Troescher Building, H. Schultz and Company, Chicago Daily Illustrated Times Building, Daily Times Building, Chicago Evening Journal, Chicago Joint Board Building, Louis Sullivan Building
Life Span: 1884-1979
Location: Market street near Madison
Architect: Adler & Sullivan
- Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1904
Chicago Tribune, May 18, 1884
A six-story and basement business building, 80 by 90 feet, on Market street, south of Madison, for Mr. A. Troescher. The architects are Messrs. Adler & Sullivan, who are now letting contracts for the structure, the first story and basement of which will be of brown stone and the upper stories of Chicago pressed and ornamental brick.
Chicago Tribune, December 28, 1884
A Splendid Showing.
Half a block further north, near Madison street, on the west side of Market street, Adler & Sullivan are just completing a fine store building 80×95 feet and six stories high for A. F. Troescher of New York. The first story is of McArthur brown stone, rock-faced and splendidly designed, and the upper stories are of Anderson brick, trimmed with brown stone and terra-cotta. When finished it will cost about $100,000.
Inland Architect, December, 1884
Store building for A. F. Troescher, by Architects Adler & Sullivan.
The building is seven stories in height, seventy-nine feet front and ninety feet deep. The front is built of McArthur brown stone for the first story, and above this Chicago Anderson pressed brick, terra cotta, iron, and plate glass. The columns are iron, the plastering upon wire cloth. The interior finish is red oak with maple floors. This work, as well as the entire carpentry of the building, is placed by M. B. Bushnell, whose work as a constructor of auditoriums, and other expert construction, has given him a reputation for accuracy and quickness second to none in the West. There is one steam freight and one steam passenger elevator. The arrangement is for a wholesale store, and the cost when completed will be $100,000.
Chicago Tribune May 4, 1978
No cause to cry over this razing
By Paul Gapp
Architecture critic
The Louis Sullivan- Troescher Building at 15 S. Wacker Dr. Is about to be demolished, and preservationists are wringing their hands. I can’t get excited about it. It wasn’t much of a building when it opened in 1884. and it is of no more importance today.
Some years ago, the multiply arched base of the seven-story masonry structure was squared off in an ill-conceived “modernization.” Last weekend, workmen removed what remained of two clumsily decorated arches at the summit of the building s two middle bays.
In anthropomorphic terms, the structure has already been beheaded and amputated. I have explored its interior, which is unremarkable. And the Troescher has never been nominated for official city landmark status.
So why are many of Chicago’s preservationists trying to make a brouhaha out of its impending demolition?
Some of them probably overdosed on art history in college and are going through life with the notion that anything old is worth saving. Others are reacting emotionally because of the barbaric 1972 destruction of Adler & Sullivan’s magnificent Old Stock Exchange Building at 30 N. La Salle St.
But these feelings do not make the Troescher an architecturally or historically important structure. Even the world famous Sullivan did some nondescript buildings, just as Frank Lloyd Wright did some nondescript houses over whose demise I would not weep.
The Troescher affair does raise a couple of points to which preservationists should pay heed, however.
First, it is unwise to waste one’s energies on saving marginal buildings when so many important ones are in danger of defacement or oblivion.
Second the manner in which the owner of a building passes the death sentence is sometimes irritating, but again, this has nothing to do with the building’s merits.
Harry Walken, a real estate developer who controls the Troeocher did not push the doom button with much class.
The city Department of Buildings was on Walken’s back because chunks of brick and terra cotta were falling off the top of the Troescher. Walken had a crew erect scaffolding on the building and remove loose material. The workmen will move into demolition with little or no pause.
No, not much class. But Walken couldn’t have come off much better even it he had hired a battalion of press agents.
And the Troescher is still a second-rate building.
- Troescher Building
Robinson Fire Insurance Map
1886
- Troescher Building
Greeley-Carlson Atlas of Chicago
1891
- Chicago Journal Building
Sanborn Fire Insurance Map
1906
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