Thursday, August 28, 2008

The Courtyard Building, Part V - Courtyards de Luxe


This post is dedicated to the ultra large courtyard building, which I am giving the terminology of Courtyard de Luxe (or perhaps a taxonomy of Courtyard Giganticus) of which there are several well known and lesser known examples throughout Chicago.


The first of these is the legendary or near notorious Tudorbethan Park Gables of Indian Boundary Park, which is one of the very finest examples of both the style and of a large courtyard, in this case a double-courtyard in fact. In many cases, unusually, the exterior decor here carries into the interior, carrying the theme of gothicism inside with vaulted ceilings and beamed rooms.
And I'm not even mentioning it's neighbor, the Park Tudor, which has more of a castellated, gothick feel than Park Gables.


The next example in this post is The Sterling Apartments, probably less well known, in fact, as much as unknown I would say. This one is of the single-courtyard type, but with multiple entries along the front and sides, as well as off of the side courtyard and it runs from side street to side street, for an entire block front. As you can see from only half of the floor plan it is a large building with a variety of accomodation types, from studios to two-bedroomed suites.



Some other examples of these large types can be found in Kenwood, South Shore, Beverly and other areas (such as Uptown-Buena Park, in the Pattington) which were upper middle class.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gosh, i used to ADORE those buildings. My dad used to manage one on the corner of Rockwell and Estes and we'd always go to the park for a walk and I see those huge buildings. The one you have pictured was one of my favorites as a child.

David said...

Well, I hope that you STILL love it, Didi!

Now, I just want to find plans for/of Park Gables, especially the bigger front units, which look like they are much larger and grander than the rest of the units (which aren't too bad themselves).