The Low-Rise Modernist Commercial Buildings on Chicago's Peterson Avenue.

Long overlooked by preservationists, these quirky modernist buildings give a jolt of Southern California nostalgia to a sleepy stretch of Chicago's Northwest Side.

2440 W. Peterson Ave. (built in 1964): Boasts a shade-giving wraparound canopy.

The buildings aren’t the work of celebrated modernist architects such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe or Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. They bear no resemblance to the towering glass and steel monuments to postwar rationalism that you see downtown. They house doctors’ offices and dry cleaners, furniture stores and accounting firms. Some are vacant, their hedges and topiary gone to seed. But with their zigzagging roof-lines, staggered façades, wildly geometric entrances, and 1960s flair, these low-rise gems — arrayed along an otherwise unremarkable stretch of Peterson Avenue between Western and Central Park Avenue — are as fascinating to architectural photographer and critic Lee Bey as any skyscraper. “The modernism here is completely different from the modernism we associate with Chicago,” says Bey. “This is more L.A. style.”

The connection to America’s car culture makes sense because Peterson — a stretch of U.S. Route 14 — was still a main driving route into and out of the city in the late ’50s and the ’60s, when most of these buildings went up. “Here’s a traffic-heavy thoroughfare that’s also a neighborhood business strip,” Bey says. “Where do you look to find a building prototype that can catch the eye — act as its own sign to passing drivers — and still be a corner store, a small corporate office, a clinic?” The answer, decidedly, was Southern California, where the modernist vernacular took similarly offbeat forms along countless commercial streets. There’s an understated genius to these buildings, which sing with grace notes like shade-giving canopies, flagstone partitions, artful brickwork, and entrances shielded from the street by screens and low walls. Such features offer occupants what Bey calls “a bow to privacy” on a street that was once a bustling gateway to the city.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

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2518 W. Peterson Ave. (built in 1974): Originally an architect’s office.

2552 and 2554 W. Peterson Ave. (circa 1964): The storefront spaces were staggered to create a sawtooth effect.

2606 W. Peterson Ave. (built in 1957): An ornate screen and a recessed façade form a shady forecourt.

3414 W. Peterson Ave. (built in 1964): One of a number of buildings along Peterson that use an architectural barrier to hide the entrance.

3455 W. Peterson Ave. (built in 1956): Formerly the Town House Interiors furniture showroom.

3535 W. Peterson Ave. (built in 1956): Bey calls this pitched-roof retail space "very Brady Bunch."

3557 W. Peterson Ave.: Colorful, residential-looking doors impart a welcoming feel to offices in this low-slung mixed-use building.

The Fingerhut Bakery was a Chicago staple since 1895.

Fingerhut Bakery opened in 1895 at 18th and May streets in Chicago. Bohemian immigrant Frank Fingerhut brought the "old country" recipes with him for baked items like Kolacky (a soft and sweet cookie filled with jam), Houska (a sweet yeast bread with raisins and dried fruit), and Babi (Rye Bread).

In 1916, Frank's son Charles purchased land at Cermak and Central (5537 W. Cermak) and built the Charles Fingerhut Bakery. Another store, Fingerhut's Oven Fresh Bakery, opened in Brookfield, Illinois. Herb Fingerhut, a grandson and a seventh-generation, later ran the company until it closed in 2004.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Film footage of the 1919 World Series, the year of the Black Sox Scandal, was discovered in 1978.

In 1978, in north-west Canada’s Yukon territory, construction on a new recreation center was under way in a small rural settlement called Dawson City. As bulldozers tore up the ground where the previous sports hall had stood, a remarkable discovery came to light: hundreds of reels of ancient nitrate film.

Five hundred and thirty three (533) silent films were recovered, including newsreels and features of all types, dating from the 1910s and 20s. Most were previously unknown to film scholars or thought to be totally lost. But for 49 years the inhospitable cold of the Yukon landscape had safely protected the films – which had been found at the bottom of an old swimming pool.

1919 Chicago White Sox team photograph.

This film is an excerpt from the British Canadian Pathé News showing various baseball games between the Chicago Black White Sox[1] and Cincinnati Reds in the infamous 1919 World Series.

Film clips of 1919 White Sox World Series.

This silent film shows some age damage.
runtime: [04:30:00]

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[1] The Black Sox Scandal; was a Major League Baseball match-fixing incident in which eight members of the Chicago White Sox were accused of intentionally losing the 1919 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds in exchange for money from a gambling syndicate led by Arnold Rothstein.

The fallout from the scandal resulted in the appointment of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis as the first Commissioner of Baseball, granting him absolute control over the sport in order to restore its integrity.

Despite acquittals in a public trial in 1921, Judge Landis permanently banned all eight men from professional baseball. The punishment was eventually defined to also include banishment from post-career honors such as consideration for the Baseball Hall of Fame. Despite requests for reinstatement in the decades that followed (particularly in the case of Shoeless Joe Jackson), the ban remains in force.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.