WBEZ 91.5 Chicago

An historic North Kenwood home where legendary bluesman Muddy Waters once lived--and jammed--is the subject of demolition order now being sought by the city's buildings department.

The 120-year-old weathered and boarded-up two-flat, 4339 S. Lake Park Ave, has been vacant for years and its owner has been cited about the structure's condition, Department of Buildings spokesperson Susan Massel said.

Inspectors found the building open last November and the dwelling has been the subject of complaints to the city's 311 non-emergency number as far back as 2002, she said.

According to a records search, the unoccupied building is owned by a great granddaughter of Waters'.

Earlier this week, the city affixed a red "X" to the building's facade--a signal to first-responders that the home is structurally unsound. Although the building department is seeking a court order to get a permit to demolish the building, Massel said the agency would rather have the owner take better care of the property. A court date has not yet been set.

"We want compliance," she said.

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The city of Chicago in 1968 had to know what people--particularly black people--were calling urban renewal, then: Negro removal.

At the time, portions of the near South, West and North Sides, especially those closer to downtown, were being demolished and replaced with lower density housing and higher density middle-class white or racially-integrated dwellings. The new places had idyllic names like Lake Meadows. Prairie Shores. An early Puerto Rican neighborhood was uprooted to construct Sandburg Village. Still more poor and working-class black and Italian neighborhoods were cleared to build the University of Illinois-Chicago, expand the Illinois Medical District and more.

The tenor of the times gives some context to the above 1968 film A Place to Live. The 16mm documentary was commissioned by the city's Department of Urban Renewal Commissioner Lew Hill to explain and humanize the controversial policy. The always fascinating Chicago Film Archives uploaded the entire film to YouTube a few days ago.

The well-done color film shows the Department of Urban Renewal's efforts to relocate families whose apartments and substandard homes were being demolished by the city.

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When it opened in 1972, the Ebony/Jet Building was a buttoned-down and conservative addition to south Michigan Avenue; an elegant, modernist rectangle overlooking Grant Park with the same dignity found in the magazines published in the building.

 

But that was the exterior. Behind pioneering black architect John Moutoussamy's four walls were offices designed with an exuberant, high-style and fearless mix of a color, texture, art, contemporary furnishings and pattern. Created by interior designers William Raiser/Arthur Elrod, the offices embodied an afrocentric modernism that was well-turned, avant garde and quite hip--a perfect match for publisher John H. Johnson's groundbreaking magazines.

 

Johnson died in 2005 at age 87. Raiser and Elrod were killed by a drunk driver in 1974. Johnson Publishing sold its building to Columbia College Chicago and last year moved to new digs six blocks north.

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If you are of a certain age--and, boy, I am--the early 1970s video of a Dan Ryan Line el train making a 95th Street-to-downtown run is a real trip...back in time.

Completed in 1969, the line was only a few years old when this video was made; the sleeker new trains glided down the median of the still new Dan Ryan Expressway, stopping at modernist stations designed by Myron Goldsmith of Skidmore Owings & Merrill. Back then, the old Lake/Dan Ryan Line went north, passed through downtown, connected to older Lake Street el and traveled west to Oak Park. Today, the Ryan trains compose the south end of the Red Line, while the firner west leg is now part of the Green Line.

As the train travels north in the video, some long-gone landmarks and structures can be seen, such as the lip-shaped Magikist carpet cleaners sign kissing the sky near 85th. As the train pulls into the 47th Street station at 6:45, the now-demolished massive Robert Taylor Homes are visible on the right. At 35th, the camera pans to the left and gets a good view of old Comiskey Park.

Placing a high capacity rail line in an expressway median was revolutionary in the 1950s and 1960s. It lessened the cost of land clearance for mass transit and created a train system that didn't darken roadways, as do the city's overhead lines.

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Acme's 100+ acre site awaits a future uncertain. The complex closed in 2001, almost a generation after larger and more prosperous competitors in the area shuttered. A movement to preserve Acme as a museum failed; the plant's assembly of blast furnaces, coke ovens, conveyors, lifts, pipes, chutes and other works were demolished and sold for scrap.

What's left is a solemn handful of spectacular industrial ruins scattered about Acme's vast, stilled grounds. Let's take a look around, beginning with the photo above in which a coke tower once connected to a battery of ovens stands against the open sky.

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Last week, I talked about television programs with opening credits that best showcased architecture and place.

I had my picks, as did the architecture professor whose class prompted the discussion. But I asked for yours and got responses that included the opening credits to the 1980s comedy Perfect Strangers, to the 1960s show The Prisoner.

Let's begin with WBEZ's John Schmidt's pick of the early 1970s show Banacek—seen in the clip above. Schmidt said the intro features two of his loves "Boston and old Packards." It's good, crisp—begins showing star George Peppard rowing along the Charles River (the rear projection on the close-up is a little dodgy, though) with what I think is Boston Government Center in the background.

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A permit to demolish a boyhood home of President Ronald Reagan has been placed on hold as city officials decide whether the vacant Hyde Park six-flat is worthy of preservation, WBEZ has learned.

Heneghan Wrecking and Excavating Co., on behalf the University of Chicago, last Thursday applied for a permit to raze the three-story brick building, 832-834 E. 57th St. The move triggered an automatic maxium 90-day review by landmark officials because the structure is among a class of buildings with "potentially significant architectural or historical features," as listed in the city's Historic Resources Survey.

(The above news story from Voice of America last month shows the building's exterior and efforts to preserve the structure.)

The demolition permit is one of three currently under such review by the city. The list, which includes St. Boniface Church, 1352 W.

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