🧵: If you're new to preservation advocacy, or aren't connected with preservation organizations, but want to support landmarking Pride Cleaners, here are my suggestions:
02.03.2026 16:24
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🧵: If you're new to preservation advocacy, or aren't connected with preservation organizations, but want to support landmarking Pride Cleaners, here are my suggestions:
'Most endangered' lists are an important part of how local, state and national preservation non-profits interface with the public. Yet as far as Chicago--one thing is always clear to me when they are released--we don't have policies in place to treat our existing built environment as an asset.
🧵ctd: When the bldg was set for renovation, I called the developer & told them what this was, its significance & not to scrap it. They had no plans for it, so it ended up in my possession & I had to move it from the bldg to my garage, where I started metal work & paint removal. Huge: 16' long.
🧵addendum: photo of the sign & the lounge after it closed for good, while the Tivoli Theater (closed 1963) sits awaiting the wrecking ball, probably 1965.
🧵: my foray into sign preservation started when I discovered that the neon sign for McKie's DJ Show Lounge was still hanging on the facade of the bldg, despite the club being closed ca. 1965. The sign itself is from the '40s when the spot was called Strand Show Lounge.
The moment in time when a building's original use ceases and there are no stated plans for its future is one of the most critical in preservation. Local landmarking isn't a tool that solves all problems, but it helps protect the physical body of a building so that it CAN have a future.
While it is valuable for preservation organizations to hear from you, as you will make them aware that Pride Cleaners is a priority, regular folks that don't typically speak up about preservation always make a difference in situations like this--particularly when they contact decision makers.
Local/state/national preservation organizations are likely going to mount their own advocacy efforts. Much of this work is technical and happens behind the scenes--building consensus, discussing criteria, preparing supporting research--
But EVERYONE can and should participate in preservation here!
If you contact the Alder or the Commission, you don't need to pull up technical language, like how the building meets criteria.
State simply, in your own words, what you think--but please don't rage about how the building isn't already a landmark (it won't help, even if that's how you feel!)
If you are elsewhere in Chicago (or the world) contact the Chicago Landmarks Commission staff and tell them that Pride Cleaners is worthy of landmark status.
☎️ 312-744-3200
📩 landmarks@cityofchicago.org
Local landmarking is dependent on aldermanic support. If you live/work in the 6th Ward, contact Alderman William Hall, tell him that you support landmarking.
Hall is on the record stating that Pride Cleaners is a de facto landmark, which is a great start!
☎️ 773-241-3100
📩 ward06@cityofchicago.org
🧵: If you're new to preservation advocacy, or aren't connected with preservation organizations, but want to support landmarking Pride Cleaners, here are my suggestions:
Chatham is a very special neighborhood, replete with the over-the-top terra cotta beauties that defined the 1920s, but also home to treasures like this cleaners & a slate of other fantastic MCM designs, as I've written about. All of our South Side masterpieces deserve both attention & preservation.
In 2021 I sent a letter to the longterm owner, Rick Ehman outlining the ways in which landmarking and NRHP designation would be beneficial. I followed up but did not hear back. Around that time, the manager told me that city employees had told her that the sign out front was nonconforming.
I'm not saying it should be a dry cleaner because I feel some type of way about it being "my dry cleaner," although I felt like the best way to appreciate it was to take my money there!
When I moved to South Shore I started taking my dry cleaning to Pride Cleaners. I hope there is a way to keep it a dry cleaner (the highest/best use is the historic/current one) and that aldermanic support gives any advocacy effort towards landmarking enough gas to get DPD to act quickly.
great news and a great article, it's a really neat church—when was researching it, i was struck by how the congregation managed to pull through after a really tumultuous period in the 1980s
www.postcard-past.com/metropolitan...
I'd love to know more about Metropolitan MBC's preservation and stewardship! The NRHP Nomination (2016) and the Chicago Landmark Designation (1988) include almost no information on Metropolitan MBC, who have owned the building for almost twice as long as the Christian Scientists owned it.
Color photo of twin buildings, one red brick and the other brown, but otherwise exactly they same. Both have gently rounded bays on either side of their centrally located entrances, which are reached by climbing a handful of stairs. The structures meet in a recessed section that appears to connect both buildings.
Color close-up of the entrance to the brown brick building. After climbing a handful of stairs, you reach the entrance to the building, which sits underneath a glorious arch with a mighty keystone. Narrow, rectangular windows flank this, and the address of the building is written in white letters on a glass door. In the transom above can be glimpsed a chandelier.
Color detail of the arch above the door of the red brick building. Each element of the arch, including the large keystone, is encrusted with floral designs and supported by equally ornate decorative brackets. Inside the arch is a glass transom lined with egg and dart molding.
Ad clipped from the November 20, 1904 Chicago Daily Tribune. I have drawn a red box around the following text: "7 ROOMS, 4539 Indiana-av., new and very fine; magnificent decorations, fine light; best apartments ever offered for the money. Open."
Don't you love it when twins wear the same outfit, but in different colors? This pair is even accessorizing with the same door surround! Also incredibly amused by this 1904 ad that swears that these are the "best apartments ever offered for the money." The best EVER!
Architect: Thomas W Wing, 1903
The same Thomas Wing who designed the Raber House? Or is this a Jens J. Jensen?Jens Jensen situation.
My monthly column in MAS Context returns, and it is all about asbestos! "The Totality and Paradox of Asbestos" explores the vast number of asbestos containing building products and consumer goods--from roof tiles to cigarette filters--that were once on the market.
Curling
Bisbee, ND
Animals cooking
Chatom, AL
Join Sen. Duckworth, Sen. Warren, and me for a Grassroots Power Hour next Friday! I'm so proud to have the support of these two incredible women, and I can't wait to chat with them about why this race is so important and my path to becoming YOUR next U.S. Senator. Sign up at the link in my bio!
Roland Kirk at McKie's, August 2 1962. His band is not identified but I think that's Henry Duncan, drums, Vernon Martin on bass and maybe Andrew Hill on piano. Ray Flerlage took the photo. You can see this poster on the back of the piano.
🚨🚨🚨 I want to abolish ICE. Period. @rajaforil.bsky.social thanked ICE, funded ICE, and took money from an ICE contractor.
Hey, I haven't always included the source of a historic photo/image that I've posted on social media, but I do now.
Maybe you haven't either. That's okay! We are figuring a lot of this stuff out in real time, which includes developing best practices as we are presented with new challenges.
It's maddening.
Worse, so much material being generated for a general audience—who don't have a specialized background in a subject—is accepted at face value, while content creators knowingly generate AI swill for clicks.
It doesn't seem to bother them.
Short thread:
bsky.app/profile/tedg...
These are all so terrible!
Yes! But they appear elsewhere on the internet, so I'm not sure if the Asbestorama URL (which actually just directs to a Flikr account) is where they came from originally.
