Colony of Exclusivity
It's hard to know why some buildings end up looking the way they do. If a structure
wasn't designed by a famous architect, chances are there's little record left of how certain design choices were made. Was it the architects Loewenberg & Loewenberg who decided to create an ornate entry to the Hotel Pine Grove? Or did the owners Robert Edelman and Hyland Paullin ask the architects to give their apartment hotel a little bit of glamour?
Apartment hotel construction was in its heyday when the Pine Grove was built in 1923.
Many were built to serve a middle class clientèle and dressing up your building with elaborate decoration could give residents a feeling that they lived somewhere special . While offering only 2, 3 and 4 room apartments, the Pine Grove had grand public spaces to mill around in, fit for a king and queen.
The neighborhood was undergoing a transformation at the time. Large single family homes
were being demolished to make way for multi-family dwellings. The architects also designed a smaller 3-story apartment building just around the corner, which was described as being in "a rapidly growing colony of exclusive hotels and apartments." And while the Pine Grove may not have had the social cache of some of the 8 to 10 room apartments being offered in neighboring buildings, it certainly looked the part.
Posted by designslinger at 2/11/2010 1:16 AM 
Categories: Architecture, History, Decorative Arts
Tags: terra-cotta apartment hotels decoration Chicago apartment buildings
Categories: Architecture, History, Decorative Arts
Tags: terra-cotta apartment hotels decoration Chicago apartment buildings
I love the apartment-hotel era! In fact, I'm fascinated by mid-to-large apartment buildings altogether. I wish there was some kind of register where you could trace who lived in each apartment down through its history.
Now there's a project!