Category: Real Estate Development

The changing economy and its effects on the retail streetscape may be best studied in the pre-war and post-war streetscape: pre and post First World War. This particular timeframe holds fascination as it depicts a landscape before and after the automobile’s influence. Oak Park offers another excellent set of examples: it has both types of development at hand.

Since the 1860’s, downtown Oak Park has been built up next to a commuter train station, and a rapid transit station in time. The largest source of traffic for these train stations was commuter traffic to and from Chicago. Storefronts were built up along adjacent streets. Though this area was never planned, it grew naturally, with many improvements over the years. The commuter train and rapid transit stations are still there, they generate a sizeable amount of foot traffic. While this neighbourhood has some storefront vacancies, it is a sought after location in Oak Park, perhaps one of the most economically vibrant in town. Odd, because this society has become so much more reliant on personal transportation – the automobile – since the initial development. This infrastructure and its layout still seem to work. Granted, there is an ongoing issue about car parking in this area, the sentiment being that more parking garages should be built to provide more accessibility for shoppers; in reality, the parking garages in existence draw on a substantial trade of commuters who park their vehicles to walk to the train stations.

As an aside, a very large parking garage might hold as many as 1000 cars, whereas a fully loaded commuter or rapid transit train may hold as many as 1000 people. While parking may be an attraction for commuters, it’s effect is limited. Most transit riders still seem to find other ways to get to the train.

While Oak Park grew naturally around its train stations in that era prior to mass ownership of automobiles, the town was bordered by country roads.

Using the First World War as a marker, a pivotal point in time because automobiles were becoming more widespread. The original Garden City concept of orderly development around train stations forming towns, and towns separated by open space was becoming passé ; all of the bits of the open space between established towns were now accessible point-to-point by automobile and seemed to be idyllic places to live. These areas were settled as ‘sprawl’. Our urban design patterns were still based on walkable towns, so these new areas settled by “automobile development” were awkward in their layout.

Areas of Oak Park like North Avenue were developed in this fashion in the 1920‘s. Small storefronts with large signs were built “cheek by jowl” along a busy highway, originally intended to move traffic from one town to another without stopping in between. Automobile parking happened on either side of this broad right-of-way. Additional parking was provided along the back of the storefronts, allowing customers to enter from either a front or back door. This led to confusion and an informality, as the ‘back doors’ alongside convenient parking also doubled as the service entrance. Architect and Urban Planner Victor Gruen, in his book “The Heart of Cities” chronicled this type of development.

In Oak Park, North Avenue has more vacancies than anywhere else in tow, and has become a favourite location for tattoo parlours and palm readers. The Village is probably coveting the property and sales tax revenue generated by marginal uses like these, and that this tax income is more difficult to come by in this economy.

Jumping ahead many years, it was the era after the Second World War that developed an urban model that located a building in the middle of a vast parking lot, the precursor of big box retailers and shopping malls. And oddly, this type of retailer isn’t doing that well either these days.

What goes around comes around.

Many early-modern architectural theoreticians were impressed by inventions of the machine age.  Some, like French Architect Le Corbusier, promoted the concept of architecture as a “machine for living”.  Still others, like Mies van der Rohe, spoke of the ‘machine aesthetic”.

From that same historical period, one may find many examples of “architecture as a machine” along Chicago’s waterways and railways.  Many other towns and cities have tremendous examples as well.

Perhaps one of the earliest examples of a tall “skyscraper”, granaries – better known in North America as grain elevators – first appeared along canals.  Canals introduced the idea of valuable “frontage” along waterway’s edge.  In order to achieve maximum financial return when building a facility along a canal, the formula was to use as little frontage as possible while building as large a building as possible – the idea of stacking uses vertically.  Grain elevators acted as a transition between transportation modes by way of a storage depot.  Grains would be brought to the elevator, deposited, and stacked on top of other grains in storage.  The act of transporting the grains upward caused great architectural drama; the economy of designing tall, vertical structures to store grains created sensations.  Once stored, grains had to be deposited back down to earth on a means of conveyance that could carry a larger amount of goods; the path returning to earth also creating impressive architectural forms.

Engaging materials along a similar sequence of path, coaling towers refreshed the coal bins of steam locomotives.  Initially built of wood, they were round in shape; a circular plan being the most efficient use of materials.  Later, when built of concrete, they were square in plan.  Perhaps squares are easier to arrange on a site than circles.

Architect / Engineer William LeBaron Jenney designed truss bridges during the Civil War.  He observed that trusses could be mounted vertically, rather than horizontally to create a ‘”skyscraper” frame.  While bridge trusses display breath-taking shapes and repetitions, the types of bridges that move – turntable bridges that turn around and drawbridges that go up and down -show an ability to move entire buildings.  Apart from amusement park rides, modern architects have never found reason to do this, though devices that move within buildings – like passenger elevators – are very useful.  The British architectural movement, “Archigram” had great, though fantastic visions of buildings that would pick up and walk, though none have come to realization.

Roundhouses were initially facilities where railcars would be stored, then eventually facilities where locomotives would be serviced.  They were designed to fit into the tightest of spaces.  A locomotive would drive onto a turntable that would turn, pointing the locomotive – or railcar as it was – onto a track that led to the appropriate service bay.  Though most roundhouses were simply arcs, some roundhouses were near complete circles.  The latter types surrounded the turntable with almost 360 degrees of service bays, the leftover being a ‘slot’ that locomotives would drive through to approach the turntable.

Many have looked at these buildings sitting empty and derelict, wondering why they can’t be retrofitted into some other use.  True, a couple concrete grain elevators have been turned into hotels; square beds have a difficult time fitting into round spaces, and the walls can be so thick so as to create structural challenges in creating window openings.  Likewise, finding ways to introduce horizontal circulation at every level takes away from the original form. However, as I’ve explained to others before, these buildings are not unlike my old, manual typewriter.  Maybe its appearance could be updated by painting it a different colour, or replacing the strike pads with a different font.  It wouldn’t make any sense to “modernize” it to be an electric typewriter, and it would make no sense to do an adaptive reuse on a manual typewriter to become a coffee percolator.  A manual typewriter is a machine; its shape and form are intrinsic to its function.  Same with a grain elevator.  Or coaling tower.  Or roundhouse.