JLL

Back in the 1870s, one of the construction materials of choice in Chicago was stone from quarries near Joliet and Lemont. Let's call it JLL. These are not just the acronym of the commercial real estate management firm Jones Lang Lasalle, but the initials of "Joliet-Lemont Limestone."  I'll avoid calling it limestone. The definition of limestone varies among geologists, the construction profession and the architectural and historical communities. JLL is a dolomitic stone extracted from quarries between the towns of Joliet and Lemont, Illinois. JLL has a golden-yellow hue that is familiar in Chicago today from the Water Tower and Pumping Station, Holy Name Cathedral, the old prison in Joliet and other buildings of that era. Because it can be produced in large thin sheets -- my sense is 12 foot by 8 foot by 8 inches -- it could be used for façades, allowing for quick and economical construction. Not always of the most uniform of consistency, JLL use was replaced as a dimension stone by the grey, strong and uniform limestone from Bedford Indiana by the early 1890s, although some use of the crushed stone may continue.

JLL was a popular building material in its day, so much so that many row houses covered with it nearly typified (or so I'm told) Chicago of that era. Almost entire blocks can be found in East Garfield Park. JLL's use went beyond residential construction: I have seen commercial structures on Halsted, Archer, Roosevelt and Grand using it. Even when structures of that era were built of brick, JLL was used as the sills and lintels, and so many structures can be approximately dated by the presence of JLL.

 

 

(One of the stories of its commercial exploitation is that the town of Lemont changed its name to Athens, so this stone was  marketed as "Athens marble," which sounds much more impressive. For geologists, there is a huge difference between marble and dolomite; to masons and stonecutters, not so much.)

Wandering around Chicago in the early 21st century, I still can find many examples of this stone. I once had an ambition to catalogue and map all the instances I could find. It might shed an interesting light on the building of Chicago. Until I do, here are some findings. (Note should be made of [1] An 2013 article in the newsletter of the Earth Science Club of Northern Illinois; [2] the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois monograph Joliet-Lemont Limestone in 1988.)

Often only a few large sheets of JLL form the entire facade of a multiple storey structure. I imagine that these were detailed in the workyards of the stonemasons. If this guess is true, then these structures are an early instance of prefabrication. Therefore, contemporary architects can use these as examples of the design possibilities of prefabrication.

These townhouses on Lexington just west of Racine Avenue date from the 1870s. Across from Arigo Park, they have been well preserved.

But less than a block away is this double house, neither as grand nor as well preserved.

And a bit more down the same street is a row of townhouses that have fallen even further.

There are several interesting buildings in the nearby Jackson Boulvard Historic District covered in JLL. The one of the oldest is known as the Iram Nye house, which dates from 1874. Nye was a fishmerchant. Nye probably built here because of proximity to the posh buildings that surrounded Union Park. Nye died, however, shortly after building this house, and his widow moved out and rented the place. One of the tenants was Leopold Schlesinger, who would later commission Louis Sullivan to design a department store in downtown Chicago. 

Two later paired structures, dating from about 1881 and marvelously restored, further show the design flexibility of  JLL.  

 

Old maps show that the legal description of the land along Jackson and Adams as "Laflin and Loomis Subdivision." Matthew Laflin was an early immigrant to Chicago, coming originally to sell black powder to the construction of the I & M canal. He soon found that a better way to make money in Chicago was real estate. On Jackson there is a house known as the John C. Nicol house, commissioned by Laflin in 1879, possibly as a "show home" when he was trying to develop the properties. (I doubt Laflin ever resided there.) Laflin endowed the Chicago Academy of Science building in Lincoln Park.

 

While this was one of the first houses on the street, it did not set the pattern for firther development: while this house is respectable near-by structures are taller and grander: some have suggested that this house was the only one on the block built as a multi-unit dwelling.

One of Chicago's most photographed houses is William Henneberry House. There are several interesting stories associated with the Henneberry House. 

Henneberry was a printer and bookbinder by trade. He established a printing and publishing business with M.A.Donohue that after the 1871 fire commissioned a large building on South Dearborn, and was among the firms that lead to that area being called "Printing House Row". The firm of Donohue and Henneberry printed and sold a large number of colorfully illustrated books in unauthorized versions. Newspapers report also that the firm frequently had labor troubles because they worked with nonunion labor.

The Jackson Boulevard neighborhood may have been quite prestigious in the 1880s, but by 1920 most of the structures had been divided into apartments, with various rooms converted into kitchens and communal bathrooms. At least one of the houses was reputedly a bordello, and an empty lot next to the Henneberry House is where a illegal distillery blew up during prohibition.

The neighborhood hit bottom in the late 1960s, when the city had scheduled demolition of the entire block. A high-rise public housing project (the Henry Horner Homes the location of the book There Are No Children Here) was nearby, and the riots of 1968 following the assassination of Martin Luther King devastated Madison Street, two blocks away. But some urban pioneers recognized the underlying beauty and integrity of the buildings.

One such man was Bill Lavicka, an engineer who was educated at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He worked for awhile at the engineering firm Sargent & Lundy, until deciding to go out on his own. He bought the Henneberry House and set about providing construction engineering services to other urban pioneers. He worked not just here, but throughout Chicago. An obituary from the Chicago Sun-Times can be found here.

The Henneberry House design reflects both "Second Empire" and "Queen Anne" elements. Other houses using JLL are much simpler in an Italianate style. This suggests that the aesthetic possibilities of prefabrication may have been somewhat flexible. 

JLL use can be found throughout much of Chicago.