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Boyce Block
Life Span: 1872-1899
Location: NE corner of N. State and Madison streets (1-3 N. State)
Architect: TBD
Boyce Block
The area around State and Madison bounced back relatively quickly. Field & Leiter rebuilt a block to the north, at Washington Street, in 1873, and soon the ornate Colonnade Building rose on part of the site where Booksellers Row had been. Here we see an entire row of handsome five-story buildings containing stores (including the Mandel Brothers department store, second from the corner) and offices, in the center of which is the Colonnade. Just to the north, across Washington Street, is the 1878 Field & Leiter Store, which was constructed after the 1873 building was lost to another fire in 1877. Note the horses and the vehicles that brought the well-to-do “carriage trade” to State Street.
The major retail occupant of the Colonnade Building was Jansen, McClurg & Company, which was a book publisher as well as seller of books and stationery. It also published Chicago’s leading late-nineteenth-century literary and cultural magazine, The Dial. In 1886 the company became A. C. McClurg. Its most successful title was Tarzan of the Apes, by Chicagoan Edward Rice Burroughs, published in 1914.
Boyce Block
NE corner of N. State and Madison streets (1-3 N. State)
Robinson Map 1886
Volume 3, Plate 9
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