Thursday, May 8, 2008

'Build With Terra Cotta For Beauty'

From "Arthur Gerber: Insull's Transit Architect" by Tom Burke and Graham Garfield

"Gerber's Wilson station was grand and impressive enough in design and execution that the "Terra Cotta Service Bureau" elected to use it on an advertisement promoting the use of terra cotta in buildings ("Build with TERRA COTTA for Beauty"). The richly detailed parapet served as a landmark in Uptown for decades. (photo from the JJ Sedelmaier Productions Collection)

11 comments:

  1. Wow, it's so clean.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That is really a nice image.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Can anyone do a timeline on how and when things changed? As one poster a while back said, "Who looked at this beautiful building and thought 'that's a perfect place to put a stinkin' Popeyes'!!"

    ReplyDelete
  4. Great photo. Love seeing old images of Chicago

    ReplyDelete
  5. Who's bright idea was it to remove the top portion? And where is it now?

    ReplyDelete
  6. So wait... where is the train? This is a doctored photo, I'm guess because the train goes right overhead? Or did it run a different route back then?

    ReplyDelete
  7. They whited out the train tracks and other "stuff" behind it because it is ad for terra cotta - so the focus is on the building.

    ReplyDelete
  8. That building totally looks like it's crying out for a Popeye's Chicken! Ha!

    ReplyDelete
  9. http://www.chicago-l.org/stations/wilson.html

    ReplyDelete