2500 W. Touhy


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2500 W. Touhy
Posted by: WayOutWardell ()
Date: July 04, 2014 01:51AM

There is a half-block-long string of brick apartment buildings on the north side of Touhy just west of Western. They're all similar - very plain - and back up to Rogers Park.
Were these a public housing project of some sort?

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Re: 2500 W. Touhy
Posted by: Mr Downtown ()
Date: July 05, 2014 09:37PM

No, but they might have benefited from the favorable tax incentives offered just after World War II to investors to build apartments. A number of large complexes, such as Granville Gardens and Winchester-Hood Garden Homes, were developed at that time in Rogers Park by big institutional investors.

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Re: 2500 W. Touhy
Posted by: shoreline ()
Date: July 07, 2014 12:12AM

Way Out,
There are many buildings throughout the Rogers Pk area that are identical to those on the 2500 W Touhy block. During the 1950s I had friends in a few of the apartments and learned that these were co-op buildings constructed aroung 1950.

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Re: 2500 W. Touhy
Posted by: gman ()
Date: July 07, 2014 05:07PM

shoreline Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Way Out,
> There are many buildings throughout the Rogers Pk
> area that are identical to those on the 2500 W
> Touhy block. During the 1950s I had friends in a
> few of the apartments and learned that these were
> co-op buildings constructed aroung 1950.


Yup, my parents lived in a similar building just north of Albany Park and a great-aunt lived in one on Kedzie near Devon. I suspect either it was a common developer or the plans were somehow in the public domain. There wasn't any money wasted on architects on these. There are many examples in Budlong Woods also. Probably hundreds of similar buildings if anyone were to take the time to hunt them down and catalog them.

They're exceedingly inconsequential as far as design or historical significance.

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Re: 2500 W. Touhy
Posted by: davey7 ()
Date: July 08, 2014 01:56PM

There are huge areas of similar townhouses along Ridge, Howard and around Milwaukee/Golf (all over Niles) from the 50's. The one's along Touhy were probably built to be walking distance to Shul.

Granville Gardens, Win-Hood et al (Lunt-Lake Apartments, Parkway Gardens, Sherman Gardens and so on) were developed by a Mutual Homes cooperative trust model and all were designed by Holsman, Holsman, Klekamp and Taylor as affordable owner-occupied cooperatives, which most of them still are to this day. Holsman developed a large number of cooperatives before WWII in South Shore and Hyde Park as mutual trust cooperatives as Parker-Holsman (which still exists as a property management company in Hyde Park). Henry K Holsman, founder of this all, was originally an automobile manufacturer as well as architect.

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Re: 2500 W. Touhy
Posted by: rjmachon ()
Date: July 21, 2014 10:51PM

The building at 2538 West Touhy was built around 1952 according to city records. Estimated Building Sq Ft. 3,968. Land Square Footage 9,200.

All of the other buildings on the block are condos and built around 1952 and 1953 according to CityNewsChicago.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/22/2014 12:41AM by rjmachon.

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