Fisher Studio Houses

“They have an extra bedroom apiece but otherwise do not differ from the smaller apartments in any substantial way. The third apartment, possibly intended for Fisher's own use, occupies a portion of the first and all of the upper floors of the rear wing; it is the building's largest and most spatially elaborate apartment.”

“The Fisher Apartments is an excellent example of Art Moderne architecture while also incorporating aspects of progressive European styles such as the International Style and Expressionism. Yet Edgar Miller's embellishment of the building with a wide variety of handcrafted ornament gives it a visual quality extremely unusual for modern buildings of the period.”

“One example of such recognition is the 1984 edition of The Chicago Architectural Journal which was dedicated to Rebori and contained two articles on his work. Several buildings designed by Rebori have received landmark status, either through listing on the National Register of Historic Places or as Chicago Landmarks.”

“Miller was art director for the Streets of Paris at the Century of Progress Exposition and designed a number of murals for the concession. He practiced in the Chicago area until the 1960s when he retired, first to Florida and then California, only returning to Chicago in the last several years.”

“According to contemporary newspaper accounts, the Fisher Apartments was believed to be the first completely air-conditioned apartment building built in Chicago. Each apartment had its own air-conditioning unit, prefabricated by Fairbanks-Morse and Co., that provided fresh air through an outside wall intake register.”

“One of the earliest studio apartment buildings developed specifically for artists was the Studio Building at 51-55 West 10th Street in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City.”

“The entrances to the Individual apartment units face an interior courtyard (above) that runs perpendicular to the street. FISHER STUDIO HOUSES (also known as the Frank F. Fisher, Jr., Apartments) 1209 N. State Parkway (1936; Andrew Rebori and Edgar Miller, architects) The FISHER STUDIO HOUSES is one of the city's finest pre-World War II modern designs.”

“Rebori's designs from these prosperous years were accomplished and refined, with those built in the early 1920s based on Italian Renaissance and Georgian precedents. Later buildings show his growing interest in Art Deco, a style based on work shown at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs and Industriels Modernes held in Paris in 1925.”

“It is an exceptional--and rare-- example of Art Moderne, a style of architecture influenced by European modernism. It was commissioned by Frank Fisher, an executive of Marshall Field & Co.”