Office of the City Clerk - Record #: O2013-8380

• Record #: O2013-8380
• Type: Ordinance
• Status: Passed
• Intro date: 11/13/2013
• Current Controlling Legislative Body: Committee on Zoning, Landmarks and Building Standards
• Final action: 12/11/2013
• Title: Historical landmark designation for Augustus Warner House at 1337 N Dearborn St
• Sponsors: Misc. Transmittal
• Topic: HISTORICAL LANDMARKS - Designation

Date	Journal Page Number	Action By	Action	Result
12/11/2013	72132	City Council	Passed	Pass
12/5/2013		Committee on Zoning, Landmarks and Building Standards	Recommended to Pass	Pass
11/13/2013	63150	City Council	Referred

ORDINANCE

Augustus Warner House 1337 North Dearborn Street

WHEREAS, pursuant to the procedures set forth in the Municipal Code of Chicago (the "Municipal Code"), Sections 2-120-630 through -690, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks (the "Commission") has determined that the Augustus Warner House, located at 1337 North Dearborn Street, Chicago, Illinois, as more precisely described in Exhibit A attached hereto and incorporated herein (the "Building"), satisfies two (2) criteria for landmark designation as set forth in Sections 2-120-620 (4) and (5) of the Municipal Code; and

WHEREAS, the Building is a single-family house that exemplifies, at a high degree of design, craftsmanship and historic physical integrity, the Victorian-era taste for eclecticism in design; and

WHEREAS, the Building combines visual elements from both the English Queen Anne and Victorian Gothic architectural styles in a manner that exemplifies the Victorian love of eclectic, picturesque design. The Building is lavishly detailed with a variety of ornament executed in traditional building materials, including red Indiana pressed brick walls; red molded brick and architectural terra cotta trim; historic multi-paned windows; a visually-unusual and prominent wooden bay projecting from the Building's second floor and supported by wooden brackets; a historic glass-and-wood-paneled front door; and a limestone stoop with decorative-metal railings. The integrity of the Building's front facade—historically the most important and visually dominant of the Building's facades—is exceptional; and

WHEREAS, the Building is the work of Lawrence Gustav Hallberg, Sr. (the "Architect"), who was a significant Chicago architect in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries for his residential, institutional, educational and industrial architecture; and

WHEREAS, the Architect is significant for his designs of finely-designed and -craftedsingle-family houses built in fashionable late-nineteenth century Chicago neighborhoods. Built largely for upper-middle-income clients, the Architect's houses were built in handsome period styles of the era, including Romanesque, Classical Revival, and Queen Anne, and finely detailed in traditional building materials, especially various kinds of pressed brick and stone; and

WHEREAS, the Architect is especially noteworthy for his designs for houses in the Gold Coast neighborhood on Chicago's Near North Side, which historically was Chicago's premiere residential neighborhood after its development in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Architect was one of the most important architects working for Gold Coast clients, designing more than two dozen single-family houses and row houses in the neighborhood; and

WHEREAS, the Starling House at 1254 N. Lake Shore Dr., designed by the Architect in 1892, is a contributing building in the Seven Houses on Lake Shore Drive Chicago Landmark District. The Seaverns House at 3831 S. Michigan Ave., designed in 1892-93 by the Architect, became the South Side Community Art Center in 1940 and is an individual Chicago Landmark; and

WHEREAS, the Architect is also noteworthy for his work for ethnic Swedish institutions. He designed a building for the Swedish Theological Seminary (now part of Kendall College) in

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Evanston in 1907 (identified as a contributing building in the National Register-listed Northeast Evanston Historic District). He also designed the Old Main Building built for Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, which is a grandly-scaled Classical Revival-style building built of buff-colored dolomite limestone quarried in Iowa. Old Main was individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969; and

WHEREAS, the Architect also designed buildings for two hospitals founded by Swedish religious denominations—Swedish Covenant and Augustana hospitals. In 1889, the Architect designed the "Swedish Home of Mercy" for the Covenant denomination, and in 1892, he designed a building for Augustana Hospital in the Lincoln Park community area. Both buildings have been demolished; and

WHEREAS, in addition, the Architect designed the Women's Hospital, which stood at the northwest corner of W. 32nd Street and S. Rhodes Ave. in the Douglas community area on Chicago's South Side. Built in 1885, this hospital was founded to treat illnesses specific to women; this building has been demolished; and

WHEREAS, the Architect designed two medical college buildings (both demolished) for the Policlinic Medical School (a post-graduate school teaching medical specialties) in 1889 and the Women's Medical College (the only medical school in Chicago that admitted women at the time of its construction in 1885); and

WHEREAS, the Architect also is significant for his industrial designs. He designed the original section (1913-14) of the Vasser Swiss Underwear Company Building at 2343-45 W. Diversey (designated as a Chicago Landmark in 2008). Other representative industrial buildings designed by the Architect include early buildings in the Stewart-Warner complex in the 1800-block of W. Diversey (demolished) and the Dietzgen Company Building at 990 W. Fullerton (a contributing building to the National Register-listed Sheffield Historic District); and

WHEREAS, consistent with Section 2-120-630 of the Municipal Code, the Building has a significant historic, community, architectural, or aesthetic interest or value, the integrity of which is preserved in light of its location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, and ability to express such historic, community, architectural, or aesthetic interest or value; and

WHEREAS, on September 5, 2013, the Commission adopted a resolution recommending to the City Council of the City of Chicago (the "City Council") that the Building be designated a Chicago Landmark; now, therefore,

Be It Ordained by the City Council of the City of Chicago:

SECTION 1. The above recitals are hereby adopted as the findings of the City Council.

SECTION 2. The Building is hereby designated a Chicago Landmark in accordance with Section 2-120-700 of the Municipal Code.

SECTION 3. For purposes of Section 2-120-740 of the Municipal Code governing permit review, the significant historical and architectural features of the Building are identified as:

•   all exterior elevations, including rooflines, of the Building that are visible from public rights-of way.

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SECTION 4. For the purposes of Section 2-120-740 of the Municipal Code, the following "Additional Guidelines - General" shall apply:

1. Pursuant to Section 2-120-740 of the Municipal Code, on August 1, 2013, the Permit Review Committee of the Commission approved, with conditions, a pre-permit submission, including drawings, for the rehabilitation of the Building (the "P.R.C. Project"). Notwithstanding the foregoing significant historical and architectural features listed above, all building alterations and / or additions contained in the P.R.C. Project shall be permitted.
2. For the purpose of Commission permit review, "public rights-of-way" does not include alleys.

SECTION 5. The Commission is hereby directed to create a suitable plaque appropriately identifying the Building as a Chicago Landmark.

SECTION 6. If any provision of this ordinance shall be held to be invalid or unenforceable for any reason, the invalidity or unenforceability of such provision shall not affect any of the other provisions of this ordinance.

SECTION 7. All ordinances, resolutions, motions or orders in conflict with this ordinance are hereby repealed to the extent of such conflict.

SECTION 8. This ordinance shall take effect upon its passage and approval.

Exhibit A Augustus Warner House 1337 North Dearborn Street Property Description

Legal Description:

The 21 Feet South of and adjoining the North 25 Feet of the West 129.28 Feet more or less of Lot 7 in Bronson's Addition to Chicago in the Northeast Vk of Section 4, Township 39 North, Range 14, East of the Third Principal Meridian, in Cook County, Illinois.

PIN:

17-04-218-009-0000

Commonly known as:

1337 North Dearborn Street Chicago, Illinois

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Department of Housing and Economic Development

city of chicago

October 11,2013

The Honorable Susana Mendoza City Clerk City of Chicago Room 107, City Hall 121 North LaSalle Street Chicago, Illinois 60602

RE:    Recommendation for the Augustus Warner House, 1337 N. Dearborn St.

Dear Clerk Mendoza:

We are filing with your office for introduction at the October 16, 2013, City Council meeting as a transmittal to the Mayor and City Council of Chicago the recommendation of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks that the Augustus Warner House be designated as a Chicago Landmark.

The material being submitted to you for this proposal includes the:

1. Recommendation of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks; and
2. Proposed Ordinance. Thank you for your cooperation in this matter. Sincerely,

 

Eleanor Esser Gorski, A1A Director of Historic Preservation Historic Preservation Division Bureau of Planning and Zoning

ends.

cc:     Alderman Robert Fioretti, 2^nd Ward (without enclosure) Alderman Brendan Reilly, 42^nd Ward (without enclosure)

121 NORTH LASALLE STREET, ROOM 1000, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 60602

CITY OF CHICAGO COMMISSION ON CHICAGO LANDMARKS

September 5, 2013

RECOMMENDATION TO THE CITY COUNCIL OF CHICAGO THAT CHICAGO LANDMARK DESIGNATION BE ADOPTED FOR THE

AUGUSTUS WARNER HOUSE 1337 North Dearborn Street

Docket No. 2013-07

To the Mayor and Members of the City Council of the City of Chicago:

Pursuant to Section 2-120-690 of the Municipal Code of the City of Chicago (the "Municipal Code"), the Commission on Chicago Landmarks (the "Commission") has determined that the Augustus Warner House (the "Building"), located at 1337 North Dearborn Street, is worthy of Chicago Landmark designation. On the basis of careful consideration of the history and architecture of the Building, the Commission has found that it satisfies the following two (2) criteria set forth in Section 2-120-620 of the Municipal Code:

1. Its exemplification of an architectural type or style distinguished by innovation, rarity, uniqueness, or overall quality of design, detail, materials, or craftsmanship.
2. Its identification as the work of an architect, designer, engineer, or builder whose individual work is significant in the history or development of the City of Chicago, the State of Illinois, or the United States.

1. BACKGROUND

The formal landmark designation process for the Building began on September 6, 2012, when the Commission received a "preliminary summary of information" at the Commission's regular meeting of September 6^lh from the Department of Housing and Economic Development ("HED") summarizing the historical and architectural background of the Building. At said meeting, the Commission voted to approve a "preliminary landmark recommendation" for the Building, based on its finding that it appeared to meet two of the seven criteria for designation set forth in Section 2-120-620 of the Municipal Code, as well as the integrity criterion set forth in Section 2-120-630(h) of the Municipal Code.

The Commission's Landmark Designation Report for the Building, initially adopted by the Commission on September 6, 2012, and revised as of this date, which contains specific information about the Building's architectural and historical significance, is incorporated herein and attached hereto as Exhibit A (the "Designation Report").

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At its regular meeting of November 1, 2012, the Commission received a report from Andrew J. Mooney, Commissioner of HED, stating that the proposed landmark designation of the Building supports the City's overall planning goals and is consistent with the City's governing policies and plans. This report is incorporated herein and attached hereto as Exhibit B (the "HED Report").

On November 9, 2012, the Commission officially requested consent to the proposed landmark designation from 1337 Dearborn LLC, the owner of the Building ("Owner"). On December 13, 2012, the Commission received a request from the Owner for a 120-day extension to respond to the Commission's request-for-consent pursuant to Section 2-120-650 of the Municipal Code. The Commission granted the extension, and the date for the Owner to respond to the Commission's request-for-consent was revised to April 23, 2013.

The Commission subsequently received a consent form, dated April 25, 2013, and signed by Bart Przyjemski, on behalf of the Owner, indicating non-consent to the proposed landmark designation of the Building. Upon further discussion between HED and the Owner, the Owner withdrew the non-consent to the proposed designation in a letter dated May 13, 2013.

As the extended request-for-consent period had expired on April 23, the Owner requested additional time to respond to the Commission's request-for-consent in order to provide plans for the rehabilitation of the Building for the Commission's review. In order to allow the Owner additional time to consent or not to consent to the landmark designation, on May 21, 2013, the City of Chicago ("City") and the Owner entered into a tolling agreement (such agreement, the "Tolling Agreement"). The Tolling Agreement tolled, postponed and suspended the dates and deadlines contained in Sections 2-120-650, 2-120-670, 2-120-680, 2-120-690, 2-120-700, 2-120-705 and 2-120-720, and any other relevant provisions of the Chicago Landmarks Ordinance (Sections 2-120-580 et seq. of the Municipal Code; the "Landmarks Ordinance") relating thereto. The Tolling Agreement extended the period of time for the Owner to respond to the Commission's request-for-consent to July 22, 2013.

The Owner subsequently submitted a pre-permit submission, with drawings, for the rehabilitation of the Building as a single-family residence to the Permit Review Committee of the Commission ("P.R.C"). At its meeting on August 1, 2013, the P.R.C. reviewed and approved, with conditions, the submission ("P.R.C. Project"). On August 5, 2013, the Commission requested consent to the proposed landmark designation from the Owner, incorporating the P.R.C. Project in the consent request. On August 9, 2013, the Commission received a consent form, dated August 7, 2013, and signed by Bart Przyjemski, on behalf of the Owner, consenting to the proposed landmark designation of the Building.

2.       FINDINGS OF THE COMMISSION ON CHICAGO LANDMARKS

WHEREAS, pursuant to Section 2-120-690 of the Municipal Code, the Commission has reviewed the entire record of proceedings on the proposed Chicago Landmark designation, including the Designation Report, the HED Report, and all of the information on the proposed landmark designation of the Building; and

WHEREAS, the Building meets at least two criteria for landmark designation as set forth in Section 2-120-620 (4) and (5) of the Municipal Code; and

WHEREAS, the Building is a single-family house that exemplifies, at a high degree of

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design, craftsmanship and historic physical integrity, the Victorian-era taste for eclecticism in design; and

WHEREAS, the Building combines visual elements from both the English Queen Anne and Victorian Gothic architectural styles in a manner that exemplifies the Victorian love of eclectic, picturesque design. The Building is lavishly detailed with a variety of ornament executed in traditional building materials, including red Indiana pressed brick walls; red molded brick and architectural terra cotta trim; historic multi-paned windows; a visually-unusual and -prominent wooden bay projecting from the building's second floor and supported by wooden brackets; a historic glass-and-wood-paneled front door; and a limestone stoop with decorative-metal railings. The integrity of the Building's front facade—historically the most important and visually dominant of the Building's facades—is exceptional; and

WHEREAS, the Building is the work of Lawrence Gustav I lallberg, Sr. (the "Architect"), who was a significant Chicago architect in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries for his residential, institutional, educational and industrial architecture; and

WHEREAS, the Architect is significant for his designs of finely-designed and -crafted single-family houses built in fashionable late-nineteenth century Chicago neighborhoods. Built largely for upper-middle-income clients, the Architect's houses were built in handsome period styles of the era, including Romanesque, Classical Revival, and Queen Anne, and finely detailed in traditional building materials, especially various kinds of pressed brick and stone; and

WHEREAS, the Architect is especially noteworthy for his designs for houses in the Gold Coast neighborhood on Chicago's Near North Side, which historically was Chicago's premiere residential neighborhood after its development in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Architect was one of the most important architects working for Gold Coast clients, designing more than two dozen single-family houses and row houses in the neighborhood; and

WHEREAS, the Starling House at 1254 N. Lake Shore Dr., designed by the Architect in 1892, is a contributing building in the Seven Houses on Lake Shore Drive Chicago Landmark District. The Seaverns House at 3831 S. Michigan Ave., designed in 1892-93 by the Architect, became the South Side Community Art Center in 1940 and is an individual Chicago Landmark; and

WHEREAS, the Architect is also noteworthy for his work for ethnic Swedish institutions. He designed a building for the Swedish Theological Seminary (now part of Kendall College) in Evanston in 1907 (identified as a contributing building in the National Register-listed Northeast Evanston Historic District). He also designed the Old Main Building built for Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, which is a grandly-scaled Classical Revival-style building built of buff-colored dolomite limestone quarried in Iowa. Old Main was individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969; and

WHEREAS, the Architect also designed buildings for two hospitals founded by Swedish religious denominations—Swedish Covenant and Augustana hospitals. In 1889, the Architect designed the "Swedish Home of Mercy" for the Covenant denomination, and in 1892, he designed a building for Augustana Hospital in the Lincoln Park community area. Both buildings have been demolished; and

WHEREAS, in addition, the Architect designed the Women's Hospital, which stood at the northwest coiner of W. 32nd Street and S. Rhodes Ave. in the Douglas community area on Chicago's South Side. Built in 1885, this hospital was founded to treat illnesses specific to women; this building has been demolished; and

WHEREAS, the Architect designed two medical college buildings (both demolished) for

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the Policlinic Medical School (a post-graduate school teaching medical specialties) in 1889 and the Women's Medical College (the only medical school in Chicago that admitted women at the time of its construction in 1885); and

WHEREAS, the Architect also is significant for his industrial designs. He designed the original section (1913-14) of the Vasser Swiss Underwear Company Building at 2343-45 W. Diversey (designated as a Chicago Landmark in 2008). Other representative industrial buildings designed by the Architect include early buildings in the Stewart-Warner complex in the 1800-block of W. Diversey (demolished) and the Dietzgen Company Building at 990 W. Fullerton (a contributing building to the National Register-listed Sheffield Historic District); and

WHEREAS, consistent with Section 2-120-630 of the Municipal Code, the Building has a significant historic, community, architectural, or aesthetic interest or value, the integrity of which is preserved in light of its location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, and ability to express such historic, community, architectural, or aesthetic interest or value; and

WHEREAS, pursuant to Section 2-120-740 of the Municipal Code, on August 1, 2013, the P.R.C. approved, with conditions, the aforementioned P.R.C. Project; now, therefore,

THE COMMISSION ON CHICAGO LANDMARKS HEREBY:

1. Incorporates the preamble and Sections I and II into its finding; and
2. Adopts the Designation Report, as revised, and dated as of this 5^,h day of September 2013; and
3. Finds, based on the Designation Report, HED Report and the entire record before the Commission, that the Building meets the two (2) criteria for landmark designation set forth in Sections 2-120-620 (4) and (5) of the Municipal Code; and
4. Finds that the Building satisfies the "integrity" requirement set forth in Section 2-120-630 of the Municipal Code; and
5. Finds that:

(A)      the significant historical and architectural features of the Building are:

• all exterior elevations, including rooflines, of the Building that are visible from public rights-of way.

(B)      Additional Guidelines - General

Pursuant to Section 2-120-740 of the Municipal Code, on August 1, 2013, the P.R.C. approved, with conditions, a pre-permit submission, including drawings, for the rehabilitation of the Building as a single-family house (the "P.R.C. Project"). Notwithstanding the foregoing significant historical and architectural features listed in (A), all building alterations and / or additions contained in the P.R.C. Project shall be permitted.

For the purpose of Commission permit review, "public rights-of-way" does not include alleys.

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This recommendation was adopted     lAYlfr^W r*-*r^-^<-»^   C(o 'p)

l/v-—

 

Rafael M. Leon, Chairman Commission on Chicago Landmarks

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Dated:

Exhibit A

LANDMARK DESIGNATION REPORT

 

Augustus Warner House

1337 N. Dearborn St.

Final Landmark Recommendation adopted by the Commission on Chicago Landmarks, September 5, 2013

 

CITY OF CHICAGO Rahm Emanuel, Mayor

Department of Housing and Economic Development Andrew J. Mooney, Commissioner

The Commission on Chicago Landmarks, whose nine members are appointed by the Mayor and City Council, was established in 1968 by city ordinance. The Commission is responsible for recommending to the City Council which individual buildings, sites, objects, or districts should be designated as Chicago Landmarks, which protects them by law.

The landmark designation process begins with a staff study and a preliminary} summary of information related to the potential designation criteria. The next step is a preliminary vote by the landmarks commission as to whether the proposed landmark is worthy of consideration. This vote not only initiates the formal designation process, but it places the review of city permits for the property under the jurisdiction of the Commission until a final landmark recommendation is acted on by the City Council.

This Landmark Designation Report is subject to possible revision and amendment during the designation process. Only language contained within a designation ordinance adopted by the City Council should be regarded as final.

Augustus Warner House

1337 N. Dearborn St. Built: 1884

Architect:    L. Gustav Hallberg, Sr.

The Augustus Warner House is a three-story brick house built in an eclectic Victorian-era combination of the English Queen Anne and Gothic Revival architectural styles. Unusual in the context of Chicago residential architecture in both its overall style and visual ornate-ness, the house is an excellent local example of the elaborate visual eclecticism favored by Victorian Chicagoans in the late nineteenth century. The building is noteworthy for its fine use of ornament constructed with a large number of traditional building materials, including pressed brick, architectural terra cotta, molded brick, painted wood, gray limestone, and decorative metal. The building's ornament includes an unusual second-floor projecting bay window built of wood and supported by large brackets, a terra-cotta cameo medallion in its rooftop gable, paneled wood door and matching enframement, foliate-decorated molded brickwork, and curvilinear iron stoop railings. The building's historic physical integrity is excellent, with the building retaining almost all historic character-defining exterior detailing.

As a finely-designed and crafted single-family house, the Warner House is a significant "first-generation" building in Chicago's Gold Coast neighborhood and exemplifies the historic importance of the neighborhood, which developed in the post-Chicago Fire era of the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s as arguably Chicago's premiere upper-income residential neighborhood. Swept clear by the Chicago Fire of 1871, the Gold Coast developed first with finely-designed and ornamented single-family houses such as the Warner House that were built for upper-income and upper-middle-class Chicagoans. Although twentieth-century redevelopment has seen the demolition of many of these first-generation houses for larger apartment buildings, the Gold Coast remains one of the best neighborhoods in Chicago to see the residential aspirations of late nineteenth-century Chicagoans of wealth. The Warner House is an exceptional example of this building type and well exemplifies this significant Chicago history.

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The Warner House is the work of Chicago architect L. Gustav Hallberg, Sr. Swedish-bom and -educated, Hallberg is significant in the context of Chicago architecture as a designer of finely-designed and -crafted single-family houses for Chicago's upper- and upper-middle-class families, designing many of the mansions that originally lined Gold Coast streets, as well as those of then-fashionable neighborhoods on the West and South Sides. Hallberg is also noteworthy as an important architect to Chicago's Swedish-American community, designing churches and hospitals for this immigrant community. In addition, Hallberg designed buildings for two historically-important medical schools in Chicago—the Policlinic Medical College and the Women's Medical College. Hallberg also is noteworthy for his factory and warehouse designs, where he pioneered innovative construction techniques using reinforced concrete. The original portion of the Vasser Swiss Underwear Company Building (1913-14) was designed by Hallberg late in his career.

Building Construction and Description

Built in 1884, the Augustus Warner House is a three-story building located on the east side of the 1300-block of North Dearborn Parkway in the Gold Coast neighborhood on Chicago's Near North Side. The building was designed by L. Gustav Hallberg, Sr. for publisher and merchant Augustus Warner. It has a rectangular footprint roughly 20 feet wide x 75 feet deep.

The Warner House was designed as a free-standing single-family house that nevertheless was expected to abut adjacent buildings. So the building's front facade was the primary elevation while side and rear elevations were intended to be secondary and either marginally or not at all visible. The building's front (primary) facade is built of deep red pressed brick rising above a rusticated gray-limestone base. This front facade retains the great majority of the building's historic building details and materials, including (rather unusually) historic multi-pancd windows. Side and rear (secondary) elevations are built of common brick. The building is built approximately lot line to lot line, and the south facade is hidden from view by the adjacent four-story graystone-fronted apartment building at 1335 N. Dearborn, but the north facade is visible today due to the setback of the adjacent apartment high-rise building constructed circa 1970.

The house's front facade is asymmetrical in a manner typical of narrow Chicago houses. It has a main entrance on the left (north) side of the facade, reached by a low stoop of limestone steps with wrought- and cast-iron, curvilinear railings. The house's front door has a large upper window with lower wood paneling that is mirrored in the paneling of the surrounding door enframement. Above the door is a multi-light transom. This door and stoop are balanced by a pair of large first-floor windows comprised of double-hung, 12-over-15 sashes. Beneath these windows is a band of geometric-ornamented red terra-cotta. Running across the first-floor facade at the level of the top of these windows and the base of the front-door transom is a band of decorative molded brick.

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SCHILLER ST.

Augustus Warner House, 1337 N. Dearborn St.

 

3.

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The Warner House is an excellent example of Victo rian eclecticism with its intricate exterior design, which combines elements of the English Queen Anne and Victorian Gothic architectural styles executed in a variety of traditional building materials, including red pressed brick, gray limestone, red molded brick, red terra cotta, painted wood, and decorative metal.

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Above the first-floor window, a large wooden bay window projects outward from the second floor. This visually-unusual projecting bay is supported by two pairs of large wood brackets with decorative hanging knobs and side panels of elaborately-cut, geometric ornament. This bay has multi-paned (12-over-12) windows, similar to the first-floor windows, set in both front and side wood walls that are ornamented with simple wood paneling and curvilinear ornament. The bay has a hip roof that is edged with wood ornamented in a sawtooth pattern. Next to this bay, over the front entrance, is a single, double-hung, 16-over-16 window with a curved "lunette" with curvilinear ornament similar to that found on the projecting bay window. The lunette is edged with raised curvilinear brick courses springing from a band of corbelled brick.

A secondary entablature separates the second and third floors and is comprised of deeply-corbelled brick brackets separated by decorative molded-brick blocks and supporting a projecting cornice of foliate-decorated terra-cotta. The third floor is fronted by a false mansard roof with a large pointed-gable wall dormer rising from the lower pressed-brick walls and a smaller roof dormer framed in brick and with a double-hung, 9-over-9 window sash. The larger wall dormer has a low and wide, round-arched, tripartite window with three double-hung sashs further divided by an intricate pattern of rectilinear and curved muntins. Above this window is a terra-cotta medallion with a "cameo," i.e. a woman's head in profile. Above the cameo, within the peak of the wall gable, is a triangle of decorative molded brick. The wall gable's roofline is then edged with corbelled brickwork, and the gable peak is crowned by a foliate-ornamented, Gothic-style finial.

Side elevations that are visible from Dearborn are clad with common brick and have simple "punched" window openings without ornamentation. The building's rear elevation is utilitarian as well with a first-floor brick "bump-out" of the building, as well as exterior wooden stairs accessing both first and second floors that appear non-historic.

Victorian-Era Eclecticism and the Augustus Warner House

The Augustus Warner House is an excellent and unusual house in its overall design and detailing. In the context of Chicago residential architecture, it is unusual in its combination of elements of the English Queen Anne and Victorian Gothic architectural styles. In its excellent use of a variety of traditional building materials and ornate combination of decorative features, the Warner House exemplifies the eclectic taste of Victorian-era Chicagoans.

The nineteenth century is often referred to as the "Victorian Age" in honor of Queen Victoria, who reigned over Great Britain and the British Empire from her ascension to the British throne in 1837 until her death in 1901. Taste in architecture, furniture and decorative arts during this period, although quite varied in form and detailing, can be

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The Warner House also has an unusual second-story projecting bay paneled and decorated in wood. Left: The bay is supported by pairs of carved-wood brackets detailed with curvilinear "jig-saw" ornament. Top: The bay is also ornamented with wood panels and a bargeboard detailed with scalloped edging.

characterized as favoring the intricate over the simple, the ornate over the plain, and the textured over the smooth. Victorian-era architects and designers designing for upper-income clients typically designed buildings that were elaborate in form and profile, combining many kinds of building materials and often "mixing-and-matching" architectural styles. The Warner House exemplifies this period taste in its English Queen Anne-style use of red pressed brick walls, molded-brick ornament, terra cotta "cameo" medallion and multi-paned window sash, combined with Victorian Gothic terra-cotta and molded-brick detailing. Other elements, including the unusual projecting wood bay window, are less easy to categorize with a single style but exemplify the Victorian love of visual complication.

The English Queen Anne style was developed in the 1860s and 1870s by English architects looking back at the architecture of the English Baroque period of the 1680s through the 1710s, especially the architecture built during the reign of Queen Anne (1702 - 1714), for whom this nineteenth-century style is named. The Queen Anne style as it developed in England is dominated by an esthetic that combines medieval and Classical architectural elements and that emphasizes color and texture. Buildings in this style typically are built of richly-colored red brick and contrasting, lighter-colored stone and wood trim. Windows are filled with multi-paned sash, with both double-hung and casement windows being used. Red architectural terra cotta ornament is used for a variety of ornament, including figural, foliate and geometric detailing. The result is architecture that is picturesque in appearance, human in scale, pleasing to the eye, and filled with detail and visual nuance.

The Augustus Warner House displays a number of the visual characteristics of the English Queen Anne style. The building has a front facade built of deep red Indiana pressed brick. Ornament consists of molded brick and architectural terra cotta, both building materials typical of the English Queen Anne style. Terra cotta is used especially for a secondary cornice between the second and third floors and for the round "cameo" medallion set within the wall dormer's gable. In addition, the building's windows, with its small-scale, multi-paned, double-hung sash, is exemplary of the English Queen Anne style.

The Warner House's exterior design is also influenced by the Victorian Gothic architectural style. Popularized in England during the 1860s and 1870s, this style is based on the medieval Gothic-style buildings built in European cities from the mid-12^lh-ccntury into the 15^th century. The style—characterized by structures supported by rib vaults and buttresses and ornamented with a plethora of foliate- and geometric decoration—fell out of fashion by the 1400s in Italy and much of the rest of Europe by the early 1500s, but then regained popularity in the 1800s as Victorian-era taste embraced the decorative and picturesque aspects of the style.

Gothic Revival-style architecture in the nineteenth century took several different forms, from an academic, learned expression of the style to a visually-looser, more eclectic re-imagining of the style's forms and ornamentation. The Warner House has elements that exemplify the Victorian Gothic sub-style. The Victorian Gothic style shares an interest in rich color and texture with the English Queen Anne, but focuses more exclusively on

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Gothic forms and ornament as an expression of these interests. The terra-cotta finial atop the Warner House's front gable is the most obvious of the building's Victorian Gothic-style details, but the building's rich-colored brick, the use of foliate-ornamented molded brick, and the textures found in its use of different kinds of masonry (pressed brick, molded brick and terra cotta) also reflect the influence of the Victorian Gothic style.

The Augustus Warner House was documented as potentially significant by the Illinois State Structures Survey, conducted from 1971 to 1975. It is a contributing building in the Gold Coast Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. The house was also documented as "orange" in the Chicago Historic Resources Survey, conducted from 1983 to 1995.

The Gold Coast Neighborhood

The Augustus Warner House is located in the Gold Coast neighborhood, located on Chicago's Near North Side. The neighborhood remains today as Chicago's most historically -important, upper-income neighborhood of handsomely-designed houses and apartment buildings. Although punctuated with more recently-built high-rises, the Gold Coast retains many of its historic buildings, including a plethora of fine single-family houses and row houses. The Warner House remains today as one of the neighborhood's most visually-distinctive buildings built as a single-family house.

Today, the Gold Coast neighborhood's boundaries are recognized as Lake Michigan on the east, North Avenue on the north, the alley between Bellevue and Oak on the south and (south of Division) Rush and State and (north of Division) Clark. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the southern and western boundaries were less well defined. For example, LaSalle Avenue's rows of finely-designed mansions were historically considered part of this larger neighborhood of fashionable homes.

The mid-nineteenth-century origins of the Gold Coast neighborhood as a mixed neighborhood of fine houses (especially along Dearborn and LaSalle streets), more modest cottages and flat buildings, and commercial and even industrial buildings were swept away in the Chicago Fire of 1871, which destroyed all of the buildings on the Near North Side except (famously) the Old Water Tower at N. Michigan Ave. and E. Chicago St. Following the Fire, Dearborn and LaSalle were largely rebuilt with fine houses, and families of means and fashion began to build handsome mansions farther north along the streets, near their termini with Lincoln Park. Thanks to this early development pattern, Dearborn has, in general, the oldest buildings within what is now considered the Gold Coast neighborhood. The Augustus Warner House exemplifies this early development of Dearborn during the late 1870s and early 1880s as a street of finely-crafted houses, both free-standing and attached, built by upper-middle-class Chicagoans.

The construction of the Warner House comes just after the construction in 1882 of the massive Lake Shore Drive mansion of hotel owner and real-estate developer Potter

ll

tfamaai "Qold Goait"

 

The Augustus Warner House is located in the Gold Coast neighborhood, historically one of Chicago's best-known and architecturally-finest neighborhoods. Top: A historic "Gold Coast" postcard. Bottom: A view of N. Astor Street in the early 1970s. The Gold Coast began as a 19th-century neighborhood of high-quality single-family houses and row houses. Beginning around 1900, and increasingly in the post-World War II decades of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, high-rise apartment buildings replaced low-rise houses throughout the neighborhood.

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Although fine houses were built on the western edge of the Gold Coast, along Dearborn and LaSalle streets, as early as the 1870s, the neighborhood only began to develop strongly as a high-quality residential neighborhood with the construction of a grand mansion for hotel magnate and real-estate developer Potter Palmer in1882. Top: A bird's-eye view of the Palmer mansion (marked by arrow), the 1400-block of N. Lake Shore Dr., and the Gold Coast neighborhood beyond, published by Rand McNally in 1893. Bottom: The 1500-block of N. Dearborn, looking north, circa early 1900s. The Warner House is located 1 1/2-blocks south of this intersection.

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Palmer and his socialite wife Bertha. Facing Lake Michigan and occupying the block between Goethe and Banks, the Palmer "castle," as it was known, Chicago's most elite families to leave the long-standing "Millionaires Row" of South Prairie Avenue and build homes in this lakefront neighborhood, free of the railroad intrusions that increasingly marred Prairie Avenue life.

Much development in the Gold Coast neighborhood was driven by real-estate speculation, where developers built rows of attached houses for rental or sale. The Archdiocese of Chicago, the owner of land at the northern end of the neighborhood, realized the development potential inherent in the area, and subdivided land formerly occupied by the City's Catholic cemetery for development. Potter Palmer himself also bought and developed land in the neighborhood. With the assistance of architect Charles Palmer (no relation), Potter Palmer built a variety of attached single-family houses for both rental and sale on Astor, Cedar, Elm and other streets. Such investment (and the social cachet of Palmer and his wife Bertha) drew other wealthy Chicagoans to the Gold Coast, where they built a plethora of houses designed by many of Chicago's best and most-connected architects.

By the early 1900s, North Lake Shore Drive was largely built up with large-scale stone and brick mansions in fashionable styles. Just to the east, Astor, State and intersecting streets such as Schiller, Banks, and Goethe had developed with only slightly more modest residences. Streets south of Division, including Elm, Cedar and Bellevue, largely built up with row houses. These new residential streetscapes meshed with the older mansions along the western edges of the neighborhood, including those on Dearborn such as the Warner House.

Starting in the 1890s, the Gold Coast neighborhood began to acquire tall apartment buildings such as the McConnell Apartments (1897) on N. Astor and the Raymond Apartments (1900) on N. Lake Shore Dr. The attractiveness of the neighborhood, the ever-increasing value of its land, and the social and economic shift from house to apartment living that occurred in the early twentieth century encouraged the construction of apartment buildings throughout the Gold Coast, especially in the 1920s. Hotels, both those intended for short-term stays and those meant for more permanent residents, also were built in the Gold Coast in the 1920s.

The result was, by the time of the Great Depression of the 1930s, Chicago's most-elite residential neighborhood, built up mostly with single-family houses and row houses, but with a sprinking of apartment buildings and hotels. The Depression years of the 1930s and the World War years of the early 1940s and immediately after saw little development or outward changes in the neighborhood. The 1950s, on the other hand, saw pent-up demand for apartments in the neighborhood explode, and a trickle of tear-downs in the 1950s became a flood in the 1960s and early 1970s, and older houses throughout the Gold Coast were demolished for new high-rise apartment buildings.

Concerns about such redevelopment, and the resulting loss of older buildings and the low scale of the neighborhood, brought the Chicago Landmark designation by City

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Council of the Astor Street District, one of Chicago's first Chicago Landmark districts, in 1975. In 1978, the Gold Coast Historic District, covering most of the neighborhood bounded by North, Lake Shore Drive, Oak, Rush, State, Division and Clark, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, providing both recognition of the larger neighborhood's historic character and access to historic rehabilitation tax incentives. In 1989, the Seven Houses on Lake Shore Drive District was designated by City Council to recognize and preserve surviving mansions from the street's "first-generation" development. More recently, the Near North Historic Overlay Districts Nos. 1 and 2 were enacted by City Council to provide a measure of protection, through height limitations for new construction, for much of the Gold Coast neighborhood.

Architect L. Gustav Hallberg, Sr.

The Augustus Warner House was designed by Lawrence Gustav Hallberg, Sr. (1844-

1915), a Chicago architect who is significant for his high-quality residential architecture, especially single-family houses built in and near the Gold Coast neighborhood in the late nineteenth century. He also is noteworthy for religious, educational and medical buildings constructed for the ethnic Swedish communities of Chicago, Evanston, and Rock Island, Illinois, as well as medical college and industrial buildings.

Hallberg was born in Venersnas (in some biographical accounts, spelled "Wenersnas), Sweden, with the original first name of Lars. He was educated in Swedish public schools, followed by private tutoring to prepare him for college. He attended the Chalmers Polytechnic School in Gothenberg, from which he graduated in 1866 with a degree in civil engineering.

Hallberg then worked for a local Gothenberg architect (only his last name "Westenberg" is given in available biographical information on Hallberg) on designs for an estate, Fimmersta, owned by a local merchant, Robert Dickson. He then traveled to Stockholm during the winter of 1868-69 to study at the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1869, the Swedish city of Gefle was devastated by fire, and Hallberg worked on its rebuilding. He then returned to Gothenberg to work on the design of a large agricul tural and industrial exposition.

In 1871, Hallberg left his native country to travel to England where he briefly worked for Sir Digby Wyatt. (Some accounts of Hallberg's life give Wyatt's name as "Watts.") Shortly after his arrival in England, however, news of the October 1871 fire that devastated much of Chicago reached Hallberg. With his architectural experience with fire-damaged Gefle, Hallberg decided to seek his fortune in Chicago.

By the early 1880s, Hallberg was well established in Chicago, and through a career lasting until his death in 1915, he designed a plethora of buildings of varied types, including single-family houses; small flat and commercial buildings; religious, institutional, educational and medical buildings; and factories. In the 1880s and early 1890s, he was

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Top left: Lawrence Gustav Hallberg, Sr., the architect of the Augustus Warner House, is significant as the designer of high-quality houses in many of Chicago's

 

Top right: The Starring House at 1254 N. Lake Shore Dr., built in 1889, was designed by Hallberg for the daughter and son-in-law of Prof. David Swing, a leading Protestant minister and social reformer in Chicago in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The house is a contributing building to the Seven Houses on Lake Shore Drive Chicago Landmark District.

 

Right: The Seaverns House at 3831 S. Michigan Ave. was designed by Hallberg and built in 1892-93. One of a handful of surviving 19th-century freestanding mansions on this once socially-prominent South Side avenue, it was designated as a Chicago Landmark for its history as the South Side Community Art Center, started in 1940.

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1441   1439     1433 1425

 

 

Hallberg was a significant architect in the development of the Gold Coast neighborhood, designing many houses in the neighborhood during his career. The 1400-block of North State Parkway especially shows Hallberg's hand in the neighborhood's development with three extant houses by Hallberg (1433, 1439, and 1441), one house at 1425 remaining standing but with a new front from 1917, and one house at 1419 demolished. Top: The east side of the 1400-block of North State. Bottom (left to right): 1441 N. State, designed for merchant Benjamin Felix in 1888; 1439 N. State, built in 1892 for "fancy grocer" J. B. Inderreiden; and 1433 N. State, also dating from 1892 and designed for Samuel S. Sherman, a coffee, tea and spice wholesaler.

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Hallberg designed a number of speculative row houses in the Gold Coast neighborhood. Top left: Hallberg designed three Romanesque Revival-style graystone row houses at 50, 52 & 54 W. Cedar in 1892 for Thomas Dougal. Top right: These two houses, clad in brownstone, at 55 & 57 W. Elm were built in the mid-to -late 1880s, probably for Talbot & Keith. Middle left: A pair of Queen Anne-style houses with projecting second-story bays were built at 58 & 60 W Elm in 1884 for H. W. Lemon. Middle right: A pair of brownstone-clad row houses at 17 & 19 E. Goethe are contributing buildings to the Astor Street Chicago Landmark District.

Hallberg also designed several houses on N. LaSalle Street. Most have been demolished, including 1614 N. LaSalle, an unusual greenstone-clad mansion built in 1885 for grocer Christian Jevne.

Hallberg designed buildings in Edgewater for prominent real-estate developer J.L. Cochran and throughout Chicago for S.E. Gross, who is best known for his Alta Vista Terrace development (a designated Chicago Landmark district). Top: A photograph from the early 1970s of a row of eleven (originally twelve) row houses in the East Garfield Park neighborhood that Hallberg designed for Gross in 1885. Located on W. Monroe near S. Sacramento Ave., the buildings were picturesque in their upper-floor window configurations and rooflines. (Several of these houses have since been demolished and the rest have lost additional historic integrity.)

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perhaps best known for his house designs for members of Chicago's merchant class. For these residential designs, Hallberg designed in the fashionable styles of the day, including Romanesque Revival, Queen Anne, and Gothic Revival. He also was known for his institutional and religious buildings, often designed for ethnic Swedish clients. Later in his career, his work turned largely on commissions for factory buildings, typically more simple and functional in design and with reinforced-concrete structures, a building material for which he was known as an expert.

Hallberg was active in the architectural profession. He was a Fellow of the Western Association of Architects from 1884 to 1889, when the association merged with the American Institute of Architects (AIA). Hallberg was then a member and Fellow of the AIA until his death in 1915. He also was a member of the Chicago Real Estate Board, the Chicago Association of Commerce, the Western Society of Engineers and the Chicago Citizens Association.

The Augustus Warner House is an especially fine example of Hallberg's residential designs, an important and significant part of his career. Research indicates that Hallberg designed many houses for well-to-do clients in many of the fashionable Chicago neighborhoods of the late nineteenth century. Although a large number of these houses have been demolished over time, and others have been greatly altered, Hallberg's residential commissions, with their handsome designs and fine craftsmanship, exemplify both the social aspirations of his clients, many of whom appear to have been successful merchants and businessmen, and his own design expertise.

Houses built in the Gold Coast neighborhood were perhaps his finest, given the wealth and social status of property owners in that neighborhood. The area itself remains one of Chicago's finest residential neighborhoods and much of it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Gold Coast Historic District. Hallberg especially shaped the development of Elm and Cedar streets with stone-fronted row houses designed for real-estate developers and speculators H. W. Lemon, Dr. E. S. Talbot, and Thomas Dougal. Surviving, documented examples of these houses include 55, 57 and 59 E. Elm, 58 and 60 E. Elm, and 50 and 52 E. Cedar, although citations in contemporary sources such as the Chicago Tribune and Inland Architect indicate that Hallberg may have designed more than a dozen houses along the two streets during the 1880s and 1890s.

Hallberg also designed approximately ten houses on North LaSalle Street north of Division, a street historically part of the Gold Coast neighborhood, including several by himself as developer. (Hallberg actively developed a number of his own designs in Chicago during his career, including, among others, houses on Dearborn near its intersection with Burton, row houses in what is now the Streeterville area and commercial buildings near the Clark / School intersection in the Lake View neighborhood.) At least two of his house designs on N. LaSalle were visually-distinctive "greenstone"-clad houses located at 1614 and 1652 N. LaSalle. Now demolished, these buildings were built in 1885 and 1883, respectively, for merchants Christian Jevne and Robert Lindblom. Greenstone was a type of building stone known for its visually-startling green hue but rarely used in Chicago. The most prominent local example remains the Greenstone United

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ELIM SWEDISH M. E. CHURCH, DEDICATED TODAY

 

A native of Sweden, Hallberg designed a number of buildings in Illinois for ethnic Swedish institutions, including (top) the Old Main Building at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois (individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places); and (bottom) Elim Swedish M.E. Church in Chicago's Lake View community area (adaptively reused for housing).

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Methodist Church at St. Lawrence and 112^th St., designed by S. S. Beman in 1882 as part of the Pullman factory town development. A second surviving example of a greenstone-clad building, the former Hotel Raleigh at 650 N. Dearborn, has been attributed to Hallberg.

Besides the Warner House, row houses on Elm and Cedar, and houses along LaSalle, Hallberg designed more than a dozen other houses in the Gold Coast neighborhood. Among those that survive, three are contributing buildings within Chicago Landmark districts. The largest is the Starring House, a Romanesque-style stone mansion at 1254 N. Lake Shore Drive, built in 1889 for the son-in-law and daughter of noted Protestant minister and social reformer David Swing, who also lived here late in his life. Hallberg and his wife were members of Dr. Swing's congregation. (The Starring House is a contributing building to the Seven Houses on Lake Shore Drive Chicago Landmark District.) Hallberg also designed two three-story brownstone houses at 17 and 19 E. Goethe St., also designed in the Romanesque style, that are contributing buildings in the Astor Street Chicago Landmark District.

In addition, Hallberg designed at least five houses on the east side of the 1400-block of N. State Street (1419, 1425, 1433, 1439 and 1441 N. State St.), all for separate clients. A house at 1419 N. State (now demolished) was built in 1885 for glove merchant Alonzo C. Mather. Tailor Max Newhouse built a three-story house at 1425 N. State (refaced in 1917) in 1886. Samuel S. Sherman, a tea, coffee and spice merchant, commissioned a house from Hallberg at 1433 N. State in 1892, while J. B. Inderreider, the owner of a wholesale "fancy grocers and fruits" concern, built his Hallberg-designed house at 1439 N. State the same year. A three-story rusticated stone house at 1441 N. State was constructed in 1887 for Benjamin F. Felix, a partner in a furniture and housewares business.

Hallberg is also known to have designed houses in the 1500-block of N. Dearborn for developer John Mountain. (Although not confirmed, research indicates that these may be the buildings at 1511, 1515, and 1517 N. Dearborn.) Mountain also commissioned a number of row houses from Hallberg on Huron St. (now demolished) in the Streeterville neighborhood. Hallberg designed close to twenty row houses for various developers on Superior, Huron and Erie streets in Streeterville. Although greatly redeveloped today with buildings associated with Northwestern Memorial Hospital, as well as high-rise hotels and apartment buildings, these streets east of Michigan Avenue were originally lined with many row houses built for upper-middle-class residents.

Besides houses in the Gold Coast neighborhood, Hallberg also designed houses in several of Chicago's fashionable neighborhoods during the late nineteenth century, including as far north as the Birchwood neighborhood in today's Rogers Park community area and as far south as the Hyde Park neighborhood. Hallberg-designed houses were built especially along then-fashionable Near West Side streets such as Monroe, Adams, and Jackson, along S. King Drive (then known as Grand Boulevard) in the Grand Boulevard community area, and along S. Ellis and S. Lake Park avenues in the south lakefront neighborhoods of Oakland and North Kenwood. Others were built in the Sheridan Park

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and Buena Park neighborhoods on Chicago's North Side. Many of these houses appear to have been demolished over time. One that survives is the George Seaverns House at 3831 S. Michigan Ave., built in 1892-93. The Seaverns House was converted into the South Side Community Art Center in 1940 and is an individual Chicago Landmark.

Hallberg designed a number of houses for historically-important real-estate developers. He designed eight houses in 1889 in the newly-developing Edgewater community for J. L. Cochran, the founder of this then-suburban development on the far North Side lake-front. Hallberg also designed several dozen houses for developer Samuel E. Gross in the Humboldt Park neighborhood and on the Near West Side. Gross today is best known for the forty intimately-scaled houses that he built on Alta Vista Terrace (a Chicago Landmark District), but the developer built hundreds of houses in both Chicago neighborhoods and suburbs. One Hallberg-designed commission for Gross—a picturesque group of twelve Queen Anne-style brick row houses in the 2900-block of W. Monroe St., just east of S. Sacramento Ave.—has been identified. Built in 1885, several houses in the group have been demolished and the rest greatly altered since their documentation by the Illinois State Structures Survey in the early 1970s and the Chicago Historic Resources Survey in 1988.

Besides these single-family house commissions, Hallberg designed a number of larger-scale flats, commercial and mixed-use buildings, as well as a variety of religious, institutional, educational, hospital and medical school buildings, a number of which were built for Swedish institutions. Hallberg designed many small flats and neighborhood commercial and mixed-use buildings throughout Chicago, especially in the Lake View, Near West Side, Grand Boulevard, and Oakland neighborhoods.

As a Swedish-born architect, a number of Hallberg's clients were ethnic Swedish churches and institutions. He designed a building for the Swedish Theological Seminary (now part of Kendall College) in Evanston in 1907. (The building is a contributing building to the National Register-listed Northeast Evanston Historic District.) Hallberg also designed several churches for a number of congregations, including the Englewood Covenant Church at 59^th and Carpenter (extant); the Elim Evangelical Lutheran Church at N. Kenmore and W. Barry in the Lake View neighborhood (extant, converted to residential use); and a building for a Swedish Methodist Episcopal congregation at Sherman Avenue and Grove Street in Evanston. He also designed a Presbyterian mission chapel at 1345 W. Erie (extant) in 1885. Hallberg's church designs tend to be simple in design and small in scale, befitting the taste of Swedish Protestant congregations.

Perhaps the most important institutional building designed by Hallberg is the Old Main Building built for Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. Founded in 1860 by Swedish immigrants, Augustana is a private liberal-arts college associated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Originally known as Memorial Hall, the Old Main Building was built between 1884 and 1888. Hallberg was the designer in association with a local architect, E. S. Hammatt of Davenport, Iowa. The building is a grandly-scaled Classical Revival-style building built of buff-colored dolomite limestone quarried

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Hallberg designed three hospitals (early buildings for Swedish Covenant Hospital, Augustana Hospital and Woman's Hospital) as well as two medical college buildings for the Policlinic Medical College and the Woman's Medical College. Top: A lithograph from the early 1890s showing several Chicago hospitals and medical college buildings, including the Woman's Medical College (marked by arrow), originally on the Near West Side on S. Wolcott (demolished). Right: Hallberg's building for Augustana Hospital, located at the intersection of N. Lincoln and N. Cleveland avenues (demolished).

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in Iowa. Old Main was individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969.

Hallberg also designed buildings for two hospitals founded by Swedish religious denominations—Swedish Covenant and Augustana hospitals. In 1889, Hallberg designed the "Swedish Home of Mercy" for the Covenant denomination. This small-scale, two-story hospital building (demolished) stood on the south side of W. Foster St. west of Lincoln Avenue and on the grounds of the current Swedish Covenant Hospital. In 1892, Hallberg designed a six-story building (demolished) for Augustana Hospital on the southeast corner of Lincoln Avenue and Cleveland Street in the Lincoln Park community area.

In addition, Hallberg designed the Women's Hospital, which stood at the northwest corner of W. 32nd St. and S. Rhodes Ave. in the Douglas community area on Chicago's South Side. Built in 1885, this hospital was founded to treat illnesses specific to women; its building has been demolished.

Hallberg also designed two medical colleges. In 1889, he designed a building for the Policlinic Medical College, which provided post-graduate instruction in medical specialties for doctors. Hallberg also designed the Woman's Medical College in 1885. Intended to provide educational opportunities denied women at other Chicago medical schools, this building was located on S. Lincoln St. (now S. Wolcotf) across from the then-Cook County Hospital complex. Both the Policlinic and Woman's medical college buildings have been demolished.

Hallberg is also known for his industrial building designs. He was especially interested in the use of reinforced-concrete construction, and he received two United States patents in 1890 for innovations in both concrete slab and foundation construction. The original section of the Vasser Swiss Underwear Co. Building at 2343-45 W. Diversey (built 1913-14) was designed by Hallberg shortly before his death. (A later section of the building was designed by Hallberg's son, Lawrence Gustav Hallberg, Jr., who took charge of his father's architectural office upon the elder Hallberg's death in 1915.) The Vasser Swiss building was designated as a Chicago Landmark in 2008. Other noteworthy industrial buildings designed by the elder Hallberg include early buildings in the Stewart-Warner Speedometer Corporation complex in the 1800-block of W. Diversey Ave. (demolished); the Dietzgen Company Building at 990 W. Fullerton, built in 1906 and a contributing building to the National Register-listed Sheffield Historic District; and the Addrcssograph Company Building at 400 W. Peoria.

Criteria for Designation

According to the Municipal Code of Chicago (Sections 2-120-690), the Commission on Chicago Landmarks has the authority to make a final recommendation of landmark des-

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ignation lor a area, district, place, building, structure, work of art or other object within the City of Chicago if the Commission determines it meets two or more of the stated "criteria for designation," as well as possesses sufficient historic design integrity to convey its significance.

The following should be considered by the Commission on Chicago Landmarks in determining whether to recommend that the Augustus Warner House be designated as a Chicago Landmark.

Criterion 4: Exemplary Architecture

Its exemplification of an architectural type or style distinguished by innovation, rarity, uniqueness, or overall quality of design, detail, materials or craftsmanship.

• The Augustus Warner House is a single-family house that exemplifies, at a high degree of design, craftsmanship and historic physical integrity, the Victorian-era taste for eclecticism in design.
• The Warner House combines visual elements from both the English Queen Anne and Victorian Gothic architectural styles in a manner that exemplifies the Victorian love of eclectic, picturesque design. The building is lavishly detailed with a variety of ornament executed in traditional building materials, including red Indiana pressed brick walls; red molded brick and architectural terra cotta trim; historic multi-paned windows; a visually-unusual and -prominent wooden bay projecting from the building's second floor and supported by wooden brackets; a historic glass-and-wood-paneled front door; and a limestone stoop with decorative-metal railings. The integrity of the building's front facade—historically the most important and visually dominant of the building's facades—is exceptional.

Criterion 5: Work of Significant Architect or Designer

Its identification as the work of an architect, designer, engineer, or builder whose individual work is significant in the history or development of the City of Chicago, the State of Illinois, or the United States.

• The Augustus Warner House is the work of Lawrence Gustav Hallberg, Sr., who was a significant Chicago architect in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries for his residential, institutional, educational and industrial architecture.
• Hallberg is significant for his designs of finely-designed and -crafted single-family houses built in fashionable late-nineteenth century Chicago neighborhoods. Built largely for upper-middle-income clients, Hallberg's houses were built in handsome period styles of the era, including Romanesque, Classical Revival, and Queen Anne, and finely detailed in traditional building materials, especially various kinds of pressed brick and stone.

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The Augustus Warner House is finely-crafted and detailed with a variety of building materials, including wood, terra-cotta, and pressed and molded brick.

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Hallberg is especially noteworthy for his designs for houses in the Gold Coast neighborhood on Chicago's Near North Side, which historically was Chicago's premiere residential neighborhood after its development in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Hallberg was one of the most important architects working for Gold Coast clients, designing more than two dozen single-family houses and row houses in the neighborhood.

The Starling House at 1254 N. Lake Shore Dr., designed by Hallberg in 1892, is a contributing building in the Seven Houses on Lake Shore Drive Chicago Landmark District. The Seaverns House at 3831 S. Michigan Ave., designed in 1892-93, became the South Side Community Art Center in 1940 and is an individual Chicago Landmark.

Hallberg is also noteworthy for his work for ethnic Swedish institutions. He designed a building for the Swedish Theological Seminary (now part of Kendall College) in Evanston in 1907 (identified as a contributing building in the National Register-listed Northeast Evanston Historic District). He also designed the Old Main Building built for Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, which is a grandly-scaled Classical Revival-style building built of buff-colored dolomite limestone quarried in Iowa. Old Main was individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969.

Hallberg also designed buildings for two hospitals founded by Swedish religious denominations—Swedish Covenant and Augustana hospitals. In 1889, Hallberg designed the "Swedish Home of Mercy" for the Covenant denomination, and in 1892, he designed a building for Augustana Hospital in the Lincoln Park community area. Both buildings have been demolished.

In addition, Hallberg designed the Women's Hospital, which stood at the northwest corner of W. 32nd Street and S. Rhodes Ave. in the Douglas community area on Chicago's South Side. Built in 1885, this hospital was founded to treat illnesses specific to women; its building has been demolished.

Hallberg designed two medical college buildings (both demolished) for the Policlinic Medical School (a post-graduate school teaching medical specialties) in 1889 and the Women's Medical College (the only medical school in Chicago that admitted women at the time of its construction in 1885).

Hallberg also is significant for his industrial designs. He designed the original section (1913-14) of the Vasser Swiss Underwear Company Building at 2343-45 W. Diversey (designated as a Chicago Landmark in 2008). Other representative industrial buildings designed by Hallberg include early buildings in the Stewart-Warner complex in the 1800-block of W. Diversey (demolished) and the Dietzgen Company Building at 990 W. Fullerton (a contributing building to the National Register-listed Sheffield Historic District.

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Integrity Criteria

The integrity of the proposed landmark must he preserved in light of its location, de-sigh, setting, materials, workmanship and ability to express its historic community, architectural or aesthetic interest or value.

The Augustus Warner House possesses an exceptionally high degree of exterior historic physical integrity, unusual for the building type and the age of the building. It retains its historic location, siting, and massing, as well as the vast majority of its character-defining exterior forms and details. It retains its red pressed brick front facade, its limestone and decorative-metal stoop, glass-and-paneled wood front door, second-story projecting wood bay, and other detailing.

Exterior changes to the building are relatively minor. Original cladding for the roof of the second-story projecting bay and the false mansard atop the house and facing Dearborn has been replaced with asphalt shingles. Other changes can be found on the building's rear elevation (not considered a significant historical and architectural feature for the purpose of this proposed designation), including rear wooden stairs that provide exterior access to upper floors. In addition, the building's interior is not being considered as a significant historical and architectural feature for the purpose of this proposed designation and has not been evaluated.

Despite these changes, the Augustus Warner House retains the ability to express its historic, community, architectural, and aesthetic values as a finely-designed and -crafted single-family house designed in the Queen Anne and Victorian Gothic architectural styles and for its historic associations with its architect, L. Gustav Hallberg, Sr., a significant architect in the context of Chicago architectural history. The building's historic integrity is preserved in light of its location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, and ability to express such values.

Significant Historical and Architectural Features

Whenever a building, structure, object, or district is under consideration for landmark designation, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks is required to identify the "significant historical and architectural features" of the property. This is done to enable the owners and the public to understand which elements are considered most important to preserve the historical and architectural character of the proposed landmark. The Commission has identified the significant features for the building, and these are defined in the Commission's "Recommendation to the City Council of Chicago that Chicago Landmark Designation be adopted for the Augustus Warner House," dated September 5, 2013.

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Selected Bibliography

"AIA Historical Directory of American Architects," American Institute of Architects website: http://communities.aia.org/sites/hdoaa/wiki/Wiki%20Pages/Home.aspx

American Contractor, Index to the Chicago Building Permit Column, 1898-1912, Chicago History Museum website: hJtp^/wwwjM^^ 1912permits/search.asp

Andreas, A.T. History of Chicago. Chicago: A.T. Andreas Publishing, 1885.

Bonner, Thomas Neville. Medicine in Chicago: 1850-1950. 2^nd ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991.

Buelow, Paul A. "Hospitals," in Encyclopedia of Chicago: www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org

Chicago Historic Resources Survey, 1983 - 1995.

Chicago Tribune, various dates.

Cook County Assessor website: www.cookcountyassessor.com

Dixon, Roger, and Stefan Muthesius. Victorian Architecture. London: Thames and Hudson, 1978.

Fleming, Jeffrey S. "Evanston Lakeshore Historic District," National Register of Historic Places nomination, 1979.

Girouard, Mark. Sweetness and Light: The Queen Anne Movement, 1860-1900. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977.

Graf, John. Chicago's Mansions. Images of America series. Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2004.

Granacki, Victoria. "Vasser Swiss Underwear Company Building," Chicago Landmark designation report, 2008.

Gustafson, Anna Olson, "Swedes," in Encyclopedia of Chicago : www.encvclopedia.chicagohistory.org

"History of Swedish Covenant Hospital:" www.swedishcovenant.org

Inland Architect, various dates.

"Lawrence Gustav Hallberg," obituary, Chicago Tribune, December 5, 1915. Longstreth, Richard, ed. The Charnley House: Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and

the Making of Chicago's Gold Coast. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Marquis, Albert Nelson, ed. The Book of Chicagoans. Chicago: A.N. Marquis & Co.,

1911.

Northeast Evanston Historic District Association, "Northeast Evanston Historic District," National Register of Historic Places nomination, 1999.

"Old Main, Augustana College," Historic Campus Architecture Project, Council of Independent Colleges website: http://hcap.artstor.org/cgi-bin/library?a=d&d=pl38

Olson, Anita R., "A Community Created: Chicago Swedes, 1880-1950," in Holli, Mel-vin G., and Peter d'A. Jones. Ethnic Chicago: A Multicultural Portrait. 4^th ed. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1995.

Olson, Ernst W., ed. History of the Swedes of Illinois. Chicago: Engberg-Holmberg Publishing Co., 1908.

Pacyga, Dominic, and Ellen Skerrett. Chicago, City of Neighborhoods: Histories & Tours. Chicago: Loyola University Chicago, 1986.

31

Rand McNally & Co. 's Bird's-Eye Views and Guide to Chicago. Chicago: Rand McNal ly&Co., 1893.

The Stopt Diapason. Whole number 96 (Summer 2007), Chicago-Midwest, Organ Historical Society.

Wagner, Robert. "Gold Coast Historic District," National Register of Historic Places nomination, 1977.

Withey, Henry F., and Elsie Rathburn Withcy. Biographical Dictionary of American Architects (Deceased). Los Angeles: Hennessey & Ingalls, 1970.

 

A close-up view of the Warner House's roofline gable with its terracotta "cameo" medallion, foliate ornament and Gothic-style finial.

32

Acknowledgements

CITY OF CHICAGO

Rahm Emanuel, Mayor

Department of Housing and Economic Development

Andrew J. Mooney, Commissioner

Patricia A. Scudiero, Managing Deputy Commissioner, Bureau of Planning and Zoning Eleanor Esser Gorski, Assistant Commissioner, Historic Preservation Division

Project Staff

Terry Tatum, research, writing, photography and layout Eleanor Esser Gorski, editing

Illustrations

Flickr website: p. 5, 21 (top), 27, & 29 (bottom right). Historic Preservation Division: front cover, pp. 6, 8, 9, & 32. Various websites: p. 12 (top), 21 (bottom), & 24.

Barbara Crane for the Commission on Chicago Landmarks: p. 12 (bottom). Rand McNally & Co. 's Bird's-Eye Views and Guide to Chicago: p. 13 (top). Pacyga & Skerrett, Chicago, City of Neighborhoods: p. 13 (bottom). Olson, History of the Swedes of Illinois: p. 16 (top left). Graf, Chicago's Mansions: p. 16 (top right).

Digital Collections, Ryerson & Burnham Libraries, The Art Institute of Chicago: p. 16 (bottom).

Chicago Historic Resources Survey: pp. 17 (top) & 18 (middle left and bottom). Cook County Assessor: pp. 17 (bottom left, middle & right) & 18 (top left & middle right).

HARGIS (Historic Architectural Geographical Information System), Illinois Historic

Preservation Agency: pp. 18 (top right), 19, & 29 (bottom left). Chicago Tribune: p. 21 (middle).

Charles Cushman Collection, Indiana University: p. 29 (top).

33

COMMISSION ON CHICAGO LANDMARKS

Rafael M. Leon, Chairman James M. Houlihan, Vice-Chairman Andrew J. Mooney, Secretary Anita Blanchard, M.D. Victor Ignacio Dziekiewicz Tony Hu Mary Ann Smith Ernest C. Wong

The Commission is staffed by the:

 

The Department of HOUSING and

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Department of Housing and Economic Development

Bureau of Planning and Zoning

Historic Preservation Division

33 N. LaSalle St., Suite 1600

Chicago, Illinois 60602

312.744.3200 (TEL) ~ 312.744.9140 (FAX)

http://www.cityofchicago.org/landmarks

Printed September 2012; revised and reprinted September 2013.

34

Exhibit B

 

Department of Housing and Economic Development

city of cm icago

November 1. 2012 Report to the Commission on Chicago Landmarks on the

Augustus Warner House 1337 N. Dearborn St.

The Department of Housing and Economic Development finds that the proposed designation of the Augustus Warner House as a Chicago Landmark supports the City's overall planning goals for the surrounding Near North Side community area and is consistent with the City's governing policies and plans.

Built in 1884, the Augustus Warner House is a significant "first-generation" building in Chicago's Gold Coast neighborhood and exemplifies the historic importance of the neighborhood, which developed in the post-Chicago Fire era of the 1870s. 1880s and 1890s as arguably Chicago's premiere upper-income residential neighborhood. It is also the work of Chicago architect L. Gustav Hallberg, Sr., who is significant in the context of Chicago architecture as a designer of finely-designed and -crafted single-family houses for Chicago's upper- and upper-middle-class families, designing many of the mansions that originally lined Gold Coast streets, as well as those of then-fashionable neighborhoods on the West and South Sides.

The Augustus Warner House is located in the Gold Coast neighborhood, which is part of the Near North Side community area. It is zoned RM-6.5, which is a high-density zoning classification thai permits high-rise residential buildings. Surrounding properties are primarily a mix of small-scale houses and flat buildings built in the late nineteenth century and large-scale tall apartment buildings built in the 1960s and 1970s. Smaller-scale residential properties are largely zoned RM-5 (which accommodates multi-unit residential buildings), while larger buildings are zoned RM-6.5.

In addition, the Warner House is located within the Near North Historic Overlay District No. I. This purpose of this overlay district, which covers much of the Gold Coast neighborhood.-is to supplement existing base district zoning regulations in order to "preserve and enhance the unique and historic residential character of the Near North Historic Area," "preserve the existing and delicate balance of townhouses, row houses, landmark structures and high-rise buildings," and "prevent further increases in scale, density and congestion by limiting construction of taller buildings." In the case of the Warner House, the Near North Historic Overlay District No. I would allow the demolition of the house, but a replacement building could be no taller than 125 feel or 11 stories, whichever was greater.

The Augustus Warner House is well-served by public transportation. The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) Red Line Division St. stop is 2 V2 blocks south west of the property at Division and Clark streets. Several CTA bus lines serve the area, including the #22 Clark. #36 Broadway. # 70 Division, #151

•J 1 N (> !>• T 11 I. \S.\ l.l. K s'l'li    KT. Rufi.M  i»»:i. i' H I <' '.•:<■   II.I.INiiiS .;<n,iii'

Sheridan and #155 LaSalle buses. Lincoln Park is the nearest park and is located 2 Vr blocks north of the building.

There are a number of individual Chicago Landmarks and Chicago Landmark Districts in the vicinity of the Augustus Warner House. The Three Arts Club, located at 1300 N. Dearborn St., is located on the same block as the Warner House. To the east is the Fisher Studio Homes at 1209 N. State Parkway, while to the north is the Madlener House at 4 W. Burton PI. To the northwest are the Germania Club and the Village Theatre, located at 1536 and 1546-50 N. Clark St., respectively. Additional individual Chicago Landmarks are the James Charnley House at 1365 N. Astor St., the Former Engine Company 27 firehouse at 1244 N. Wells, and the Bryan Lathrop House (housing the Fortnightly Club) at 120 E. Bellevue PI. The Astor Street District, comprised largely of residential buildings facing the 1200- through 1500-blocks of N. Astor St., is located two blocks to the east of the Warner House. Farther to the east, the Seven Houses on Lake Shore Drive District is made up of seven surviving buildings built as single-family houses. To the south is the Washington Park District and Extension, comprised largely of small-scale residential and institutional buildings located along the 800- through 1100-blocks of North Dearborn St.

The Department supports the designation of the Augustus Warner House as a Chicago Landmark. The Central Area Plan, approved by the Chicago Plan Commission (CPC) in 2003, and the Central Area Action Plan, approved by the CPC in 2009, both support the goals of historic preservation and the protection of landmark buildings within the City's Central Area, including the Near North Side. Preserving buildings such as the Warner House provides many long-term benefits to the City. Landmark designation encourages the preservation and rehabilitation through a range of incentives. Designation also supports economic development, employment and an enhanced property tax base. It serves as a model for sustainable development by retaining existing buildings and adapting them to modern conditions. Preservation of Chicago's architectural heritage attracts tourists and new residents as well as contributes to the quality of life for Chicago citizens.

In conclusion, landmark designation of the Augustus Warner House supports the City's overall planning goals for Chicago's Near North Side community area and is consistent with the City's governing policies and plans.