Arlington-Deming District

“Besides the Lange house, Wing also designed in 1893 a frame building located on the World Columbian Exposition's Midway Plaisance that housed a display of noted East-Coast photographer Eduard Muybridge's “animated pictures.” (This was touted in Wing's Chicago Tribune obituary in 1916 as “the first exclusive motion picture theater in the world.") Henry Ives Cobb, the architect for two apartment buildings on the northwest corner of W. Arlington Pl. and N. Geneva Terr., as well as three small houses to the west at 604 through 608 W. Arlington Pl., is significant as one of Chicago's most prominent late-nineteenth-century architects.”

“(The St. Clement church building itself is not included in the district pursuant to Sec. 2-120-660 of the Chicago Landmarks Ordinance.) The Arlington-Deming Districttoday is a well-established, fashionable and attractive residential neighborhood of houses, low-rise “flat” buildings, and taller apartment buildings and hotels that exemplify the best of historic neighborhood architecture in Chicago.”

“(Cobb, a well-known Chicago architect of the period, designed the Former Chicago Historical Society and the Chicago Varnish Co. Building, both individually designated Chicago Landmarks, as well as the Newberry Library, which is a contributing building to the Washington Square Chicago Landmark District.) By 1900, the Arlington-Deming District was already seeing the first construction of apartment buildings, a general building type also of significance to the historic visual character of the district.”

“These include the polychromatic, Queen Anne-influenced brick house at 522 W. Deming Pl.; the massive-looking Richardsonian Romanesque-style mansion at 612 W. Deming Pl., designed in 1893 by Thomas W. Wing with exceptional low-relief stone ornament; and the Classical Revival-style house built in 1896 for retailer William Wieboldt at 639 W. Deming Pl.”

“Examples include 557 W. Arlington Pl., 561 W. Arlington Pl., 647 W. Arlington Pl., and 649 W. Arlington Pl. The Arlington-Deming District's row houses, built as single-family houses but with a tighter, more efficient use of space, exemplify the beginnings of the neighborhood's transformation into a more densely populated urban community.”

“Arriving in Chicago in 1885, he established a private architectural practice that soon attracted Ernest Lehman, the owner of the Fair Department Store and a real-estate investor. Lehman and his heirs would become arguably Krause's most important clients, commissioning a number of important buildings, including the Majestic Building and Theater in downtown Chicago (a designated Chicago Landmark) as well as the Commodore and Green Briar Apartment Buildings in the Surf-Pine Grove District, located northeast of the Arlington-Deming District in the adjacent Lake View neighborhood (under consideration as a Chicago Landmark District).”

“The Arlington-Deming District has several examples of corner apartment buildings. Two of the earliest are located on the southeast and southwest corners of N. Geneva Terr. and W. Arlington Pl., both built in 1905.”

“Geneva Terrace (then known as Larrabee) was an even narrower and more intimately-scaled street than Arlington Pl., with both small-scale, freestanding houses and row houses. Orchard St., the most built-up street within the district in 1894, had mostly small-scale frame houses from the district's earliest stage of development in the 1870s and 1880s, although masonry free-standing houses and row houses were beginning to be built.”