| Address | 4646 N. Hermitage Avenue, Chicago, IL |
|---|---|
| Built | 1886 |
| Architect | Unknown |
| Status | Designated Chicago Landmark |
| Designation Date | October 4, 2006 (Final)City Council Journal of the Proceedings, p. 86820 |
| Neighborhood | Uptown |
| Type | House |
| Landmark ID | L-34 |
Direct quotes from the Chicago Landmark Designation Report
“Carl Sandburg is one of America's finest and best-known poets and writers and one of the nation's leading literary figures of his day, writing more than a dozen books of poetry, essays, and biographies, including such noteworthy books as Chicago Poems, Cornhuskers, Smoke and Steel, and an award-winning multi-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln.”
“Through Monroe's open-minded view of the possibilities of modern poetry, Poetry became one of the leading venues for English-language poetry during the 1910s. Monroe's associate editors, Alice Corbin Henderson and Eunice Tietjens, were the first to read Sandburg's submissions.”
“After the Chicago Fire, there was a significant influx of residents because less expensive wood-frame housing was permitted outside the city's limits. These wood-frame buildings are still evident throughout Ravenswood, and the Sandburg house exemplifies this period of construction.”
“By January 1916, with Paula's help, Carl had compiled a manuscript of 260 poems arranged in seven sections. The first section, Chicago Poems, included his vivid portraits of the city.”
“An important middle-class Chicago housing project, Carl Sandburg Village, built on the Near North Side between 1960 and 1975 as part of urban renewal, bears his name. His birthplace in Galesburg is maintained by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency as the Carl Sandburg State Historic Site, and his later home in Flat Rock, North Carolina, is managed by the National Park Service as a National Historic Site.”
“Ravenswood, along with the rest of the town of Lake View, was annexed to Chicago in 1889. This, along with improvements in public transportation such as the nearby Ravenswood elevated line (now the Brown Line) that began operation in 1907, encouraged more intensive development in the area in the 1910s and 1920s at the time Sandburg lived in the neighborhood.”
“Samuel B. Gookins, a Chicago lawyer who arrived in the city in 1858 and established his career during the Civil War and Chicago Fire years, built the Sandburg residence circa 1880.”