FitzGerald Associates predecessor firm Rissman and Hirschfeld had a significant impact on Chicago’s Milwaukee-Diversey-Kimball Historic District, designing two buildings at the six-corners intersection in the city’s Logan Square Neighborhood and a third on an adjacent lot along Milwaukee Avenue between 1927 and 1928.
The most prominent building completed for the District by Rissman and Hirschfeld is the three-story commercial building built at the Southeast corner of Milwaukee and Kimball Avenues for the Goldblatt Brothers’ department store in 1927. The building, which is richly decorated in the Classical Revival style, was built during an era of great success for Goldblatt’s, which expanded quickly in the 1920s and 1930s to become a significant pioneer in chain retailing in Chicago. The building is now home to a GAP outlet store.
At the Southwest corner of Milwaukee and Diversey Avenues , Rissman and Hirschfeld designed a four-story Classical Revival style building for the Milwaukee & Diversey Building Corporation featuring first-floor commercial spaces and three stories of apartments.
Rounding out the trio of buildings designed by the firm in the District is 2767 North Milwaukee Avenue, a narrow three-story commercial building in the Art Deco style. Detailed with glazed terra cotta, the building includes stylized fluted pilasters and a wing-spread motif above its third-story windows, giving the building a very vertical emphasis and a modernistic appearance.
