Old Housing in Chicago, or, adding poorly built additions (apartments, condos)

[MannheimMadman]

Have a look at a picture taken of my 3 flat walkup.



I'm trying to figure out origins of how this thing was built. My landlord has said that this particular unit was built in 1893. However, I am suspicious of when parts of my particular unit were built. My buidling has a basement front,rear. There is a first floor f,r. And on top, there is an apartment that is all by its lonesome up there. In my picture, you can see it on the top.

My dad stopped by and told me it that it appears part of my unit and the unit above me were actually additions, as seen by the extension heading left from the topmost.

I have tried to look for evidence in seams of the bricks, but it looks so old and patchy, it is hard to tell. Oddly, you can see a big bulge of the bricks on the top level. Not sure what that's from.

In my apartment, (right of where the top most section ends) there is evidence that it may be part of the original structure. The molding around the windows is BEAUTIFUL carved oak that is not present in my kitchen, bathroom, and closet (which would be left of top-most ending in the picture). Also, the bathroom looks like it may have been a broom closet at one point. The door frames and walls are not symmetrical by any means. At first I wondered if it was due to an old house settling, but now I wonder if it was shoddy craftsmanship in putting up an extension.

Anybody familiar with these types of deals? I'm not upset or anything, but it would be cool to have an answer as to why things are what it appears to be.

[It'sAutomatic]

Honestly, I don't think anyone would be able to tell anything from that one pic. Load up some more pics from the outside and I'd love to help.

[MannheimMadman]

Sure. I'm not exactly sure what angles would be helpful though. I'll just try to take from multiple angles and see what happens.

[jcarlilesiu]

You might be chasing answers that will be impossible to tell. Most buildings of the early 1900's vintage have been gutted, rebuilt, modified, added onto, demolished, rehabed, renovated, redeveloped so on and so forth. Attempts to try and figure out what it originally looked like when built would be on par with trying to figure out what the praire looked like before chicago was here.

The side of the building where you took your picture is basic common brick found on buildings throughout the city. One of the good things about brick is how easy it is to attach to when putting on an addition without being able to tell where the old was and the new starts. Toothing in the brick so that it maintains coarsing is pretty easy. Being that its common brick, it all looks the same.

[Attrill]

I have to agree that it is hard to figure out. Our house was built in 1879 and we thought we had a good understanding of when everything was built. Once we started a large rehab project and tore down the interior walls we found that there was a lot evidence that the house was originally built in a very different way than we had thought.

We found 2 doors to the outside that we had NO idea existed, based on the placement of a grease trap we think the original kitchen was in a completely different place than we thought, and we found the remnants of two kitchens upstairs (one from the 1890's, another from the 1930's). You can certainly do a lot of guess work, but you really need to get down to this level before you can know anyting for sure:

[MannheimMadman]

Attrill- that picture is awesome. I feel like some of these old buildings in Chicago have so much history in them. When you gut it out to rehab like you're doing, it seems like you can unlock some history.

I suppose that over 120 years, my building may have changed a LOT.

Do you have any pictures from the above project?

[StrayKitten]

Did you check the Cook County Accessors site? If you click on 'search by address' and put in the address, it gives you information on when the building was built originally. (Sometimes you need to put in a range instead of a specific address. For example '2400 to 2500 N. Clark' instead of '2433 N. Clark'.) It also shows a picture of the building.

Cook County Assessor's Office - Property Search

Also, if you really want to spend some time on it, you could go to the County Building and look up the records. This would show not only who owned the building when, but also some of the building permits. I don't know how accurately these records were kept, so there could be some missing information, especially with the older places.

Very cool picture!

[MannheimMadman]

Originally Posted by StrayKitten

Did you check the Cook County Accessors site? If you click on 'search by address' and put in the address, it gives you information on when the building was built originally. (Sometimes you need to put in a range instead of a specific address. For example '2400 to 2500 N. Clark' instead of '2433 N. Clark'.) It also shows a picture of the building.

Cook County Assessor's Office - Property Search

Also, if you really want to spend some time on it, you could go to the County Building and look up the records. This would show not only who owned the building when, but also some of the building permits. I don't know how accurately these records were kept, so there could be some missing information, especially with the older places.

Very cool picture!

I went to this site- very cool!

It confirmed my building as 126 years old. The weird thing was that it said that there were 3 apartments in this building when there are in fact 5?

Here is a picture of my building from the front, though.

http://www.cookcountyassessor.com/Property_Search/Property_Large_images_Output/17283320340000_AA.JPG (broken link)

[StrayKitten]

Sometimes the information is not up to date. I'm not sure how they get the information; maybe they just look at the building and see three apartments. Although, sometimes they know if the units are apartments or condos, so I don't really know.

You live in a very cool building! I love the old places. My building was built in 1919. Once I was giving the bathroom floor a good scrubbing, and a rusty old hairpin came out from under the piece of wood that divides the bathroom from the hallway. You would have thought it was a piece of gold the way I was so excited about it, LOL.

Here is a link to a reverse address directory from 1929. You can look up the address (by street, then by number) and see who lived there in 1929. I have to warn you though that it takes a long time (5 minutes?) to load, and if you are using a dial-up, don't try it. There is a list on the left side of the screen so you can pick the letter your street begins with.

http://www.chsmedia.org/househistory...enus/PolkL.pdf

[MannheimMadman]

Originally Posted by StrayKitten

Sometimes the information is not up to date. I'm not sure how they get the information; maybe they just look at the building and see three apartments. Although, sometimes they know if the units are apartments or condos, so I don't really know.

You live in a very cool building! I love the old places. My building was built in 1919. Once I was giving the bathroom floor a good scrubbing, and a rusty old hairpin came out from under the piece of wood that divides the bathroom from the hallway. You would have thought it was a piece of gold the way I was so excited about it, LOL.

Here is a link to a reverse address directory from 1929. You can look up the address (by street, then by number) and see who lived there in 1929. I have to warn you though that it takes a long time (5 minutes?) to load, and if you are using a dial-up, don't try it. There is a list on the left side of the screen so you can pick the letter your street begins with.

http://www.chsmedia.org/househistory...enus/PolkL.pdf

Excellent link. Thank you!

Interestingly, my address shows that 3 couples/families lived in my building at the time. That would coincide with there being 3 original units (per the Cook County assesor), and structurally makes sense. My only guess is that common brick, as Jcarlileisu said, was used to patch in the additions on my unit and the above unit. I had a look at my roof today; compared with the top most unit, what could be my 'addition' kind of slumps.