Chicago Apartment History – Converted Mansions Traditional Cache
riponteles: I am out of town and unable to maintain the cache for now.
Chicago Apartment History – Converted Mansions
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This series of caches highlights the history and variety of Chicago’s multifamily architecture.
This cache brings you to an example of Chicago’s converted mansion apartment buildings.
NOTE: Please respect the privacy of the apartment's residents. The cache is NOT on or near the building! It is a magnetic key container that holds a small log and pencil.
Unlike the tightly packed tenements and row houses of cities in the eastern United States and Europe, residential development in Chicago was originally dominated by single-family homes. By the time of the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, a large part of the population, including many factory workers, could afford what was then the extraordinary luxury of a single-family detached home. Entire neighborhoods of “workman’s cottages” – small one-story or story-and-a-half frame or brick houses - were erected on all sides of the central business district and many can still be seen today in neighborhoods like Bridgeport, Old Town and Bucktown.
Chicago’s first apartments appeared in a “flat craze” serving Chicagoans made homeless by the Great Fire of 1871.
The city’s characteristic two-flat and three-flat apartment buildings began to be interspersed with single-family houses. Tall apartment buildings first appeared in 1882 and newly fashionable “French flats,” or apartment buildings were built in affluent areas such as the Gold Coast.
Chicago’s 1923 zoning code allowed a generous building envelope along the lakefront. On the Gold Coast and in Hyde Park, the affluent middle classes and the wealthy built apartments reaching 23 stories and containing a variety of apartment configurations.
This cache brings you to an example of Chicago’s converted mansion apartment buildings.
Chicago is known throughout the world for its architecture. Although many people are familiar with the city's skyscrapers and public buildings, they often overlook or are unaware of Chicago's mansions that are located throughout the city. These mansions represent Chicago's past and its future, and it can even be said that they are the very embodiment of Chicago and its architecture. These fashionable residences were built to make a statement, and what better way to have done this than to employ the leading architects of the time to design them. These architects included men such as Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Henry Hobson Richardson, Daniel Burnham, and John Wellborn Root. While the city's mansions are significant because of who built them, they are just as important because of who lived in them. Many of these mansions were built for Chicago's elite businessmen and captains of industry-men who represented old money, new money and big money. Just as important were the families of these men and the other residents who came to live in these mansions-for they left a legacy of their own that contributed to the city's history.
The converted mansion in front of you is The Wellington House. It was completed in 1900 as a residence for Frederic A. Delano, president of the Wabash Railroad and uncle of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Delano moved to Washington, D.C. in 1914 where he served on the Federal Reserve Board and was appointed to various posts in the administrations of Presidents Calvin Coolidge and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In 1922, the Delano residence was purchased by The Bethany Girls, a religious and philanthropic organization formed to provide lodging, classroom, and dining facilities for fifty young women. The building also served as the organization’s national headquarters.
The building was later converted to apartments and a 6-story addition was built to the west. Today, the mansion, the coach house in the rear, and the addition, are home to 90 households.
Source: Graf, John. Images of America Chicago’s Mansions. 2004.
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