Stephen Vaughn Shipman

How a Building Becomes a Raised Middle Finger: Stephen Vaughn ...

Lee Bey has recently written about the now beautifully restored White Castle #16 building at 43 E. Cermak, including a couple of handsome nighttime photo's. The Landmarks Commission's 40 page report, however, not only covers the history of the building, and of the White Castle chain, but of the history of working class dining and buildings that served them.  We learn, for example, that while today's entrepreneurs battle both city bureaucracy and bricks-and-mortar restaurants to get food trucks back on Chicago's streets, horse-drawn lunch wagons were a Chicago mainstay in the 19th century and beyond.  The report covers the trend setting Fred Harvey Restaurants, and includes the 1907 cartoon you see here, warning of the dangers of diner food, which could easily be repurposed as a commentary on how our own fast food culture is leading us to obesity and disease. The report on the Riviera Motor Sales Company Building at 5948-60 North Broadway not only chronicles the handsome building and its spectacular showrooms, but provides a history of how cars have been sold throughout Chicago's history, and provides a richly illustrated account of a time when they were displayed, not in garishly lit car lots, but in surroundings that mirrored the richness of the movie palaces of the era. The report on the Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church at 4501 S. Vincennes Avenue, originally Isiah Temple, Dankmar Adler's last major commission, provides a rich history of the building and its time, both in its early years as a synagogue, and in its much longer service as a house of worship for Chicago's Afro-American community.  There's a biography of Dankmar Adler, floor plans, copious photographs, and a history of the music of the church, which hosted such singers as Mahalia Jackson and Dinah Washington. The report on the Italianate 1872 Holden Block at 1027 West Madison, to which Granacki Historic Consultants also contributed, is just as exhaustive.  One of the great things about the Commission's reports is how they'll include biographies of once prominent, but now forgotten Chicago architects.  In the case of the Holden Block, it was Stephen Vaughn Shipman, who moved to Chicago after the Great 1871 fire and remained here until his death in 1905.  His surviving work includes the Hubbard Street lofts that Harry Weese renovated to be the home of his firm, now the offices of Ross Barney Architects.

Stephen Vaughn Shipman

Memorials of Deceased Companions of the Commandery of the State of Illinois, Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States ...: From July 1, 1901 to December 31, 1911

Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters

The Shipman family in America

Memorials of Deceased Companions of the Commandery of the State of Illinois, Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States: From July 1, 1901, to December 31, 1911