Chicago, IL: Jeanne Gang's Aqua Tower

(Satellite)

The Aqua Tower is the wavy building. I think the blue towers to the right are her St. Regis building.

Illinois Field Guide posted

Aqua Tower rises 82 stories above Chicago's Lakeshore East neighborhood, and when it was completed in 2010, it became the tallest building in the world designed by a woman, a title Chicago architect Jeanne Gang held onto until her own follow up project, the St. Regis Chicago, eventually surpassed it just blocks away.

Gang got the job in an unusual way for a project this size. Veteran Chicago developer Jim Loewenberg met her in 2004, at a point when her tallest completed independent work was a 90 foot theater in Rockford, Illinois. He was looking for a young architect willing to break from the standard glass box formula for a tower going up at Lakeshore East, a site boxed in by a crowded field of existing high rises. Gang and her team responded with an idea nobody else in Chicago's skyline was doing at the time, stretching each floor's balconies outward at different lengths, anywhere from two to twelve feet, specifically to open up sightlines toward Lake Michigan and Millennium Park that a typical rectangular tower would have blocked entirely.

The result is the building's signature feature, a rippling, wave-like facade made of contoured concrete balconies jutting out from a rectangular glass core, with every single floor plate shaped slightly differently from the ones above and below it. Gang drew the inspiration directly from the layered limestone outcroppings found along the Great Lakes shoreline, translating that natural topography into poured concrete on a scale nobody had attempted downtown before. The design wasn't just visual either. Those irregular balcony shapes also help break up Chicago's notoriously harsh lake winds and provide shading, doing real structural work rather than existing purely for the sake of appearance.

At 819 feet [1318m] tall, Aqua combines residential apartments, condominiums, a hotel, offices, and parking into one 1.9 million square foot vertical community, all sitting on top of an eight story base topped by a massive terrace complete with gardens, a running track, and a fire pit. It remains one of the largest projects ever awarded to an American architecture firm led by a woman, and it launched Gang and her firm, Studio Gang, into the center of Chicago's architectural conversation almost overnight.

Aqua has stayed one of the most photographed and talked about buildings on the skyline in the years since, recognized by critics and architecture publications as one of the standout skyscrapers built anywhere in the world during the 2010s. For a city that already claims some of the most influential architecture in American history, Aqua gave Chicago something genuinely new, proof that even in a skyline shaped for a century by rigid steel and glass towers, there was still room for something that moved like water instead.

Chicago, IL: 1912 C P Kimball & Co. Automobile Body Factory, an "Industrial Gothic" Building

(Satellite)

Street View, May 2019

Carey Wintergreen posted
[The description is copyrighted. Click the "posted" link for a detailed description of the building and its history. My main interest is that he describes the style as "industrial gothic." The building was used by C P Kimball from 1912 until they went bankrupt in 1926. Since 1993, it has been used to store records.]
📸©️Percy H Sloan | c 1912 | Newberry Library
Carey Wintergreen shared

Carey Wintergreen commented on his share

1915 Cadillac Model 51 V8

Coachwork by C P Kimball & Company

De Tour Village, MI: Ship Bow is now a Cottage

(Satellite)

The wheelhouse of  the Benson Ford has been preserved on South Bass Island in Lake Erie. But this is another preservation effort.

Chuck Zentmeyer posted
Pit stop on the way home from the Soo gave us the opportunity to see this and meet with the owners. They graciously showed us around. Thank you so much for your hospitality.
Glenda Jill shared
Alan Wooller: They cut the bow off up at the Purvis scrap yard and barged it down. I remember seeing it when it was just shimmed in place before they cleaned it all up and secured it. They definitely did a wonderful job!

Preston Allers commented on Chuck's post, cropped
Taken yesterday as we were heading down river.

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Kurt S Volkers commented on Glenda's share, cropped
This was taken 7/3/2015 from the water.

Rick Knutson commented on Glenda's share
[When I tried typing in the "newsthumbs" URL, I got a 404. But I did find this: https://boatnerd.com/lewis-g-harriman/]

Collingwood, ON: 1929 Hotel/Grain Elevator

(Satellite)

Street View, Apr 2021

safe_image for Impressive hotel will soon be built into century-old grain silos in Ontario

BlogTO
The silos will be used for hotel rooms and the new tower will be the cash-cow residential units.

BlogTO
The development also includes a restaurant and event space. "A tenth-floor space on the current 'bin floor' atop the silos is planned as a publicly-accessible feature offering elevated views of the town and Georgian Bay."

Bonus: the Canada Malting silos in Toronto, ON, might be turned into an observation deck.

Chicago, IL: Essanay (Movie) Studios

(Satellite)

Not all big industries have smokestacks. When you consider movies, music, sports, etc., the entertainment industry is big.

Street View, Nov 2021

Chuck Edmonson posted eight photos with the comment:

THE HOLLYWOOD OF THE PRAIRIES

Before silent movie makers discovered the sunny skies of Southern California, Chicago held the distinction of being the Hollywood of the Prairies.

 On August 10, 1907 George K. Spoor and Gilbert M. Anderson founded Essanay Studios on the near north side, moving just a year later to Argyle Street in Uptown.

 The name was derived from the initials of the founders last names, S and A. With a staff of around 80 employees and performers the studio was soon turning out around 8 fifteen minute silent movies a month which included the likes of early film stars Francis X. Bushman, Ben Turpin and Charlie Chaplin.

 It would be Essanay Studios who would discover a young Gloria Swanson while she was on a visit there. 

 Sadly a decade later in 1917 film makers would soon turn to the warm weather and sunny skies of California. Until that time even outdoor shots were filmed inside, the move allowed filmmakers to go outside the studio to shot. The old studio still stands, now a Chicago landmark.

Jennifer Ann Stix: Toured Essanay Studios in the early ‘80’s. They were a video production facility at the time.

George Anderson, aka Bronco Billy was also one of the early founders.

Link with list of films made at Essanay Studios (includes synopses, actors, etc.)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/.../Category:Essanay_Studios...

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Baltimore, MD: 1906 B&O Headquarters

Old Headquarters: (Satellite?, corner of East Baltimore Street & North Calvert Street, but which quadrant?)

Depot: (HAER; Satellite?)

1906 Headquarters: (3D Satellite)

Baltimore & Ohio Ellicott City Station Museum posted two images with the comment:

On this day in history, 7th February 1904, the Great Baltimore Fire began. This fire was the most devastating in Baltimore’s history. The fire began on the morning of 7th of February and would burn until 5pm the next day. The fire started in the Hurst building, a dry goods store, within minutes all the surrounding buildings were ablaze as the fire swept rapidly through downtown Baltimore. The battle against the raging inferno involved 1,231 firefighters. These firefighters included volunteers from the surrounding counties and outlying towns of Maryland. It is likely that members of the Volunteer Fire Department of Ellicott City also came to Baltimore to assist in fighting the blaze. The B&O Railroad played a vital role in bringing firefighters and fire equipment from nearby cities such as Frederick and Washington, DC. However, due to the lack of standardization of fire equipment, firefighters from outside of Baltimore found that their hoses and pump equipment were not compatible with the water systems in Baltimore, limiting their effectiveness.

The Great Baltimore Fire burned 70 city blocks of downtown Baltimore with over 1500 buildings destroyed in the blaze. One of the greatest losses was the destruction of the B&O headquarters on the corner of Baltimore and Calvert streets. This 1888 building was designed in the ornate Second Empire architectural style that symbolized the grandeur of the B&O Railroad. Sadly, many of the irreplaceable records and documents from the first decades of B&O Railroad were lost in this fire. A loss that is still felt by historians to this day. 

The Great Baltimore Fire was the most destructive fire in the United States since the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. It destroyed much of Baltimore’s historic 19th century era Downtown and caused an estimated $200 million in property damage. The destruction of fire led to a massive reconstruction effort. In 1906, the Baltimore Sun reported that “one of the great disasters of modern time had been converted into a blessing.” The fire spurred a massive downtown urban renewal project, the city built new safer fireproofed buildings, modern sewerage systems and wider streets designed to facilitate streetcar traffic. In 1906 The B&O Railroad would complete its new headquarters building, a 13-story Beaux Arts style skyscraper on Charles Street. The new B&O Railroad headquarters was declared to be “a monument to the city’s progressiveness” that represented the rebirth of Baltimore in the aftermath of the fire.

Images: The old Baltimore and Ohio Headquarters building destroyed in great fire of 1904 

The ruins of downtown Baltimore in the aftermath of the fire (Enoch Pratt Free Library / State Library Resource Center)

Conor Conneally shared

Edward Bommer: The B&O office building burned down in the early 1900's with the loss of nearly all the company's records. It could well be that gas was the issue and the building had been piped for gas lighting throughout when built in the late 1800's. Oddly at time, many people felt that those new "Edison lights" from electricity were more dangerous than gas. They could shock someone if they touched it wrong, or if it sparked from a short circuit that could start a fire. Gas could be easily shut off at the light. But was it always really SHUT OFF? Most working folks simply blew out their lit coal oil lamp to turn off the light at home and doing that unthinkingly at a gas-lit office may have been more common than we'd like to think. From the wreckage of the B&O office building, signs of an explosion are visible.

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1 of 7 photos posted by Irving Vnay

The B&O Railroad Headquarters Building is a historic office building at 2 North Charles Street in Baltimore, Maryland. It is a 13-story, 220-foot skyscraper designed by the Boston and Baltimore-based architectural firm of Parker & Thomas and constructed in 1904–1906.

"When the original Second Empire style headquarters on the corner of Baltimore and Calvert Street was destroyed in the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904, Baltimore & Ohio Railroad executives decided to build a new 13 story steel-framed building two blocks west of the old site. The building's entrance is adorned by two sculptures: Mercury, the Roman god for commerce, and a figure named Progress of Industry, which holds a torch and a locomotive; Progress of Industry clearly invokes the company's position not only as an industry leader, but also the company's aspiration to be a vehicle of progress."

It was designed by the architectural firm of Parker and Thomas of Baltimore and Boston, assisted by Herbert D. Hale and Henry G. Morse, and built by the construction firm of the brothers W. W. and E. A. Wells of Chicago. The same group had successfully teamed up a couple of years earlier on the Belvedere Hotel, an eleven-story Beaux-Arts building, about one mile up North Charles Street in the Mount Vernon area of downtown Baltimore.

"The 13-story office building, built in 1906, served as headquarters for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad for 75 years. The building's beauty and elegance of its marbled lobbies, ornate stairs and Tiffany stained-glass windows became an instant landmark in downtown Baltimore and it symbolized the power and prestige of America's largest and oldest railroad." The impressive building includes seven different kinds of marble imported from six countries representing four continents. The first 3 floors of the exterior façade are clad in New Hampshire granite, while Bedford stone is utilized from the fourth floor and above. The trim is terra cotta tile. The building's H shape design provides for a large number of window offices. The ornate main lobby contains two white marble staircases, grand chandeliers and many decorative details.

As the building neared completion in 1906, The Baltimore Sun ran a glowing piece under the headline, A Palace for B. and O. - Headquarters a Monument to City's Progressiveness, "A model of architecture, with ornamentation and decorations, inside and out, of the richest and most up-to-date design, the new Baltimore and Ohio building, now nearing completion at the northwest corner of Baltimore and Charles Streets, opposite the new home of the Baltimore Sun, will be a lasting monument to Baltimore's progressiveness. Not only is it the largest office building in Maryland, and perhaps along the Atlantic Coast south of Philadelphia, but it ranks among the finest in the world in style and completeness." The article went on to relate the tremendous skill of the craftsmen, the gigantic size of the structure, including 1,600 windows, and the great number of employees, who would work there, 1,000 in all, 500 of whom could be fed at any one time in the company dining room.

When the B&O Headquarters Building was completed, it was the second tallest structure in Baltimore to the 16 story 249-foot Continental Trust Company Building, two blocks away at 201 East Baltimore St., which was constructed in 1900–1901 to designs prepared by the Chicago skyscraper architect D.H. Burnham and Company.

Oscar G. Murray was the president of the B&O Railroad when their new Headquarters Building opened in 1906. His 1914 will established a fund for his employees’ widows and orphans. It survives 100 years later and is administered today by the Baltimore Community Foundation.

The current occupant of the building, The Hotel Monaco, rhapsodizes on its website, "The (B&O) Headquarters opened its doors at midnight on September 12, 1906, to the dazzling spectacle of more than 5,000 electric lights that 'burst into fire and presented a grand spectacle', as reported by The (Baltimore) Sun. The newspaper went on to point out that Oscar G. Murray, B&O Railroad president, chose to move into his office suite the next day, September 13. 'The structure is 13 stories high; Murray started in the railroad business on January 13, 1872; and he was elected the thirteenth president of the railroad,' furthered the news report. Of course, Murray's office number was 13 and his phone extension was the same. Amusing anecdotes aside, the building is known for architectural greatness. The exterior is dignified and monumental, with beautiful carving and ornamental work showing off the craftsmanship of yesteryear. Perhaps one of the most compelling features is the building's statuary over the main entrance. Believed to predate the statuary at New York's Grand Central Station and designed by John Evans & Co. of Boston, the figure of Mercury and an allegorical feature cradling a locomotive represent transportation and commerce."

The B&O Railroad Headquarters Building lies within the Baltimore Business and Government Historic District, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987. In 2001 the City of Baltimore's Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation and the Maryland Historical Trust designated the B&O Building one the city's ten most historically consequential buildings.

Randall Hampton shared
Tom Dunne posted a copy of Irving's description
Mabry E Pouncy: I worked for the B&ORR Road Forces ( Electrical Dept) in 1963 , we changed every office light from incandescent to Troffer florescent style fixtures. No sooner did we finish all 13 floors , dropped ceilings became the rage and we took every one down, and replaced them with layin lights. What a job.
Martin Myers: Many years ago I was doing some restoration work at the B & O building. The original brass door knobs had the B&O logo cast in them. They couldn't find the stock of old ones that were supposed to be there so new knobs were cast and installed. Later I was working a job at Pier 5. Guess who's door knobs were on the the doors.

Dan Hennelly posted

Although not a railroad station, the B&O Railroad Headquarters Building located at 2 North Charles Street in Baltimore served as the railroad's headquarters for 75 years. Constructed between 1904 and 1906, the 13-story building housed over a thousand employees of the B&O Railroad. When completed, the building was celebrated for its architectural greatness. Its interior featured seven different kinds of marble. The first three floors of the exterior are clad in New Hampshire granite, floors four through thirteen are clad in Bedford stone. Two statues sit above the main entrance (barely visible in the postcard.)

The building now houses 202 room Hotel Monaco, a boutique hotel operated by the Kimpton Hotel and Restaurant Group. There are three floors of office space.

Jim Kelling: Built after the great Baltimore fire of 1904 destroyed the previous headquarters building a few blocks away.

Thomas Dunne shared

 

Rod Russell commented on Thomas' share
There also is a restaurant, associated with the hotel. The lobby appears unchanged since B&O operated the building, with a pair of marble stairways and a lot of Tiffany-style cut colored glass. It is worth a visit.

Tamme Pompilio, Jun 2022

This 7:21 video has a brief history of the B&O railroad as well as the headquarters building.

Cowan, TN: Museum/L&N/NC&StL Depot

(Satellite, 526 photos)

NC&StL = Nashville, Chattanooga & St Louis

CSX still operates the railroad.

Street View, Jul 2013

Street View, Apr 2014

Frank Keller Photography posted
I was visiting the small rail museum in Cowan, TN when CSX K443 rolled by headed south towards Waycross, GA. Interesting little museum BTW

Jamie Elliott posted seven photos with the comment: "Cowan, Tennessee at the former station now a railroad museum. Current csx mainline is behind station."

Vince Webb: We just recently installed a rail fanning camera there at the depot. You can watch the live feed here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvpaEFaLpho

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Phillip Parks commented on Jamie's post

While checking out the Cumberland Mountain Tunnel marker for the NC&StL Cowan Tunnel, I noticed that the town still has some Italianate Architecture buildings. The windows along the street have been remodeled, but the side window on the far left looks original. I included the marker in the center front and the museum/depot on the right side. This town exists because of the workers needed to build that 2228' (679m) long tunnel from 1848 to 1852.

Street View, Apr 2014

Kansas City, MO: Stuart Hall Lofts/Nabisco Bakery

(3D Satellite)

Street View, Jun 2018

KC Yesterday posted

THE STORY OF NABISCO IN KANSAS CITY

In September 1911, the Crossroads were forever changed when a grand celebration was held for the opening of the National Biscuit Company's newest and most advanced baking facility. 

Nabisco's grand opening in KC was met with a flurry of fanfare, drawing in guests from across the country and forever marking the history of the city.

This seven-story, 200,000 square-foot facility, situated at the intersection of Central Street and Milwaukee Avenue, was the talk of the town. 

The bakery was one of the largest and most modern in the country when it was built -- the event's guests marveled at the modern technology of the bakery, with production starting on the top floor and the finished biscuits being packaged in Nabisco's renowned In-er-seal packages on a lower level.

The bakery continued to operate until 1951, after which the building found a new purpose as the headquarters for the Stuart Hall Stationery Company. After changing ownership several more times, the building went dormant for several years.

Then, in the early 2000s, a transformation began. By 2004, the once-bustling bakery had been repurposed into the Freight House Lofts at Stuart Hall. Elements of the original architecture, like the arched ceilings, wood and concrete floors, and brick walls, were carefully preserved, paying homage to the building's storied past.

Today, Stuart Hall stands proudly in the Freight House District of downtown Kansas City, not far from the vibrant Crossroads District. Its rich history echoes throughout the building, serving as a testament to the city's past and an integral part of its present.

DebKen Reppert: After living here for over 50 years, and seeing thousands of pictures of the National Biscuit Company building, it finally dawned on me that it was "NABISCO" (NA BIS CO). Sigh.

Chicago, IL: Peace Jubilee Municipal Triumphal Arch

(Satellite)

Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago posted two photos with the comment:

Two views of the Peace Jubilee Municipal Triumphal Arch at the intersection of La Salle and Washington in Chicago on October 21 and 28, 1898. The arch was constructed as a tribute to the Army and Navy at the end of the Spanish American War. The legible portions of the text on the side of the arch read as follows: “Chicago Salutes the Heroes of the Army and Swells __ Hallelujah that Hails Their Return from Camp and Trench and Field. Heroes, whose Valor in Action and Fortitude in Hardship Have Won Tributes from Every Land. Hurrah for the American Soldier, the Young and The Old, the Blue and the Grey, who shouted “Ready“ when the Nation Called.”

MWRD posted again.

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To celebrate Veterans Day in 2023, MWRD also posted this photo.

MWRD posted
The old Chicago Board of Trade building is seen in this photo from October 22, 1898, with decorations for the Peace Jubilee celebrating the end of the Spanish American War. The photographer's journal describes the banner hanging on the building as, "Jubilee Decoration on Board of Trade. 'Commerce Follows the Flag.'"

Naperville, IL: 5th Avenue Station/Kroehler Furniture Co.

(Kroehler 3D Satellite; Depot 3D Satellite)

This factory was used to help care for the injured when a passenger train travelling at 85 mph ran into another passenger train. (source)
Colin Mulligan American high speed rail attempts never recovered.

Marty Bernard posted

NOTE: Several commenters have said the series was taken before 1955.

INTRODUCTION: A. C. Kalmbach spent hours one mid-day at Naperville shooting trains on the CB&Q 3-track mainline (aka., racetrack). Sets of 35mm slides were produced from them and sold by Blackhawk Films and called "Noon at Naperville". No date is given. My guess is circa 1960. As you will see the captions, which I'll put in quotes, are not railfan type captions. I'll add roster and other information where I can.

The quality of the Blackhawk duplicates and the years gone by have left the slides quite blue. Eliminating the blue has not left much color, but I did my best. The slides would not sharpen up much.

Published with permission.

"Big furnature company at Naperville cointributes its quota to Burlington freight revenue."

 

safe_image for Naperville was home to the largest furniture-manufacturing company in the US
This building was built in 1918. The company was founded in 1893.
Andrew Cole: My grandfather started at Kroehler in the early 1930's and became a stockroom foreman and later did customer service until he retired in the 1970s. According to him, that during the Depression, the men would play baseball in the area north of the plant and when a job came up, they would get called in by turns so everyone got some work. Because he worked around the loading docks, he was also a material witness to the "Tragedy at Loomis Street" in 1946.

Lost Illinois Manufacturing posted six pictures with the comment:

Kroehler Manufacturing Co.In 1902, Peter E. Kroehler bought the Naper ille Lounge Co., a maker of wooden lounge chairs and upholstered furniture. Kroehler built a new factory in Naperville in 1913 after the original facility was destroyed by a tornado. Soon thereafter, he renamed the company Kroehler Manufacturing Co. This enterprise soon operated across the country and employed several hundred men and women in the Chicago area. By the middle of the 1940s, with over $20 million in annual sales, Kroehler was the second-largest furniture maker in the United States. During the 1960s, when the company employed close to 8,000 people around the country, annual revenues passed $100 million. The company struggled during the 1970s, closing its historic Naperville factory in 1978 and ending its operations in the area. In 1981 Kroehler was acquired by the ATR Group of Northbrook, which put the company up for sale. By the early 2000s, furniture was still manufactured under the Kroehler name by two unrelated companies, one in North Carolina and the other in Ontario, Canada.

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I assume this was the factory destroyed by the tornado.

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Ted Fisk asked about photos with boxcars there.
JW Shoener Here's a link that has a few photos with boxcars. http://www.napersettlement.org/index.aspx?NID=395
Eric Reinert Marty Bernard has lots of them on various sites: http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=4419872

Jayson Hallberg posted
Here’s CB&Q 5632 Pulling an excursion train as it goes through Naperville Illinois. Photo by: Melvern Finzer Circa 1960s. 🚂

I didn't realize that the part that still exists is such a small part of the original factory. When my wife and I first visited the repurposed builiding, it was more of a shopping mall and food court. When I had to run an errand in Naperville, I made a point to check out the old Kroehler factory on my way back. Other than parking being a hassle, it seems that they have been successful developing it as office space. It does not surprise me that there are a lot of lawyer offices in Naperville. Since my first pass looking for a parking spot was not successful, I ended up at the Loomis Street crossing. So I took photos of the locomotives of the eastbound freight. It looks like the first one suffered some sort of fire in its middle.

20180712 2830

Since I wasn't going anywhere, I got out of the car to take this shot facing West. Note the commuter train stopped at the station platform on M1. The freight is on M3.

The freight was going incredibly slow, so I turned around, found a parking spot and trotted to the west end of the factory building to find the train was still rolling through town. Note the underground pedestrian passage between the two parking lots. A pedestrian passage is desperately needed at the Main Street station in Downers Grove.

I moved closer to the train, but I was still in a bad position for photos, so I resisted wasting electrons until I saw this BN hopper.

Why would I take a photo of a commuter parking lot? To record that there was more of the freight train as far as I could see. But I moved on to take photos of the building.

This is the west end of the factory.

Since I was so close, I did walk to the northern platform of the depot for photos to the West and then East.

One advantage of taking photos is that I see stuff in the photos that I didn't notice in "real time." Below I zoomed in on the above photo because I noticed the parked freight. That would explain why the freight was rolling so slowly across Loomis Street --- it was coming to a stop just east of Loomis. If you look at a satellite map, you will see that there are no grade crossings in Lisle, IL. The tracks are elevated across that town because the town is down in the flood plane of the East Branch DuPage River.

Camera Resolution

A view of the southwest corner of the factory building.

The northwest corner making sure to include the iconic Naperville Water Tower.

Photo, Jul 2020

I'm going to "photo dump" the interior shots. They have quite a few plaques and framed photos illustrating the history of the building. I walked through the building from the west side to near the east side. 

They took advantage of the wood beam construction to leave a wide open space in the middle.

They also preserved the skylights.

Ken Rehor posted

BNSF 5694 pushing a westbound stack train is dwarfed by a huge new municipal water tank under construction just east of the 5th Ave Train Station in Naperville. 

2026-08-06 5:10pm