Unique Old Town Chicago
by Alexandra Till
Title
Unique Old Town Chicago
Artist
Alexandra Till
Medium
Photograph - Photographs - Prints - Digital Images - Cards - Posters - Photo-calendars - Photo Art
Description
Chicago's Old Town was one of the city's first historic districts, designated in the 1970s along with its neighbors Mid-North and Astor Street and Kenwood on the south side. Unlike its landmarked contemporaries, Old Town's history and architecture were more modest. The landmark plaques on the streets describe a working-class German neighborhood and even today the enduring image of Old Town is a simple worker's cottage, 1-2 stories high in frame or brick, perhaps with some decorative window hoods and brackets at the eave.
Chicago's historic district retains layers of history, a rootedness, a sense of unique, distinct and coherent place. There is a scale to Old Town, a closeness of building to street and street to cross street and curb to curb that you simply don't find anywhere else in the city. It is not so much about the rope mouldings above the windows or the paired brackets and dentils at the eave or even those Furnessian ornaments on Adler & Sullivan's Halstead Houses. It is about a premodern relationship of buildings and streets and narrow alleyways - something not unusual in Rome or the old part of Edinburgh but exceedingly rare in Chicago.
Uploaded
April 3rd, 2013
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