Kent Building

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Kent Buliding, Kuppenheimer Building, 415-423 S. Franklin Street Building,
Life Span: 1903-1950s (During Congress Expressway construction)
Location: NE Corner Congress and Franklin streets
Architect: Pond & Pond

Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1904

Kuppenheimer B. & Co.

Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1906
Kent Building.—297-305 Franklin

Lakeside Business Directory of the City of Chicago, 1907
Kent Building.—297-305 Franklin

Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1911
Kent Building.—423 S. Franklin.

Fireproof Magazine, October, 1903

Architectural Record, January, 1905

A CHICAGO FACTORY.
In the Chicago building which we identify by means of the signs B. Kuppenheimer & Co. (signs which are seen reversed against the sky) there is certainly no affectation of architectural ordonnance with entablatures and all the rest of it, but there is what is fully as surprising, a reference to the very latest and clumsiest forms of the seventeenth century, Barockstil in the attempted architectural treatment of the entrance doorways. Why those blocks are built into the abutments and into the arch itself unless it be for the purpose of claiming relationship to a fantastical form of Neo-classic architecture it would be hard to say. The forms of pediments wrought into four of the windows of the second tier and the similar pedimental forms in the woodwork of the doorway are of the same character. The appearance of those forlorn old conventions here is disheartening enough, coming in the work of such daring and intelligent realists as are the members of the firm, Pond and Pond.

But indeed the addition of purely ornamental features to this building has not been fortunate. The diagonal squares in the parapet and those other features of the wall surface below, square frames with diagonal squares set in them and triangular pendants below these, with little square blocks between them, are altogether most uncalled for and it is indeed impossible to form a conception of what their purpose has been. That the building would have been better without them seems so obvious a truth that one would have thought even the elevation drawings certain to proclaim it.

Apart from those little accessories how straightforward, simple and dignified the building is! As a matter of opinion one might have wished away the segmental arches of the parapet, for why shirk the responsibility of carrying out the square effect of the window-openings to the very top? Why affect an arcuated construction where there is no need, namely, at a point where there is no weight upon the arches? But that is a small matter. It might even be defended on the ground of getting mere light through those windows which alone among the windows of the front would have a deep reveal at their heads, and as for the rest of the work, it is certainly most inspiring in the assurance it gives us that a wholly realistic lay-out of a front of brick and glass may be effective. Dignified it can hardly be, because it can hardly have weight enough; one cannot make a lantern dignified. Picturesque, in the usual sense, it cannot be because of its squareness and uniformity, the flatness of its roof, the general box-like appearance of the whole. It cannot appeal to the past; it is neither historical nor ethnological in its genesis, because it has grown up from a momentary need which no one could have foreseen. Just because it pretends to none of these excellences, because it is not a reflex of old and fine work, nor yet a ponderous mass impressive by its grave solidity of proportion, nor yet again a florid and richly-adorned composition of highly organized sculpture, it is the more attractive. The modern world requires such buildings as this, and this is a serious attempt to make one of them comely.—R. S.

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