“Individual buildings are frequently demolished and replaced, but the streets and public open spaces tend to stay put.”—Colin Davies, Thinking About Architecture
— by Eric Farber ’65
I WAS RAISED IN BEVERLY HILLS.
Illinois, not California.
Among Chicago’s South-Side neighborhoods, Beverly stands out because of its concentration of large homes designed by architects. Most of these were built in the 1920s and 1930s when the neighborhood was a bedroom community for men who worked downtown in Chicago’s Loop.
As a child I played in the Beverly streets and knew their names by heart. As an adult I recognize that Beverly’s homes are unique. Built in traditional styles with many European influences, each one is distinctive and different from the others. What’s more, as they attain old age, they are still in fine condition.
The demographics of the neighborhood have changed—with Irish Catholics and African Americans replacing the white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants of my youth—but Beverly looks and feels the same. When I visit I take long walks around the neighborhood to reacquaint myself with the beauty and interest of those old homes. I wonder if it was my daily exposure to them as a child that partly accounts for my interest in architecture as an adult.
Other parts of the Chicago of my youth have changed greatly. The little stores on Vanderbilt that sold army-navy goods and equestrian outfits are gone, as are the movie theaters and used bookstores I used to haunt as a kid. Gone, too, are the nightclubs with names like the London House and Mr. Kelly’s along with the bars and restaurants that once gave Rush Street and the surrounding Gold Coast such a cosmopolitan air.
They have been replaced by undistinguished, monolithic buildings and hotels whose commercial spaces, where they exist, are occupied by the kind of products with designer names that we find in every big American and European city. These parts of Chicago have lost their charm, for me at least.
Fortunately, there are other parts of the city, like Pilsen, Uptown, and Andersonville on the far North Side, that have changed demographically and become more interesting. Chicago is a city of neighborhoods—I believe I’ll never run out of interesting ones to explore.