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.
Back when municipal parking garages were regarded as great and glorious beacons of a prosperous future — in immediate postwar America — Chicago got some noteworthy architects involved in a stylistic mix of structures. Central land values not quite what they are today, some of these beasts were laid out flat as a pancake over large plots. One such exemplar is the structure pictured at top, only half of which is in view. The surface parking area occupied the middle ground of a two-wing design that sheltered up to 1,200 cars. Garages that went up in the Loop on small lots had more verticality, but those that hugged the river or lake or were built further afield often stayed under five stories. Utilitarian to a fault and often downright brutal, the one in question in today's Cornerspotter was slightly more playful and elegant than it had to be. The garage came down in the 1970s, but, amazingly, efficient and desirable land use is still a struggle here and in the neighborhood. Okay then, pinpoint the site and its current occupant.
·CornerSpotter [Curbed Chicago]
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