Henry B Clarke House
- Year
- 1836
- Style
- Greek Revival
- City
- Chicago, IL
The Henry B. Clarke House is the oldest existing house built in Chicago, put up around 1836 for Henry Brown Clarke, a New York-born hardware merchant who had come to Chicago in 1833 and ran a building-supply business, King, Jones and Company, with William Jones and Byram King. Built by local contractor John C. Rue, the Greek Revival home predates nearly all of the city's surviving architecture.
the building
A house that has moved twice. Originally built near Michigan Avenue and 17th Street, the house has been relocated twice, most recently in 1977 to Indiana Avenue and 18th Street, close to its original site, where it now sits within the Prairie Avenue Historic District.
the style
The house is built in the Greek Revival style common to genteel American homes of the 1830s, a style choice that reads today as a rare surviving marker of what Chicago looked like before the Great Fire and before the skyscraper era.
More on Greek Revivalsignificance
The Clarke House was designated a Chicago Landmark (L-74) and listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 14, 1970, among the city's earliest landmark designations. In the mid-20th century it was preserved through the efforts of Bishop Louis Henry Ford and his wife Margaret, who championed the house as the city's oldest surviving home.
nearby
- John J. Glessner House
- William W. Kimball House
- Second Presbyterian Church
- Wheeler-Kohn House
- Harriet F. Rees House
- Chess Records Office and Studio