Brewster Apartments
- Architect
- Enoch Hill Turnock
- Year
- 1893
- City
- Chicago, IL
The Brewster Apartments, originally called the Lincoln Park Palace, went up in 1893 at Diversey and Pine Grove, designed by architect Enoch Hill Turnock for Bjoerne Edwards, the Norwegian-born publisher of American Contractor magazine. Edwards never saw the building finished in 1896 — he died from a fall from the eighth floor during construction. It was designated a Chicago Landmark on October 6, 1982.
the building
The atrium. The building's signature space is a full-height interior atrium ringed by open cast-iron stairways and bridge walkways paved with glass blocks, lit from above by a massive skylight — an interior circulation system as dramatic as anything on the facade.
Pink jasper and steel. The exterior is faced in pink jasper stone, but the real innovation is underneath: a steel skeleton frame, the same technology that was letting architects push buildings skyward at the end of the 19th century.
the style
Turnock built the Brewster in the Romanesque Revival style, popular in Chicago in the 1890s for buildings meant to look solid and permanent. Here that heavy masonry vocabulary wraps around a genuinely modern steel skeleton — the stone reads as weight-bearing, but the frame does the structural work, a transitional moment in Chicago building technology.
significance
Designated a Chicago Landmark in 1982, the Brewster has had a second life as a filming location, appearing in Running Scared, Child's Play, and Hoodlum. Its residents have included Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld, who moved in after leaving office in 1897.
nearby
- Elks National Memorial Headquarters Building
- Francis J. Dewes House
- Building at 320 West Oakdale Avenue
- Theurer-Wrigley House
- Building at 2440 N. Lakeview Avenue
- Building at 399 West Fullerton Parkway