hanson, Krueck Sexton, Tigerman McCurry, and Vinci Hamp demonstrate how vintage apartments have been refined and enhanced. AUTHOR: Neil Harris, a Chicagoan since 1969, is Preston and Sterling Morton Prefessor of Art History at the University of Chicago. He has written many influential texts on American cultural history. Sara Paretsky is the celebrated author of the V.I. Warshawski crime novels, which are set in Chicago 338 duotone illustrations

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Penny Sparke is Professor of Design History and Pro-Vice Chancellor of Kingston University, London. She is the author of over a dozen books on twentieth-century design. Her best known publications include An Introduction to Design & Culture in the 20th Century; Italian Design; Japanese Design; and, most recently, A Century of Design and A Century of Car Design. She has also curated a number of exhibitions and has broadcast widely on her specialist area. Mitchell Owens is a style and design correspondent for The New York Times, a consulting editor of Elle Decor, and a frequent contributor to Travel + Leisure. Owens was a co-curator of ""Inside Design Now,"" the 2003 triennial of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, and author of twenty-one essays in the exhibition's catalogue. He is also an independent scholar of the history of interior design, with a specialty in American decorators of the early twentieth century.

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