Perkins-Nordine House

“The Perkins-Nordine House, through its overall architectural design and detailing, exemplifies the Arts and Crafts ideals embraced by Pond and Pond: building construction that was “honest” and understood by the viewer, the use of materials' intrinsic colors and textures for aesthetic interest rather than applied ornament, and inspiration by architecture of the past.”

“It is a finely made, Arts and Crafts house with beautiful brickwork. Spoken word artist Ken Nordine lived and worked out of the house for 68 years, creating his long-running, syndicated Word Jazz radio show and other notable commercial and artistic work out of the studios he built there.”

“Touches of medievalism such as half-timbering also appear often in their work. Irving Pond wrote a great deal about modern architecture and the art of building. In the June 1909 Western Architect, he stated, 'Architecture is a builded beauty-not sculpted beauty, not painted beauty, not vocalized beauty, but builded beauty." The Perkins-Nordine House exemplifies much of the Arts and Crafts ethic that Pond and Pond embraced in their work.”

“The elder Perkins taught at Robert College in Constantinople, an American-founded school created the year before in 1863 and still in existence today. Educated at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and Yale University (graduating in 1887), the younger Perkins came to Chicago to work for the National Malleable Castings Co.”

“The Perkins -Nordine House exemplifies the Ponds' embrace of aspects of the Arts and Crafts, especially beautiful brick construction, in a building that in aspects of its overall form were influenced by the Ponds' appreciation of American architecture from its colonial beginnings, architecture from the English Queen Anne period of the late 1600s and early 1700s, and the more recent English Queen Anne revival of the 1870s and 1880s.”

“He appeared on stage with the Grateful Dead at their New Year's Eve show later that year and again in Chicago in 1993. Laurie Anderson, a fan of Ken Nordine from her teen years in Chicago which doubtless inspired her word-centric version of music performance art, invited him to play God opposite her Mrs. God at London's Meltdown Festival in 1997 and again via Skype from Chicago in 2015 at the San Francisco Jazz Center.”

“In the latest decades of his career and artistic life, Nordine's interests focused on incorporating visual components into his creations. Utilizing the video capabilities of his second-floor home studio, and subsequently establishing a computer station for his work on the first floor, he set about to create first video and then abstract, computer-generated, visual trips to flow with his words.”

“The Perkins-Nordine house remains among the best surviving of these first-generation mansions that drew Chicagoans of wealth to the Edgewater neighborhood in the years just before and after its annexation to Chicago in 1889.”

“This new synthesis was created on Nordine's ventures from his home at 6106 North Kenmore to nearby clubs where he had to come up with new material every week for returning clientele.”