The archival Hull House photograph that kicked off this round of CornerSpotter was shot in 1910. At that time, Jane Addams' organization had a compound of 14 buildings with this massive Itallianate structure—dating to 1856 and also known as Smith Hall—as its nucleus. All that remains today is the old dining hall, rechristened as the Hull House museum and moved to the site of the demolished original, at Halsted & Polk. Its immediate setting is that of the brutalist UIC campus, which makes the quaint building look quite silly. The campus disfigured the street grid, which surely made the cornerspotting all the more treacherous. The number of correct guesses is remarkable! The other thing working against the memory of Hull House is the local demographic, captured ever-so-perfectly in the Jagermeister delivery truck nosing into Google's picture. That "whole mess of new development" we referred to is mainly University Village, south of Roosevelt. Thank for playing!
·Hint: This Noble Structure's Glory Days Came to Abrupt End [Curbed Chicago]
·Hull House [Wikipedia]
·CornerSpotter [Curbed Chicago]
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