Burdick House

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Burdick House, Crawford House, Langham Building
Life Span: 1873-1885
Location: Southwest Corner of Wabash and Adams
Architect: T. V. Wadskier

Edwards’ Annual Directory in the City of Chicago, for 1873

Burdick House

Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1874
Burdick House, Munger Bros. proprs. Wabash av. sw. cor. Adams
Goold N. & Son (Nathaniel and John F. Goold) pianos and organs, 199 and 201 Wabash av.
Hall & Bartlett, carriage mnfrs. James A. Dwight, manager, 203 and 205 Wabash av.

Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1880
Burdick House, Frank D. Ray. propr. Wabash av. sw. cor. Adams

Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1884
Crawford House, William Grayson, prop. Wabash av. sw. cor. Adams

Chicago Weekly Post, October 10, 1872

BURDICK AND MEAD BLOCK,
on Wabash avenue, at its intersection with Adams street. Messrs. Burdick and Mead, lumber dealers, have recently begun the erection of a splendid block, which will have 80 feet front on the avenue and 172 feet on Adams street. The Wabash front will be of sandstone in the Corinthian’ colonnade orders, of which there are two. The Adams street front will maintain the same general features, but will be of pressed brick, with massive stone trimmings. It will involve an expense of $150,000 to completo it.

The Land Owner, June, 1874

THE BURDICK HOUSE, OR CHICAGO BLOCK
This building is one of the most thoroughly classic and ornate of any in our new Chicago, and has been the admiration of everybody since its completion. It was planned and supervised by T. V. Wadskier, architect, who has several substantial monuments of his skill in his profession in different parts of the city, none, however, reflecting more credit upon his genius than this. The building was erected and is owned by Messrs. Burdick & Mead, the popular lumber merchants, whose offices and extensive yards are on Twenty-second street and Blue Island avenue. These gentlemen have been in the lumber trade here since 1857, and from a small beginning have created and now control a vast business.

Burdick House

Hall and Bartlett.
These celebrated manufacturers of carriages have in this block, at Nos. 203 and 206 Wabash avenue, probably the largest and best-stocked carriage repository in the country. Their manufactory is at Rockford, Ill., and their work has attained a great reputation all over the United States for its durability, shape and style. The Chicago repository is managed by J. A. Dwight, Esq. Their warerooms are entirely supplied from their new manufactory, and contain a most varied stock from elegant landaulets to 100 pound road wagons.
poster
N. Goold and Son, and the Hazelton Piano.
Our readers will observe in the splendid engraving of the Burdick House that the corner store is occupied by by the firm of N. Goold & Son, then oldest house in their line in Chicago. The senior member of the firm commenced business, in the year 1850, as agent for a leading Boston piano manufacturer, and since that tme have sold nearly all the principal makes of instruments in the United States. About twelve years since they first commenced selling the Hazelton Piano, and from their long experience they have had with them consider that they are fully justified in calling them the best piano manufactured. Of all they have sold, from first to last, not one has failed to give perfect satisfaction, and the reputation of the instrument, based upon real merit, and not upon advertising and purchased recommendations, or premiums at fairs, is constantly increasing. All they ask from any one contemplating purchasing a piano is a fair investigation of the merits of the Hazelton.

They also have a full stock of the N. Goold & Son Piano, which, for a low priced instrument, is unequalled in the market and is fully warranted, and are General North Western Agents for the New England Organ Company’s Organs. Persons in want of anything in the music line will do well to give them a call.

John F. Wells.
On the Adams-st. side of the Burdick House, this gentleman has a fine billiard hall connected with the hotel, where he always keeps a fine stock of wines, liquors and imported Havana cigars.

The Hotel.
The Burdick House is fitted up with all the modern improvements. It has elegant suites of rooms, baths, etc., and accommodations for 200 guests. This is the nearest hotel in the city to the Exposition Building; it is centrally located, and is immediately accessible to the wholesale business houses, railroad depots, places of amusement, and all parts of the city by street cars, and busses, which pass the front door. The terms are $2.50 per day, and Messrs. Munger Bros. are the hosts.

Chicago Tribune, January 6, 1881

Miscellaneous.
To Rent—From May Next. The 5-story and basement building southwest corner of Wabash-av. and Adams-st., Chicago; 80 feet front, on Wabash-av. and 110 on Adams; opposite the Exposition Building.

The main or first floor comprises two stores on Wabash-av., 40×10 feet each, and three stores on Adams-st., 25×65, all with basements. Might be thrown into one store.

The hotel known as the Burdick House comprises the four upper floors of one haif of the Wabash-av. front, with 110 rooms, the other half of front, four floors, 40×100 are in one room each.

The entire building might be arranged for one business bouse, or the stores and basements with second floor. or the botel as now arranged, or with additional rooms. Address or inquire of
W. K. Burdick, Corner of Lake-av. and Forty-third-st., Chicago.

Inter Ocean, June 22, 1882

CRAWFORD’S EUROPEAN HOTEL
To meet a necessary public demand, Mr. i. D. Crawford, the gentleman selected by the Pullman Palace Car Company to superintend the furnishing and fitting up of the beautiful “Hotel Florence” at Pullman, and also for several years the very popular manager of Pierce’s Palace Hotel, Buffalo, and later, manager of the Gardner House, of this city, has at an expense of many thousand dollars, entirely refitted and refurnished throughout the fine five-story and basement hotel building on the southwest corner of Wabash avenue and Adams street, formerly known as the Burdick House. Under Mr. Crawford’s careful personal supervision the entire house from basement to attic has been most thoronghly renovated and remodeled, and it is now in a most excellent condition. The ventilation, plumbing, sewerage, elevator, and in fact every nook and corner in the building bas undergone a thorough overhauling and cleansing. and nothing has been left undone to make “The Crawford” one of the most comfortable, homelike hotels in the city. The walls have been adorned with the finest paper-hangings and decorations that art and skill can produce. The halls are all newly tiled, and carpeted with carpets rich in design and fabric, and the furniture and all the beds and beddings are entirely new and of the most approved styles. The billiard-room and sample-rooms which have been fitted up most elegantly and with the characteristic good taste of the manager, and which will undoubtedly be one of the most popular places of resort in that section of the city, together with the restaurant, will all be on a level with the sidewalk on Adams street, and as distinct from the “Crawford House proper as if separate establishments. There are 125 rooms, at from $1 per day upwards. The entire house, including the bar and billard-rooms, will be opened to-day, at noon.

Chicago Tribune, March 22, 1885

The traveling public and more particularly thoughtless, or reckiess, or criminally negligent hotelkeepers were taught a valuable lesson last evening, when one of the largest and most gorgeously decorated European hotels in Chicago took fire and was totally wrecked in less than an hour after the first alarm was sounded. The Hotel Langham, at the corner of Wabash avenue and Adams street, is this morning a mass of ruins, and its blackened walls may cause the passers-by, to reflect what the consequences would have been had the alarm been sounded after midnight.

The hotel was a five-story structure, finished on the outside with cheap but showy moldings, and cornices of zinc and galvanized iron. The interior of the building from cellar to garret was fnished with light pine and oak. The hostelry has been pronounced for years a fire-trap, and it is owing to this fact that none of its many proprietors have been unable to make it pay.

The Alarm.
It was fifteen minutes to 7 o’clock when the frst alarm was sounded, and in ten minutes thereafter the proprietor, guests, and servants realized that the bouse was doomed, and bur riedly made their escape without attempting to take anytbing with them. The first alarm was rapidly followed by a second and third. Crowds gathered about State and Adams streets and along Wabash avenue in thousands for blocks around, and it became necessary for Capt. Ebersold of the First Police District to put every available officer on duty in the immediate vicinity of the tire to keep back the curious. When the flames had worked through the basement to the first and second floors the dense smoke inside forced out the lights in the win-dow-frames, and the streets and alleys about the place were filled with volumes of smoke so dense that at times the firemen and policemen bad to close their eyes and grope about in darkness, which of course greatly impeded the work of fighting the flames inside the building.

A Roof Goes Down.
Little more than twenty-five minutes after the fire was discovered a rumbling noise was heard inside the building, and the experienced fire laddies immediately stood out from the walls. Then there was a tremendous yet muffled crash, followed by a geyser of scarlet fame and sparks, which shot upward 100 feet. When the upper floors fell through the flames shot out through all the windows on the third, fourth, and fifth floors simultaneously, and the spectacle brought forth an exclamation of admiration from the vast throng that gazed upon 1t.

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