1366 North Dearborn Parkway
[1366 North Dearborn Parkway (1927) McNally & Quinn, architects /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
When 1366 Dearborn Parkway was built in 1927 the surrounding neighborhood was undergoing significant changes. Situated in the upscale Gold Coast community, the building replaced just another one of those old 19th century mansions built by Grandpa and Grandma. This was the Roaring Twenties afterall, so with no remorse, feelings of nostalgia, or hankering for old-world craftsmanship, it was out with old and in with the new.
[1366 North Dearborn Parkway, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
Architects McNally & Quinn's 14-story brick and limestone, multi-family structure replaced a 4,000 square foot, 20-room single family home built in 1876. The longest occupants of the house were also its last, the Samuel Morse Felton family. Felton was in the railroad business at a time when the railroad industry was big business in Chicago. Think of it in terms of the money Wall Street and the financial industry brings into New York today, or the imapct of the buckets of cash the technology industry loads into the Silicon Valley. So Felton was just one in a number of wealthy businessmen connected to railroading, which led to bank directorships, and the elusive, exclusive, well-connected, club memberships. But by 1925, he was 73 years old and downsizing. He resigned the presidency of the Chicago Great Western Railway and became company's first Chairman of the Board. He sold his house on the corner of Schiller and Dearborn Streets, and embracing the new modern way of living, moved into a large single-floor apartment at 233 E. Walton Street.
[Dearborn-Schiller Apartments /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
Unlike many of their neighboring high-rise developers, the new owners of the old Felton parcel Arthur and Garrett Fitzgerald, took a different approach in the way they would maximize a return on their their $800,000 real estate investment. The majority of the apartment towers popping-up around the neighborhood were of the exclusive, cooperative-restricting type, but the Dearborn-Schiller Apartments were designed with a less well-heeled clientele in mind. While nearby coops might have one unit per floor with up to 13-rooms or more, Dearborn-Schiller would have a total of 39 units on 13 floors with 3 apartments per floor, two 6-room and one 3-room. But, there was an added perk as the Chicago Tribune pointed out in a November 28, 1926 article, "Family rows will be quite all right in these apartments for the dividing walls between the apartments will be of double thickness with felt deadening to eliminate the passage of sound. So if friend wife doesn't approve of the way her lord and master takes his soup or the daughter of the family arrives too long past the 1 o'clock deadline the sky can be the limit in acrid remarks."
While voices may still be muffled at 1366, change came in the mid-1980s when the building went from rental to condo. And although curfews may still be broken followed by a lot of shouting, there are probably very few wives living there today who still consider their husbands their lord and master.
See some of the remaining 1870s-era, single family homes along Dearborn at: John P.Wilson & Joseph C. Bullock Houses, and the Luther McConnell House.
Posted by designslinger at 1/25/2012 2:00 AM 
Categories: Architecture, History
Tags: McNally and Quinn apartment buildings Gold Coast Dearborn Parkway
Categories: Architecture, History
Tags: McNally and Quinn apartment buildings Gold Coast Dearborn Parkway
This led me to wonder about nearby structures such as the Driehaus mansion and the Racquet Club. If you haven't featured these yet, hope you will.
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We posted about the Nickerson Mansion/Driehaus Museum way back in April, 2010 at: Art in a Marble Palace. The Racquet Club is definitely on the "to do" list!
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I was wondering why Schiller Street jogs out around this building? If not for it, the street would be a straight line to Sedgwick from the Lake.
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On a city map printed in 1862, Schiller Street runs from Sedgwick to Clark, where it ends, then picks up again on the east side of Dearborn and runs to the Lake along the southern edge of the Catholic Cemetery, where Schiller was called Church Street. Name change or not, the street lines up perfectly from one end to the other, even though it doesn't exist between that skinny stretch between Dearborn and Clark Street.
Actually, there are no east west streets between Clark and Dearborn from Division Street all the way to North Avenue - until a map from 1871. Then two streets cut through that long, skinny stretch of real estate, Burton Place toward the northern end of the parcel, and Schiller, which is kind of in the middle.
What's interesting though, is that if you look closely, the spacing between North Avenue and Burton is the same as between Burton and Schiller. And, there is no Burton Place on the map other than in that skinny band from Division to North whereas several blocks of Schiller were there, plain as day. So can we surmise that whoever surveyed that property, started at North Avenue, put in a city block and created Burton Place, then simply took the same number of feet and plotted in Schiller? This little piece of the new Schiller didn't exactly line-up with the existing portion, but it did fall into place in realtion to Burton and North Avenue.
So that's where Schiller sits today, equally distant from Burton to the north, as Burton is to North Avenue, as though the other portions of the street never even existed.
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