Welcome to CornerSpotter, Curbed's weekly game in which you, fair readers, consult archival streetscape photos or postcard illustrations to identify the building(s) and/or location presented. Time to tap that reservoir of urban minutiae and flaunt it before your fellow readers. Fire away in the comments, and we'll reveal the correct identity and backstory on Friday.
Every neighborhood has its incubators, often shifting from generation to generation along with changing demographics. The above South Side building has registered some functional shifts over the decades, but is on the verge of recapturing its original purpose: to house and support startup businesses with a local bent. Built in the mid-1920s as a combination retail/office/manufacture building, its tenants included everyone from bankers to insurers to cosmetics producers. For a time, the building became a flophouse with 45-square-foot "stalls"— 125 to a floor. Much surrounding this old stalwart has evolved, and probably not for the better. At one point it was buried in housing projects, and now a new mixed-income CHA development is slowly filling in the emptiness. Where on earth are we?
·CornerSpotter [Curbed Chicago]
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