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.
This could be any busy early 20th century intersection on the city's South Side. So, when facing this quandary, think less dense... far, far, less dense. Before we blotted it out, this postcard was captioned with the location and a claim that what you're seeing stood as the "busiest corner on the South Side". That was a very long time ago. It now stands as one of the least busy and most impoverished intersections in an area just about at the geographic center of the South Side. There are probably more businesses visible in this illustration than in a ten block radius today, which a Google Maps aerial tour exposing many large vacant lots helps support. Other stretches of the north-south thoroughfare pictured above are quite vibrant in present day Chicago, the first of which appears about 25 blocks north of this intersection. There's not much more to add without giving it away. Your turn.
·Cornerspotter [Curbed Chicago]
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