In November, the National Park Service listed 2440 North Lakeview—Designed by Rissman & Hirschfeld in 1927—on the National Register of Historic Places. The news was announced on December 14, 2011 by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency.
When it was announced in 1926, its 107 apartments made it “the largest of its kind in the middle west,” its kind, presumably, being a semi-cooperative. With the land, the cost of the project came to some $4 million.
The larger apartments, a couple of them duplexes with two-story living rooms, were intended to be sold, while the smaller units were to be rented. Separate entrances and lobbies were planned for owners and their tenants. The popular “Tudor Gothic” style was invoked in the brick, limestone and terracotta structure. Chicago Tribune critic Al Chase declared its styling made the newest Chicago buildings “look as old fashioned at a last year’s straw hat” with its “modern set-back style of architecture, now almost universally used in Manhattan and popular throughout most of the other big cities outside Chicago.” The setbacks permitted rooftop equipment to be hidden. The usual 1920s luxury items—colored tile baths, separate shower stalls, wood-burning fireplaces, vaulted galleries—were supplemented by an elaborate sunken English garden.
The promotional brochure pointed to the exclusive neighborhood, listing the names of prominent Chicagoans already living in apartments on either side of 2440. Aside from the two 11-room duplexes, 2440 originally included some 30 eight-room apartments, and 33 of six rooms. Reorganized in 1950, many tenants bought their apartments—one 11-room unit sold for $46,000 that year—and 2440 remains a cooperative today.
