'The Birdcage' Apartments at 6901 North Ridge Boulevard (at Farwell) in Chicago was built by architect Don Erickson in 1959.

Don Erickson curved this flagstone and curtain wall building to give every apartment a view of open space. The steel-rod staircase gave the apartment its nickname, 'the birdcage' which originally rose above the Koi pond whose reflection doubled its pizzazz. He also used the slope of Ridge Boulevard to develop a variety of apartment types to the north of the main pavilion.

'The Birdcage' Apartments at 6901 North Ridge Boulevard (at Farwell) in Chicago.

Don Erickson was born in Chicago in 1929. He graduated from Proviso East High School in Maywood, Illinois in 1947 and studied architecture at the University of Illinois at Navy Pier.  Erickson began his apprenticeship to Frank Lloyd Wright in 1948, on a dare from a college professor. He was an 18-year-old who was torn between a career as an architect and a life as a classical pianist.

Don Erickson, Architect.

Erickson has designed numerous custom homes in the Northern suburbs of Chicago, as well as his most well-known project, the Indian Lakes Resort in Bloomingdale, Illinois.

He died on October 24, 2006, after a long battle with multiple myeloma and is buried in White Cemetery in Barrington, Illinois.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.