City - Chicago IL - Hustle and Bustle 1907

by Mike Savad

Title

City - Chicago IL - Hustle and Bustle 1907

Artist

Mike Savad

Medium

Photograph - Colorized Photo

Description

Colorized photo from 1907
Original Title: Madison and State Sts
Photographer: Detroit Publishing
Location: 2 State Street, Chicago IL

This is the corner of Madison and State streets. Historic buildings that still stand today, for the most part. The building you will most recognize is the Carson, Pirie, and Scott building, with all that bronze gilded ironwork directly in front of us. It was designed to be seen from both streets, which explains its corner design. The building was built in 1899, its a twelve story building, as was the code at the time. The structure is made of steel beams (many buildings took this approach after the great fire), because of such, the windows are much larger than others. The building was primarily a department store, selling dry goods, millinery and the like.

On the left, across the street, is the Mandel Brothers store, also a department store. While it was founded in 1855, the building was built in the late 1880's, employing 800 people. Over the years it grew rapidly, rebuilt in 1912, in which they now had 3000 people working there. Renovated again in 1948 and lasted till the 1970's. Sometime after that it became a part of the Chicago Library. By 1989 they demolished it and replaced it with a building that looks just as old.

An interesting fun fact, this store along with others, were connected by an underground subway. There were miles of subway tunnels under the city. They used it to deliver goods to the stores so they wouldn't clog traffic on the streets. This is why you almost never see stores that have wagons of goods, because it all happened underground. They even had a subway system. Mandel brothers had a warehouse a distance from here, and were able to deliver things underground. Every basement had 3 levels to drop off and store goods. As you can see here, not all stores had this, you can see a procession of goods coming from the store just up the block.

As you can see, it was a very popular corner. Everyone dressed as if going to a wedding, in their fancy hats and finery. All going in to shop and loaf around. Oh and if you look carefully, you will see what are two window washers, or two very casual people strolling about on the last building's window edge.

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April 6th, 2021

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