Terra-Cottology, Part 1: Railway Exchange Building, the Loop, Chicago, Illinois, USA (1904)
(Updated May 14, 2024)
At the beginning of the twentieth century, it took some moxy to build a white skyscraper in Chicago. The city derived much of its energy from the burning of soft, sulfur-rich bituminous coal mined in the Illinois Basin. By modern standards the air was unspeakably foul, as noted by such contemporary visitors as H. G. Wells. Coal soot and grime coated surfaces everywhere, and the cost of removing these unsightly substances, when they could be removed, was staggering.
But this building, which darkened like practically every other, was every year easily returned to its original gleaming state, and at modest expense. This because it's clad not in granite or marble, but in glazed terra-cotta crafted by Chicago's famous Northwestern works. One of the many virtues of this less expensive and lighter stand-in for stone is that it's easily washed. Not surprisingly, many other Chicago buildings of this era were clad in terra-cotta as well.
Ironically, though, the Illinois Basin was also the source for much of Northwestern's terra-cotta-forming clay. Associated with the seams of coal found there were marine shales and underclays (paleosols or ancient soils in which the coal-swamp vegetation had grown). These were mined, too, and shipped up to Northwestern's works on the bank of the North Branch of the Chicago River.
For more on this site, see my book Chicago in Stone and Clay, described at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501765063/chicago-i...
And to see the other photos and descriptions of this series, visit my Terra-Cottology album.
Terra-Cottology, Part 1: Railway Exchange Building, the Loop, Chicago, Illinois, USA (1904)
(Updated May 14, 2024)
At the beginning of the twentieth century, it took some moxy to build a white skyscraper in Chicago. The city derived much of its energy from the burning of soft, sulfur-rich bituminous coal mined in the Illinois Basin. By modern standards the air was unspeakably foul, as noted by such contemporary visitors as H. G. Wells. Coal soot and grime coated surfaces everywhere, and the cost of removing these unsightly substances, when they could be removed, was staggering.
But this building, which darkened like practically every other, was every year easily returned to its original gleaming state, and at modest expense. This because it's clad not in granite or marble, but in glazed terra-cotta crafted by Chicago's famous Northwestern works. One of the many virtues of this less expensive and lighter stand-in for stone is that it's easily washed. Not surprisingly, many other Chicago buildings of this era were clad in terra-cotta as well.
Ironically, though, the Illinois Basin was also the source for much of Northwestern's terra-cotta-forming clay. Associated with the seams of coal found there were marine shales and underclays (paleosols or ancient soils in which the coal-swamp vegetation had grown). These were mined, too, and shipped up to Northwestern's works on the bank of the North Branch of the Chicago River.
For more on this site, see my book Chicago in Stone and Clay, described at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501765063/chicago-i...
And to see the other photos and descriptions of this series, visit my Terra-Cottology album.