Fishin For A Livin (Ain't No Livin At All) - Joe's Fisheries

If you're normal like me and often take the time to walk the weird industrial wasteland that occupies the area around Elston and the "Lincoln Yards" on the near north side, you may have noticed a small cluster of roughly hewn buildings immediately north of Cortland St. They aren't that interesting in themselves, the larger one appears to be vacant, and the lower-slung one closer to Cortland is occupied by an Asian restaurant and a private boat charter company. But even uninteresting buildings like these can have interesting histories, and the story I found here starts with this collection of signs around the back.

Facing the current glum and desolation of the Cortland St Bridge and the Lincoln Yards site are 3 signs advertising various businesses located on the other side. The two on either side are for modern, operating businesses, but in the center sits a faded red, white, and blue "ghost sign" for Joe's Fisheries - "THE PLACE FOR SEAFOOD".

Joe's wasn't your run of the mill smoker & fryer of imported coastal fish, but an actual commercial fishing operation, trawling Lake Michigan with 3 boats, the SEEKER, SPIRIT, and SURVEYOR, catching tens of thousands of pounds of fish from Lake Michigan each year to be sold retail and wholesale from this humble brick building off Cortland St, tracing back to 1922. While pollution and invasive species decimated traditional money makers like trout and herring in the latter 20th century, Joe's held on as one of a few dozen fisheries on Lake Michigan by catching yellow perch and bloater chub. By 1994, when it was profiled in the Chicago Reader, Joe's was the very last commercial fishery in the city, pulling in 93,000 pounds of fish a year (68,000 of perch and 25,000 of chub). 

Sadly the same ecological mechanisms continued to wreak havoc on the lake, and perch populations- the last truly profitable catch on the lake- continued plummeting into the 90s. The very next year the limit was slashed to a meager 24,000 pounds, and by April 1st, 1997, Illinois had banned commercial harvesting of perch entirely in an effort to allow the populations time to recover. Joe's would continue catching chub and smoking & processing imported fish for a year or two, but by 2000, the business had collapsed into bankruptcy and it's assets were being auctioned off to the highest bidder.

I don't know how this sign survived 26 years of business turnover, but I'm glad it has. I would have never in a million years bothered to research this address otherwise. I was also pleasantly surprised to learn this is not the only surviving remnant of Joe's- all 3 ships they operated by the 90s remain in service under new owners. SEEKER is now the ELEANOR B. for Hoops Fish Market in Bayfield, Wisconsin, and nearby SPIRIT works in the Red Cliff area. SURVEYOR is now RITTER BROS for Petersons Fish Market in Hancock, MI.

Sources

• A Disappearing Species by David Witter for the Chicago Reader, December 8th, 1994
• YELLOW PERCH: ONCE NOT PROFITABLE ENOUGH FOR COMMERCIAL CATCH, NOW MAINSTAY OF LAKE MICHIGAN FISHERIES by Nancy Riggs for The HELM, Fall/Winter 1996, republished in The Michigan Riparian, February 2004
• Changing ecology of lake kills perch, fishing business by Peter Kendall and Lisa Black for the Chicago Tribune, January 6th, 1997
• Precarious Perch by Susan DeGrane for the Chicago Reader, March 30th, 2000
• Joe's Fisheries, 2000, UIC Library of the Health Sciences – Chicago Special Collections (information attached to photograph record)
• Wild Chicago - Joe's Fisheries, for WTTW (PBS), 1997
• NOTICE OF U.S. MARSHAL'S SALE, Chicago Tribune, July 11th, 2000
• 
  

The below were used specifically for information about the boats and their later whereabouts

• Port State Information Exchange, U.S. Coast Guard
• Peterson's Fish Market, Visit Keweenaw
• Fishing Vessels of the Great Lakes by Harvey Hadland
• ELEANOR B. (JEAN MAUR B., EWIG II, SEEKER), by Harvey Hadland

Further Reading

The Toxic Sands Threatening Fish in Lake Superior by Shantal Riley for Undark, December 28th, 2023

On the fringes of history: the storm that sank the Edmund Fitzgerald almost claimed another boat here in the Apostle Islands by Bob Nelson for Friends of the Apostle Islands, November 10th, 2025

Chicago Minor Demolitions Survey No. 1

 This is a series I'm starting to "round up" smaller demolitions I photograph that aren't worthy of a full blog post. My hope is to give these buildings a short little digital gravestone that's better search-indexed than my BlueSky posts. This one will cover a wider gamut, photographed from 7/30 to 9/11, in the future I plan to put these out about once every 1-2 months.

2438 N Burling - Lincoln Park

I am generally not a big fan of this kind of faux-stone front (despite living in one), but this is a bonafide 1890 2-flat underneath of it, and some of the details are still nice, such as the porch and stained glass. Wreck-and-remove granted August 26th, photographed September 9th.

1113 W Drummond - Lincoln Park

A very simple 1903 brick 2-flat, relatively unadorned. Wreck-and-remove granted August 28th, new construction of a 3-story single family home permitted September 3rd. (insert negative emoji here), photographed September 9th.

634 W Aldine - Boystown

A blockier 2-story residential building, with a nice and large porch. Nothing yet permitted to replace. Photographed September 11th.

1939 N Larrabee - Lincoln Park

No demolition permit for this one yet, but it's been flagged for a 90-day demolition delay as it is an "Orange rated" building. That doesn't guarantee it much though, see the 2-orange rated structures torn down as part of DePaul's new athletic center, and future blog subject 950 W Willow. Photographed September 11th.

1839 W North Ave - Wicker Park

Unconventional entry here, as this one kind of demolished itself.. 1839 W North collapsed abruptly on August 25th, 2026 while undergoing heavy renovations. It was a heavily modified 1890 workers cottage, and had already had conservation complaints pointing to structural problems several years ago. As of 9/9 , the latest permit is still a renovation permit for turning it into a restaurant. Photographed August 26th.

909 W Webster - Lincoln Park

A sadly very pretty stone-faced 1888 3-flat here, with a funky mid-century addition eating into the sideyard. Wreck-and-remove granted 8/24 , with a permit for a 4-unit building under review since July 17th. Better than SFH, but still under-use of the property. Photographed August 26th

911 W Diversey - Lincoln Park

Another simple Victorian brick 2-flat, like 1113 W Drummond, this one from 1898. Wreck-and-remove was granted back on July 17th, but I came up it being actively demolished here on August 16th. 4-story 3-units permitted to replace. Photographed August 16th.

3724 N Bosworth - Lakeview

I honestly do not usually stop to photograph wood-frame demolitions. I have enough to photograph already, and generally we can still build new ones. 3724 N Bosworth however was blurred on Google Maps, so I stopped to take a picture so it has some kind of internet record. Demolition permitted 8/14 , permit to replace with 3-story single family home under review. Photographed August 15th.

858 N Marshfield - East Village

A quite heavily sanded-down 1888 2-flat. Wreck-and-remove granted 8/13, 3-story/3-units permitted to replace. This one has a levy of open complaints for noise violations relating to the demolition and bricks hitting the neighboring properties. Photographed August 14th; by the time of a ground survey on September 11th, it was completely demolished.

714 N Kedzie - Humboldt Park

714 is an old city firehouse with a few fun municipal details. After at least a decade of reuse as a storage building, it's being demolished to make way for a new fieldhouse and expansion of the neighboring Kells (George) Park to the north. Permit given July 1st. Photographed July 30th.

1800 N Clybourn - Lincoln Park

Long, long ago a cohesive factory building, this property had been carved up six ways to Sunday first into an indoor mall and then a sort of "urban strip mall". It's now being replaced with a newer, sleeker strip mall, only preserving the tower seen to the left, a remnant of the original factory. This photo was taken August 16th, by a later site visit on September 1st, the building chunk at the rear had been reduced to a half-demolished ruin.

THE ONES THAT GOT AWAY

Sometimes, you're slow on the draw. Life happens, you lose the lighting, the CTA catches fire and you miss a connection, and when you circle back, the reaper's already come to collect. I still include these as neighborhood snapshots, and because the buildings did still have some story to them.

2121 W Cortland - Bucktown

This was a 1902 tan-and-cream 2-flat, with some nice corbelling detail along the roofline. Wreck-and-remove was given August 5th, and it was wiped by the time I got there on the 14th. No new construction permit yet, but with it absorbing a second lot that had been a sideyard, it'll likely be a mansion or multi-family. Photographed August 14th.

4143 W 21st St - North Lawndale

This block of the K-Town Historic District was a complete, uninterrupted block for probably close to a century. 4143, an ornamented red brick 2-flat went through demolition court after a series of abandoned building complaints despite appearing in good shape on Streetview, and was finally culled by an emergency wreck-and-remove on August 19th. Photographed August 22nd.

3619 N Magnolia - Wrigleyville

One of two neighboring greystones to be felled on this block this year. Wreck-and-remove was granted on August 26th, in the wake of a new construction permit given July 10th. It's to be replaced with a 3-story, 2-unit condo building, presumably identical to the one visible to the right at 3617 N Magnolia, which was a 1910 2-flat demolished in March of this year. While I've mostly talked about this in Lincoln Park, demolitions have begun to hit Lakeview hard as well; last year another greystone was demolished at 1300 W Newport, leading to a proposal for a landmark district to protect uninterrupted greystone frontage. Photographed September 11th.

That's all for now! Like I said, I'm hoping to get these out about every 1-2 months, depending on the number of demolition permits and my ability to scoot around town after work. Detail shots for some properties may be uploaded to Flickr in the future; at that time they'll be linked here.

DePaul Demolition Night - Sheffield-Belden Group Demolition

It would be a grave understatement to say colleges in Chicago have a troubled relationship with the neighborhoods they reside in. Progressive on their face, they became a first choice for sweeping urban renewal efforts across the city, though perhaps most infamously on the south and near west sides, where the University of Chicago and UIC have displaced thousands in the name of blight clearing progress. 

While things have thankfully slowed down since those heavy-handed days, incidents still continue. Even in this blog’s short history we’ve seen this old playbook re-emerge, with Loyola purchasing a blighted property just to demolish it, with no effort to offset the housing lost. In that case, there were at least some chips you could give Loyola- the building *was* in noticeably poor shape, deteriorated to the point demolition may have been the only viable option. The crime there was in the previous slumlord who let it get to that point, and Loyola’s knuckle-dragging on any worthwhile replacement. No such charity can be extended to DePaul in today’s case however, concerning a nearly postcard-perfect half block of Chicago brick and block at the corner of Sheffield & Belden. For convenience, I’m going to borrow the name “Sheffield-Belden Group” from Preservation Chicago’s coverage of the buildings.

2310, 2314, and 2316 N Sheffield

2308 and 2310 N Sheffield

2300-02 N Sheffield/1000-12 W Belden

Photoset above taken on November 25th, 2025

This small group of 5 buildings comprised 4 1890s 3-and-4 flats and 1 1926 courtyard apartment building across about half a block. While not necessarily notable, they stood out as an example of well-preserved Chicago streetscape in an area heavily and continuously modified by DePaul's heavy hand. Despite much of it falling within the NRHP Sheffield Historic District, this area directly west of the ‘L’ is dominated by 21st century construction with little regard for the Victorian and 20th century streetscape that made Lincoln Park famous. 2 of the 1890s buildings in the Sheffield-Belden Group were even considered important enough to be Orange-rated under the 1995 Chicago Historic Resources Survey (“Possesses potentially significant architectural or historical features”), but as any architecture enthusiast sadly knows, these sorts of listings are never as strong protection as they sound in the face of developer lobbying.

DePaul began lobbying to raze the properties for a new athletic center as early as 2022, and while receiving pushback from neighborhood groups, it gained formal support from Alderman Timmy Knudsen in 2024 after minor design revisions and an agreement to formally landmark Byrne Hall (1907) and Cortelyou Commons (1930), as well as a commitment to preserve O’Connell Hall (1938), considered more than equal trades for the two Orange-rated structures facing the claw. I ultimately disagree- these “landmark” structures are important architectural history, but they do not have the same impact on the streetscape as these smaller structures, and they do nothing to make up for the housing lost (being offices, an events space, and a school building, respectively). There are, ultimately, thousands of 3 & 4 flats and courtyard buildings elsewhere in the city, but housing in Lincoln Park is a red hot market with a very limited supply, possibly even a declining supply, depending on how the rate of teardowns and downconversions balances against the sluggish rate of new construction. 

Rubble spills from the former site of 2308 N Sheffield on August 11th

The easy retort is that in an urban core like Lincoln Park, you're always going to have to tear down something to build anything new, and a city can't stay static forever. I would agree with you, hypothetical reader, on this if there were not other under-developed lots in close proximity. The prime example can be found just on the other side of Fullerton at 2400 N Sheffield, a former malaise-era supermarket with a full-size parking lot, totaling ~93,000 sq ft if the entire lot was redeveloped, bumped to around 115k sq ft if you loop in 1050 W Fullerton, a non-historic industrial building DePaul owns but doesn't obviously use for anything (I assume it's storage). This was even brought up during some of the neighborhood pushback in 2024, at which point DePaul responded that this site was being kept aside for an undetermined future major development such as a hotel and convention center, but nothing has moved forward since. 

The torn open remains of 2300-02 N Sheffield on August 26th

I admit past that low-hanging fruit, the options quickly become more complicated- the combined gas station, convenience store, and auto repair shop at 1108 W Fullerton are a terrible use of urban space, but redeveloping it would require costly and time consuming remediation of the underground tanks and 50 years of spilled gas and oil leaks on top of the cost of acquisition. Replacing a parking garage, like the one at 2331 N Sheffield is also an easy choice from an urbanist perspective, but with Lincoln Park's higher car ownership rates, they may be more heavily used than I like to imagine. Still, none of these are impossible, and redeveloping 2400 N Sheffield may even be cheaper, since you'd only be tearing down a parking lot.

Speculations on unchosen futures aside, the project (and it's associated demolitions) were formally approved by the Chicago Plan Commission in a reluctant unanimous vote in November 2025, which was when the site first came to my attention. The actual wreck-and-remove permits finally came through in July 2026, with demolition starting shortly after, and by my final site visit on August 26th, only one corner of 2300-02 N Sheffield remained standing.

I actually don’t have very strong opinions about the design of the athletic center itself. For the modern school of glass and brick, it’s not terrible, and I’ve certainly seen worse. But I’ll always look at it with a quiet disdain, because of what was torn down to make way for it.

That's all, folks!

Sources for this post can be found here, with a special thanks to Preservation Chicago
My full 100+ photo set will be uploaded to my Flickr Soon:tm:

The Least Used South Shore Line Station - Hudson Lake

 

The South Shore Line (officially the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District, or NICTD) is a really fun commuter line. America's last interurban (or at least a strong contender to that title) runs from downtown Chicago all the way to the far reaches of South Bend and Munster, a full 90 miles from the city center at it's farthest reach. Just one stop before South Bend is the little-used flag stop of Hudson Lake, serving the lake community of the same name.

Hudson Lake has been a stop since the line's opening in 1908, and technically even before then, when it served a one-time stint as the railroad's western terminus. On June 8th, 1907, with the railroad lagging in it's construction, a special train was chartered to show off it's progress, going from South Bend to Hudson Lake, as far as tracks went at that time, before transferring to a carriage.

An undated early photo of Hudson Lake^[1]

As the Lake Shore^[2] reached full operating capacity, they marketed Hudson Lake heavily as a quiet weekend getaway from the dirty, industrial cities of Northwest Indiana and Chicago's far South & Southeast sides, including accommodations for picnicking and weekend cottages at the company owned Hudson Lake Park. While the station itself never grew past a small wooden shelter, ridership was healthy, with a casino, hotels, and small lakeside resorts springing up to serve weary city dwellers. The railroad itself owned 'Hudson Lake Park', with picnicking areas and weekend cottages, and sometimes ran special trains for Hudson Lake outings, including one chartered by the Pullman Company totaling eleven cars to carry 900 passengers.

a 1911-postmarked postcard showing 'Hotel Hudson', since demolished. The land is now a mobile home park.^[3]

Past this point, Hudson Lake ebbs and fades like many early 20th century resort towns. Hotels were demolished or quietly converted to private homes, the casino became a restaurant, and it generally faded as a known destination in favor of flashier spots opened up by the age of the automobile. In 1994, the NICTD pruned many of it's low ridership flagstops, six in total, including a neighboring stop in New Carlisle. While certainly the more built up town of the two, New Carlisle's stop was the victim of a quirk of municipal fate. The New York Central (later Conrail, now Norfolk Southern) paralleled and cut in front of the South Shore in town, and at some point the bigger railroad had the road cut off to eliminate a grade crossing, making access awkward. With minimal traffic, Hudson Lake, not even 5 minutes up the road and unobstructed as the lines diverged at the town's eastern edge, was seen as enough to absorb the traffic and provide an outpost between Michigan City and the terminus at South Bend.

Catching up to today, little has changed. Station facilities remain minimal, consisting of a bus shelter for a station building, a surprisingly up to date system map, a small 8-space parking lot (paved, but well on it's way to reverting to gravel), a hanging sign, and a button to remind the coming train to actually stop here (Hudson Lake is a "flag stop", and so unless notified, the train will express past it).

Swinging out to the wider town, the first stop was for some quick food. Digzy Dogs is a charming little spot, built in a heavily refurbished mid-century mobile home next to the tracks. Everything's painted in some nice warm tones (reminiscent of the South Shore's colors, but probably coincidental), and there's a smattering of craft-store-core yard decorations about- gnomes and mushrooms and an upcycled wheelbarrow, very homey. 

Digzy's sells their own bespoke regional dog, the "Digzy Dog"- mustard, onion, nacho cheese, and bacon on a 100% beef hot dog. I'm not hungry, you're hungry. It was really good! and I think the less said on how many of these I could demolish in one sitting, the better.

After food, our endeavor was to just kind of roam the town, and then ultimately hike east to reach the Central/Eastern time zone line at the county line, which afforded us plenty of time to see the small town sights.

I am naught but a sucker for some Housing Stock, and Hudson Lake is an eclectic mix of old and new, though I only caught photos of the old. If I had to guess, I'd say the craftsman in the first photo is from the 30s-40s, and the shotgun is probably 20s-30s, based off my knowledge of similar architecture in Florida. I've seen it remarked a few times that the Midwest has more in common with the South than most Midwesterners would like to admit, and I think my second photo is a beautiful example, the overgrowth, the shotgun house, even the Buick LeSabre in the driveway, you could quite easily convince me I'd mis-shuffled a photo from my Florida or Georgia archives.

Small and overgrown at it's edges, the lake itself made a relaxing walking partner as we ambled around. Much like the housing stock, the lake here reminded me of where I'd moved from in Florida, and brick-loving city slicker that I am, I can see why people like these places. 

On our hike to the county line, E 700 N (that's the closest this road has to a name) passes under a set of heavy duty transmission lines, truly massive ones connecting the Donald C. Cook Nuclear Plant on the shores of Lake Michigan to a substation downstate in Lakeville. 765kv is a really staggering amount of electricity, enough you can feel and hear it buzzing as you walk underneath. This is really one of my favorite photos I've ever taken, a lovely 'multimodal' scene, picturebook america to me.

Oh school bus of the trees, what is your wisdom?

Speaking of picture books, this mossy old Ford school bus was another great find and shot for me. When I was growing up, my mom picked up this book called Roadside Relics: America's Abandoned Automobiles, a beautiful 200 page softcover coffee table book of rusty American scrap iron. I credit that book- which I poured over so much that it has "Property of Keith C" written inside the cover because I carried it to school- with a lot of influence towards my love of old and rusty equipment, and the photography thereof.

We eventually reached the county line, time traveled an hour for fun, and then hiked back into town to catch a train back to the big city. While exploring Hudson Lake isn't really a day-filling activity on it's own, I'm still glad I got to visit, as it really feels like a station out of time. Little stops like these used to blanket small towns across the nation, but almost all of them have been whittled away by decades of budget cuts and service reductions. Without historic station houses or even notable concrete platforms, these stops can also disappear in the blink of an eye- the South Shore's other, less lucky flag stops have all been completely wiped from the map.

Hudson Lake may even share that same fate, as there's some murmurings in the press about building a new station to replace it on the eastern edge of New Carlisle, east of US-20 at approximately 494 E Michigan Ave. While the plans have cleared the St Joseph County Redevelopment Commission, they're conspicuously absent from the South Shore's recent expansive 20-year plan, so it's still up in the air whether it will move forward.

[1] - Credit Historic New Carlisle, via the book Images of America: Along the Chicago South Shore & South Bend Rail Line

[2] - As the railroad was known at the time; the Chicago, Lake Shore, and South Bend would be reorganized as the Chicago, South Shore, and South Bend on June 23rd, 1925.

[3] - Credit 'Hoosier Recollections' on Flickr

Find a list of my sources here
See all my Hudson Lake photos in full quality on Flickr here

That's all, folks!

A Slice of Old Lincoln Park

2463 N Halsted (blt 1893, demo. 2026)

I’ve started to take notice of what I’d call “No one would miss” buildings more and more as I wander around the city; perhaps because there are already many other more dedicated posters keeping up the beat on the demolition of classical Chicagoan architecture. You’ve surely seen the type; if not flat and unornamented structures from the start, they’re usually the victims of practical but butt-ugly remodels from the malaise era, ornament traded for weather resistant polyvinyl siding, the famous Chicago common brick plastered over with more of the same. They’re on every street in every neighborhood, and you could probably demolish them all tomorrow with little fuss. From the street this building is one of these perfectly uninteresting structures. Simple paint over planks, plain siding, and a nearly windowless ground level facade earn it little in architectural beauty.

A portion of the workshop

The lion’s share of the ground floor is a workshop, with a “backroom” up a few steps behind it. Its possible this started out as a garage, but the first use I can nail down is it’s conversion to a print & engraving shop in 1950. While t-shirt and ‘printing’ shops still dot the north side, I imagine this was a more industrial affair, of the kind of light industry that once criss-crossed every part of every American city. These spaces rapidly dwindled in the latter half of the 20th century, and as the first waves of ‘urban pioneers’ re-entered the city, numerous were turned over to private workshops like this one. Behind this space is a small backroom, elevated a few steps to allow the basement underneath.

The forest-like backyard

 Heading out the back door we are let into just a beautiful garden space, a real transformation of what was likely a weedy lot when purchased. I was reminded of the space at 1649 N Halsted, mentioned in my previous post; This is the space that made the demolition hurt the most to me, I think. The people running the sale did mention they managed to find a buyer for two of the Japanese Maples, but I don’t know if they managed to shift anything more. Still, some salvage is better than none... The basement, more of a cellar than the archetypal “Midwestern basement” is also accessed from the backyard, down an uneven set of stairs. I don’t have any photos here, as it was dim and damp, and there wasn’t much there that caught my interest, and I didn’t want to linger in a space I could barely stand.

While there is a set of rear stairs, the set open to shoppers was indoors in the workshop. I’m not sure how this arrangement worked when this was an active industrial space- I could guess the apartment was originally only accessible via the rear stairs, but the indoor stairway is so narrow that I doubt it was a post 1979 renovation- its possible this lower space has been more heavily remodeled than it appears. Up these stairs we find what motivated me to write this post, the actual living quarters.

"Artist's" impression of floorplan

Bedroom; behind me is the door, to my side is the rest of the bed and a small table.

This space really captured my imagination, as the layout really felt frozen in time, unchanged since even before it was purchased in 1979. It features a small office to the side of a sunroom at the front, a dining room in the middle with a closet tucked behind the stairwell, and then a modest kitchen with a paradoxically sizable pantry and a very tiny bedroom off to the side. I believe one of the estate liquidators told me Kowals was a bachelor, and I jokingly wonder if the bedroom might have had something to do with that- as it was you could hardly fit one man’s items in there, to fit two people in it would be a big ask.

The kitchen is also a compact space- the room itself is not tiny, but is split between being a kitchen space and functioning as a ‘hallway’ to the bedroom. It features a small apartment-spec stove and only one real set of cabinets, though a stylish one that I would assume hail from the 60s or 70s at latest.  The pantry stands out here, fully walk-in, a feature unimaginably luxurious in any modern apartment but built right into what seems to have been a very humble floorplan here. If this space was being renovated instead of demolished, I imagine it would be torn out to expand the kitchen’s raw floorspace.

View of dining room, from front room

I want to touch quickly on Richard Kowal, the last owner of the property. He was a sculptor, with a masters degree in fine art from the Art Institute of Chicago, working primarily in aluminum. A helpful piece from the Rockford Morning Star- which served the city where he taught for several years- also fills in some details by telling us he worked as a furniture restorer and designer, which may explain the nearly 1:1 ratio of workshop to living space. He continued to exhibit into the new millennium, and one of his pieces, “Double Arrows” was sold at auction in New Hampshire in 2015. 

 In addition to the ‘old school’ layout, which is catnip to an architecture nerd like me, part of what made this property stick in my mind is how it’s such a fascinating little story. A totally unassuming building, which was built and will inevitably be knocked down without much fanfare, hid a sculptors workshop, some great little eclectic collections, and some architectural history. I can only hope my future home bows out the same way.

Full photoset will be uploaded to Flickr Soon:tm:.

Photos taken June 13th, 2026

Emojis used for censoring are from Openmoji, used under CC-BY-SA 4.0. My pinkish-red color-swap edit of the blue wizard is hereby also released by CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Sources

• JUST LISTED FABULOUS BUY - Chicago Tribune, October 7th, 1979
• Holiday Ideas At Art Spree - The Southtown Star, November 7th, 2004
• Illinois Sculptors' Work Shown; Malsh To Teach - Marion Wilke for the Rockford Register-Star, March 22nd, 1970
• Artist To Show Sculpture - Marion Wilke for the Rockford Morning Star, December 3rd, 1967
• ZONERS APPROVE MEDICAL SHOP IN CLYBOURN AV. - Chicago Tribune, November 5th, 1950

And Lo The Renewal Became The Renewed - Royal George Theatre

The Royal George Theatre (1641 N Halsted) opened in 1986, the project of one Royal Faubion¹, a Hinsdale-based developer who originally drafted a mixed-use development with a 200-seat theater to "anchor" the retail stores and attract tenants and customers alike. With the influence of theater producer Michael Cullen, this grew, and grew, and eventually devoured the whole lot to become a standalone theater, featuring a 450-seat 'main stage', a 200 seat cabaret theater, a 100 seat 'great room', and a 50-seat black box theater.. The name "Royal George", was in the time honored tradition of mashing the proprietors names together- Royal Faubion, and his secretary-soon-wife, Georgean Jones.

Credit Library of Congress/Sanborn Map Co. 

The theater broke ground on July 16th, 1985, on a freshly cleared lot in a then backwater of the rapidly gentrifying Lincoln Park. The total development spanned 7 "standard" city lots, pictured above in a 1935 Sanborn map, with only the the southernmost building at 1633 N Halsted remodeled into the Cafe Royal. The rest- 4 brick and 2 wood framed primarily residential buildings- were bought out and demolished. As with most vernacular buildings lost to urban renewal, sifting through the newspapers only brings up scattered details- a small grocery store at 1639, the apartments at 1643 being converted into SROs, and countless 'looking for work' ads from tenants of every building in every era.

1649 N Halsted in 1961 - Credit Loop North News/Don DeBat

We do have a valuable history and photograph of one building- 1649 N Halsted, replaced unceremoniously with a parking garage ramp for the Royal George. Our information here comes from Loop North News contributor Don DeBat, whose father purchased the property in 1948, and lived there for decades before it was purchased for the theater's construction. If you're curious, the building- originally split into tiny, four-room one bedroom apartments, was purchased for $4,800 (~$67,000), and later sold $40,000 (~$126,000). The article, written around the time the theater's redevelopment was first discussed in 2022, is an interesting reflection of a lost era of Lincoln Park, and I invite you to thumb through it for a more detailed description of the humble balloon-frame, clapboard building illustrated above. 

The former site of 1649 N Halsted; note the surviving neighboring building

Architects Lisec & Biederman were brought in to draft the new theater's design, with allusions made to it being a 'theater in the old style', with an italianate design to blend into the area's remaining historic structures. I will excise some of the harsher criticism contained in earlier drafts of this post, but overall I find the Royal George rather mediocre. Lisec & Biederman would go on to make more projects in this style, like the Bloomsbury townhomes (5230 S Cornell, 1988), and I think they only improved with time.  The Royal George by comparison feels like it's had all its details pressed flat back into it's facade, giving it the air of a cheap pressed veneer rather than Italianate craftsmanship.

Theater interior - Source: lisecarchitects.com (archived)

After a short period of previews, the Royal George opened on December 3rd, 1986 with Little Shop of Horrors, marking the complex as complete (the adjoining restaurant, The Royal Cafe, had opened a year prior). Royal Faubion however was not one to rest on his laurels, as in August 1988 he announced he was already embarking on a second theater complex, right across the street at 1630-1650 N Halsted. Set to contain new homes for both the prestigious Steppenwolf and Second City theater companies, it doesn't seem to have gotten much farther than breaking ground before things rapidly began to fall apart. Second City bailed that fall, deciding they'd instead stay at their then-and-now current location at 1616 N Wells, and Steppnewolf was not long behind them, formally bailing on Faubion's project on March 9th, 1989. The plan was basically fully scrapped by the summer, when the Steppenwolf 'stepped' back into the picture, buying their slice of the project to build their new theater themselves, and Faubion made out with only a parking garage on the south end of the property.²

Back at the Royal George, the producers of multiple shows weren't being paid, culminating in the producers of Steel Magnolias seizing box office revenues after a $64,000 check bounced in early 1989, and by February Faubion had admitted to the press that he owed "a lot of money". The theater was listed for sale in early March, and would go briefly dark in mid 1989 before being rented to a new management company run by Robert Perkins, reopening in late 1989 with The Cocktail Hour and Cowardly Custard (Perkins would later buy the theater outright in 1994 with Broadway theater producer Rocco Landesman³). The Cafe Royal, who's floundering finances were one of the speculated reason's for Faubion's money troubles, also turned over at this time to the fantastically bland-named "Halsted Bar & Grill". 

The game of hot potato would finally end in 1998, when it traded hands to it's final owners, Reading Entertainment.⁴  With this the theater could finally settle into truly regular operation, and from what I've found during my research it was a pretty popular space in the Chicago theater scene. The neighboring restaurant would continue to trade names, culminating with Balena, an Italian restaurant run by Boka Restaurant Group and B. Hospitality Co, which operated until 2017, when it suffered a devastating fire. The space would be locked in insurance back-and-forth for a further two years before the owners gave up on reopening it in 2019, and it laid vacant until the building's demolition.

The Royal George itself would continue as usual until the Covid-19 pandemic, with the theater closing in March ahead of the premiere of Hit Her With The Skates, with show pages cheerfully noting the theater "Will Be Back Soon". After a year in stasis, owners Liberty Theatres⁵ told the producers of the venues last shows they had until April 11th, 2021 to have their equipment removed, as they were prepping to sell the building for redevelopment. A deal was made by June that year, selling the property to Draper & Kramer of Chicago, IL, From there, work entered a frustrating but familiar rhythm- plans would be announced a year later, approved another year after that, and it would take another two agonizing years before the excavators of Precision Excavation would roll up to the site in late November 2025.

My first visit came the day after demolition permits were granted on November 1st, 2025, as I was still attempting to 'keep up with the Joneses' in respect to Chicago demolitions. That was a venture I quickly burnt out on, and so my coverage ended up a bit spotty. The photo above, taken on November 23rd, shows the earliest demolition work, removing the 1980s connecting building built by Faubion. 

By the time I broke out of a mixed holiday cheer and seasonal depression stupor and returned in February, the site had been almost fully cleared, saved for the stubborn remains of the parking garage. A post from @BuildingChi on Twitter shows that demolition had reached the main theater building by the 3rd.

The parking garage would hold on into March as excavators gnawed away at the steel-reinforced concrete, but the last remnants of the early pioneer of an off-Loop theater revival would soon fade. 

Architectural rendering via Draper & Kramer and SGW Architecture & Design

The approved design, an eight-story mixed use building with a sawtoothed glass facade, is quite nice in my opinion, and does also come with 20 units of affordable housing. The rendering above is also interesting as it includes an approved but seemingly abandoned neighboring development, 1623 N Halsted, that would have knocked out the remaining buildings between the Royal George and the tracks for a similar if less eye-catching 7-story mixed use building.

At time of writing, the site has been fully cleared, though construction has not begun in earnest. I can only wish them luck, as I love to see any residential development that isn't adding to the city-draining trend of deconversions and demolitions for single-family-homes, of which Lincoln Park is particularly infested.

If you'd like to see all the photos I've taken at this site, you can find them here on Flickr
A list of sources can be found here

    1. Up for grabs if anyone's looking for a drag name

2. A proposed "European style" hotel never seemed to materialize; if I had to speculate, this would have gone in the space between the garage and the Steppenwolf that later became the Arts & Education Center. 

3. I found record of a supposedly done-deal in 1992 for the theater to be purchased by real estate lawyer Jerry Schain, who wanted to rename it "Hollywood on the Lake"; it appears nowhere else in newspapers I can find after it's initial announcement.

4. The legal successor of the Reading Railroad, established all the way back in 1833!

5. Reading's live theater subsidiary