Viewing all posts from the Austin neighborhood

Preservation Chicago’s 2019 Chicago 7 Most Endangered Announced

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Thompson Center [Eric Allix Rogers/Chicago Patterns]

    Thompson Center [Eric Allix Rogers/Chicago Patterns]

Preservation Chicago released its annual Chicago 7 Most Endangered list today. Predictably, some long-simmering and contentious preservation fights made repeat appearances. The spaceship-like Thompson Center, now all but certain to be sold by the State of Illinois, once again makes the cut. This landmark of postmodernism faces an uncertain future regardless of ownership, but a sale might clear the way for demolition and replacement.

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5732 W. Lake St.

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5732 W. Lake St. [Eric Allix Rogers/Chicago Patterns]

5732 W. Lake St. [Eric Allix Rogers/Chicago Patterns]

The house at 5732 W. Lake St., in the Austin community, is a broad-faced American Foursquare built in about 1910. It’s part of a row of well-kept houses facing the CTA Green Line across the street. The two doors suggest that it may in fact be a two-flat. The siding on the upper-story bays and around the porch windows, as well as the porch trim, is colored in a unique spectrum of green shades.


Laramie State Bank Deco Panel

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John Morris/Chicago Patterns

John Morris/Chicago Patterns

Relief panel detail on the grand Art Deco-styled Laramie State Bank building at Chicago and Laramie in Austin.


Columbus Park: Jens Jensen’s Crown Jewel in the Prairie Style

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Columbus Park

In the Austin neighborhood on the city’s West Side lies what is widely considered the grandest achievement of one of the most important landscape architects to walk the earth, Jens Jensen.

This Prairie Style marvel is surprisingly intact and maintains most of Jensen’s original vision from his years designing it from 1915 until 1920.

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