Window mystery

why would they put them on a party wall?

08/05/2010 10:58 PM

By Bonnie McGrath

3 Comments - Add Your Comment


Before the tear down



After the tear down (photo by Bonnie McGrath)

I took a walk tonight over to Summer Dance at Harrison and Michigan. It was polka night. And I watched quite a Chicken Dance. On the way home, I saw a friend of mine jogging across from his home at the Crane Building--and it reminded me of another neighborhood mystery I'd like to solve.


The Crane Building, at the corner of 9th and Michigan, was built several years after its neighbor, the YWCA building, a gem built in the 1890s that was recently torn down. The buildings' outside walls were built right against one another. In fact, since the demolition of the YWCA Building, the Crane Building's outside wall for about the first six stories is partly ravaged and in need of extensive repair.

The thing I can't figure out is why--as the evidence on the side of the building is clear--the builders of the Crane originally put windows in right up against the YWCA Building. What were they thinking? What were the windows for? It appears the windows were recently filled in with new brick. Was that done from the inside when the Crane Plumbing building was renovated a few years ago and turned into condos?

Who knows?


3 Comments - Add Your Comment



By Bonnie McGrath from South Loop
Posted: 09/04/2010 2:33 PM

Anonymous appears to be totally correct. South Loop history maven, cartographer and good friend Dennis McClendon has provided a bird's eye view photo from the past that indeed indicates courtyards (or at least light wells) exactly where the window outlines on the Crane Building are. Another neighborhood mystery is solved!


By Anonymous from South Loop
Posted: 09/02/2010 8:47 AM

I thought that the YWCA building had open courtyards within it. The Crane building windows would have been where those courtyards were. I don't know why they were filled in.


By susan from (ex) s. loop, now N.C. mts.
Posted: 08/12/2010 9:59 PM

Bonnie- did I miss something in my last trip back to chicago? Do you mean the building I used to live in during my first introduction to the south loop? (before my move to much grander ground on your block). I know you love mysteries of buildings and sorry I was not there this year to speculate along with you.