For Sale: Luxury High Rise Condominiums

For the couple of weeks, construction crews have been dismantling one of my favorite buildings in Chicago. I haven’t been able to tell if anyone has lived in the building for the last 2 years that I've lived nearby. Although it seemed to be okay structurally, boards went up over the lower floors’ windows about a year ago. I would walk past the house and fantasize about the al fresco dinners I could have on one of its terraces and dream of the vintage ports I could savor inside in its sitting room.

It was a very stately brick building, probably built in the 1950s. While it had the air of a single-family home, its grandness led me to believe it was comprised of several luxury units. The building’s log spanned two streets so that it had two entrances; one on my street and another on the next street over. It was nestled that way between two towering apartment buildings, Charleston-style, so that the side of the building, with its shuttered windows and porticos, was actually the front of the building. The walls that faced the street, although stacked upon one another at different stair step levels, were relatively unornamented as though they were actually the sides of the building.

Earlier this year, I noticed two tall pylons had been erected on the street side of the building. I grew excited. Obviously, someone who saw in that building the same potential that I had seen was going to fix it up so that I may one day inhabit it. But a week later, a mammoth advertisement was slug between them. “For Sale: Luxury High Rise Condominiums.” I drooped when I first walked past it. Chicago doesn’t need anymore luxury high rise condos. What we need is more quirky, but stately buildings like the one on its deathbed behind that ugly sign.

The building remained untouched for several months. I was relieved when the sign was knocked down in a windy storm. It was never replaced on my street side. I hoped that the investors had backed out or the building was saved by folks as caring as me. It wasn’t until I was riding past the next street over that I noticed that the sign had been re-built at the building’s second entrance. That street has more traffic. More traffic meant more money.

Then, about a month ago, the construction crews came. Every morning, I heard their destruction from my room while I was getting ready to go to work. Loud and ugly sounds. Scraping and tearing and banging. I couldn’t stand to think about my future beautiful terraces being smashed to the ground.

On my way to work I surveyed the damage and my sadness was replaced by awe. It is rare to get to see a literal cross section of a building. As each day came and went, new treasures were uncovered. A powder blue tiled bathroom with a crystal chandelier; Scarlet velvet covered bedroom walls that conjured Rosemary’s Baby-esque images; Mahogany kitchens fit for a chef; interior windows acting as portals to other rooms. Everyday, I stopped and read these stories of past-tenants lives. Each room was every bit as quirky as the building’s exterior and told a very particular tale of its inhabitants’ existence; a story of which I wanted to be a part.

I kept telling myself that I was going to take photographs of these rooms. I imagined that my photographs would reveal mysterious “mists” in each room, the ghosts of residents’ past. But I never got around to taking those photographs. In some way, I think that is appropriate to the life and death of that building.

Then last week, on my way home from the bus, I saw that the building was completely gone. All that is left is a flat, barren and dusty lot. And an ugly sign that says, “For Sale: Luxury High Rise Condominiums.”