This house at 2034 East 73rd Street, in South Shore, dates to 1898. When built, its street number was 453 East 73rd, prior to the renumbering of 1909. I am not able to learn much more, as it (and pretty much everything else on 73rd) is notably absent from the Chicago Historic Resources Survey, nor does it surface in newspapers. Regardless, it is an unusually well-maintained example of simple Victorian design. The wooden shingles are an especially lovely touch, and one that generally hasn’t survived the onslaught of vinyl siding in the area.

Who says Corner Confections have to be pretty? I’m sure this was once a lovely building. It was built in 1931, and hints of Art Deco shine through the ham-handed application of the slipcover, cinderblocks, and graffiti-removal.

Like this building, the neighborhood immediately around it once had much more going on. Next door on Milwaukee, a movie palace, the Harding, stood until demolished in 1963 (the same year a Walgreens opened up in this corner). Across Spaulding, there was a bowling alley, but it burned in 1968. (This was the bowling alley where the truant William Gebhardt worked.) Still, while the neighborhood might have lost some beautiful buildings, small-scale retail has always been, and continues to be, the name of the game here.

This house at 3451 W. Diversey (pre-1909 address: 822 W. Diversey) was built in 1905. Through a layer of grime, it remains quite handsome. A power-washing and some paint would help bring out the delicate ornamental stone pieces and the two-color brick scheme. The asymmetry of the portico, with only one column, is a bit odd given the overall style, but I suppose it was a practical omission given the adjacent projecting bay.

The Gebhardt family lived here in the 1940s, and found themselves in the newspapers on a number of occasions. In March 1942, Alfred, age 41, was unemployed and looking for work when he found out he would be drafted for the war. “I’d like to help lick ‘em,” he was quoted as saying.

Unfortunately, it was the years after the war that brought tragedy. In March 1946, Fred, age 71 and a retired “dress trimmings merchant”, was struck and killed by a car just down the block. The driver was only charged with unlicensed driving and lack of a “safety sticker”. In January of the next year, 15-year-old William was arrested as a truant in the bowling alley where he worked as a pin boy.

This house in the southwest part of Pilsen dates to 1892. The dripstones above the doors and windows are painted to bring out the ornaments etched into the stone, a common feature in buildings of this vintage. I know little else about the house, but the street it’s on is a curiously short block of Seeley, which exists here only between 23rd Street and the alley paralleling the diagonal Coulter to the south. Indeed, this short and narrow little street used to be known as Kroll Place before it was changed to Seeley to provide more citywide grid consistency. When built, this house bore the address 22 Kroll Place. This is the first time I’ve ever successfully looked up an old address on a street that also changed names. Unfortunately, none of its past addresses turn up in Tribune files.

This elaborate terra cotta house stands at 5652 North Virginia, where Hollywood runs into the North Shore Channel. Oversized windows and elaborate ornamentation differentiate it from other nearby, more traditional houses in the Peterson Park neighborhood (part of the West Ridge community area). It is prominently visible from the North Shore Channel Trail and adjacent parks, with its central tower commanding attention.

Unfortunately, I can learn little about the house. The Chicago Historic Resources Survey, which rates the house orange (potentially significant), doesn’t fully identify the architect, and almost certainly reflects the wrong date of construction. The architect is listed simply as “Klafter.” There seem to have been two architects working in Chicago around the same time by that last name, David Saul Klafter and Joseph H. Klafter. I have found relatively little about either, including whether they were related. The database also indicates that the house was built in 1938, which seems unlikely for a number of reasons. Tax records reflect a much more plausible date of construction, 1928.

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