Chicago Mystery Buildings
 

There's a bunch of old photos and sketches of buildings in Chicago in my apartment building lobby. For the past few years this big aerial of Chicago has always puzzled me with a couple mystery buildings.

What is this large structure in grant park? Almost reminds me of a crystal palace of sorts. Must have been one of the largest public buildings downtown. I've never seen any historic photos related to it. Is this real?
http://www.umich.edu/~ifmuth/mystery2.jpg


To the left of the aerial about where the museum campus is, the artist drew a ton of dense apartment blocks. Did this exist or was this embellishment by the artist. That looks like something you'd find on the East coast.
http://www.umich.edu/~ifmuth/mystery1.jpg

First image is the main building of the Inter-State Exposition of 1873. The building was pulled down for the The World Congress Auxiliary building for the Columbian Exposition (now the oldest wing of the AIC).

My guess is that the latter picture was just embellishment.

Thanks! Did some searches of that old structure and it's an interesting building. As for all those building to the south..wish that could have been a reality.

Chicago didn't really build those dense apartment blocks until the courtyard buildings of the 1910s. Before that, most of the dense neighborhoods were like Pilsen or Lincoln Park... Developed at the scale of individual lots. Mostly 3-flats and such with a lot of rear yard structures, mixed use, etc.

Why? So we could have yet another area of the city to look back upon and cringe at what once was?



We would have just added it to the list:

Prairie Blocks, Douglas, Kenwood, Woodlawn, The Levee, Little Italy, The Near West Side, East Garfield Park, North Lawndale, Little Hell...




Edit: I apologize for being a negative nancy, I think I have been following Calumet412 too much.

No you are right. That's funny you say that. As I was taking the picture our doorman said "Oh well the city probably tore it all down if it existed." I really hate riding my bike around on the south side sometimes. Just total architectural extermination of once great neighborhoods. Fortunately there's some shreds of it we can still pull together when those areas once again densify if we have the right people protecting them.

Anyway, would someone be able to direct me to a photo or drawing of what that area near the museum campus actually looked like around that time? I've tried googling around and some images are maps showing a similar plat of streets. I don't understand. I always thought that area was industrial post-fire or else stand alone houses.

Not quite the Prairie District, but a little south.

The bridge in the foreground is at 23rd Street - it's now the main spine of McCormick Place. The large avenue is King, and at bottom right is the ABC Book Warehouse.

http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/2716/eywd.jpg

At eye level, the apartment buildings along the lakefront looked like this:

http://chuckmanchicagonostalgia.file...-lake-1916.jpg

Also see this photo, which is kinda hazy but definitely show the Prairie District in 1935.

http://nycma.lunaimaging.com/luna/servlet/s/67tggm