Welcome to CornerSpotter, Curbed's regular 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 tomorrow.
The building before you once sat at the head of "the most beautiful driveway in America". A 700-foot-wide lawn was greeted by 700 feet of building frontage, according to a marketing ad from 1909, with "300 feet of breeze-swept veranda". The copy also noted the building's proximity to a station of the Illinois Central Railway. This photo, from 1901, shows the type of development happening in droves in this part of town in the decade prior. Another clue: the name associated with this structure was transferred to another building not far off after the pictured one came down. The adopted building carried on the same function for several decades until a recent change in usage. What's the word on both the old intersection and the new one?
·CornerSpotter
Loading comments...