The Plaza Hotel, 1553 North Clark Street, Chicago, Illinois.

Perhaps the most quintessential Warren hotel, the Plaza was built from 1891-92 at 1553 N. Clark Street, at the southeast corner of Clark and North Avenue. The Plaza was an eight-story hotel with 100-foot frontage on North Avenue and 225 feet of frontage on Clark Street. The hotel was erected in three sections separated by light wells, with oriels and bay windows providing additional light, breezes, and views.

Note the Hasty Tasty Coffee Shop. 1964

The Plaza follows closely the plan, exterior form, and general functional arrangement of the two Michigan Avenue hotel buildings, the Metropole and the Lexington. The uniformity and the regularity of the street elevations make this hotel one of Warren's best.

Like Warren’s other work, particularly the Metropole, Lexington, and Kenmore Apartments (at 47th and Lake Park), the hotel prominently featured six of Warren’s trademark rounded, cylindrical corners along Clark Street, which extended turret windows from the second floor to the flat, corniced roofline. Unlike several of Warren’s other buildings, the hotel was situated on the northwest edge of one of Chicago’s wealthiest and most desirable neighborhoods—the Gold Coast—and afforded its guests excellent views of the lake and Lincoln Park.

The fortunate positioning of the hotel in a stable neighborhood allowed it to be more economically successful throughout its life. Ernest Hemingway courted his first wife Elizabeth Hadley Richardson at the Plaza shortly before they moved to Paris in the early 1920s. The Hemingways had their honeymoon at another Warren building, the nearby Virginia Hotel. Even as other Warren hotels suffered from age and neglect after World War II, the Plaza remained a mostly respectable hotel until its final years.

In the mid-1960s, a large urban residential redevelopment project called Sandburg Village to the south and west of the hotel changed the dynamic of the area. The land and prominent corner that the Plaza occupied became more valuable than the aging facility could sustain. 

In 1968, the Plaza was razed. The private Latin School, an exclusive, non-sectarian private college preparatory high school was built on the site.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

The Transfer Station in Decatur, Illinois.

 The station being moved to its new location.

The Transfer House is a historic structure situated in Central Park in Decatur, Illinois. It was built in 1896 and designed by William Boyington, who also designed the Chicago Water Tower. It served as one of the main electric streetcar transfer stations in the city.

Decatur was an early adopter of streetcar electrification. In 1889, the Citizens' Street Railway became the Citizens' Electric Street Railway, with a plan to electrify its horsecar lines. Electric streetcar service began on August 28, 1889. In 1891, the company was reorganized as the City Electric Railway. This became the Decatur Traction and Electric Company in 1899. It was sold to the William McKinley interests, which became the Illinois Traction System (ITS), in 1900. After December 1903, the company was known as the Decatur Railway and Light Company.

The Transfer House was erected in 1895, replacing a smaller shelter dating from 1892. The City Electric Railway paid $500 toward the $2700 building fund subscribed by local merchants and property owners and agreed to furnish and maintain the building. As its name implies, it was used as a central transfer point for all the streetcar lines (and later the bus lines) in the city.

The structure became a main focal point in the city and community events and gatherings were held at the square. Three presidents gave speeches from the open-air bandstand on the second level. The structure was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.

Ridership on the streetcar and interurban lines declined in the 1950s and the Transfer House became a bus station. It was moved to Central Park in 1962 and renovated in the 1970s. It remains a landmark in the city today.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.