Guest blogger: Landon Bone Baker Architects. Landon Bone Baker Architects were the lead architects for both SRO projects. Residential hotels constructed in Chicago between 1880 and 1930 served as an indispensable component of the city’s housing stock, offering an affordable housing option in prime locations. These single-room occupancy (SRO) hotels served a critical role in housing a large segment of the city’s middle- and working-class residents, and many continue to do so

In early spring, Historecycle donned a hardhat and steel-toed shoes and returned to Chicago’s Glessner House to witness the crowning touches of the geothermal well drilling on site. Joggers in the adjacent Chicago Women’s Park, where trees were just turning green, were oblivious to another type of greening happening next door. In Glessner House’s courtyard, on the other side of the brick wall that separates the park from the building, four holes were being bored through bedro

One hundred years ago, on a snowy, bone-chilling Chicago day like today, the Glessner family would have been huddled by the fireplace in their parlor, since the house’s original heating set-up did not allow winter temperatures to get much higher than 60°F. Now, in 2016, the parlor is located in the first zone of the Glessner House to be heated geothermally, along with the dining room, kitchen, and other first floor rooms west of the parlor. Around the turn of the new year th

On December 9, Phase I of the geothermal drilling began in the Glessner House courtyard. The 4,700-square-foot grass courtyard is enclosed by three sides of the building plus an ivy-covered brick wall to the south. This is the same courtyard where weddings are held during the summer, the same courtyard that the Glessners once looked out on from their parlor 100 years ago, the courtyard that was paved over in the 1940’s for use as parking when the house became a printing resea

Next month is D-Day for the Glessner House in Chicago – D for Dig. The much-awaited installation of the building’s new geothermal system is about to begin! Engineers from ACE (Architectural Consulting Engineers) are putting the finishing touches on the design for the new system, which will be state-of-the-art in terms of energy efficiency and performance. Although the Glessners’ 1887 house was visionary for its time, its owners could scarcely have foreseen that air condition

The Glessner House on Prairie Avenue in Chicago may seem, in our eyes, old or old-fashioned, but compared to neighboring mansions of the same period, it was–and still is–a standout. Radically different. Avant-garde. A very decided departure from the conventional. This is how the building, which is now a museum, has been described. Throughout the years, visitors have remarked upon the contrast between the unadorned, expansive, fortresslike exterior and the elegant yet cozy,