Apartment Houses for Thomas Hodgson

On two occasions, Silsbee was hired by carpenter T. J. Hodgson to design flat buildings for him.  The first was constructed in 1894 and the second in 1897.  The buildings are identical except for a slight change in brick type.  

They are simple buildings, each with a central entrance flanked by two-story bays above, on either side.  Much of the charcter of the structures is derived from this massing.  Besides the stone base and coins around the entry and some classical detailing with swags at the cornice, they do not have a lot of added detail.  They are typical of the kind of flat buildings that could be found throughout Chicago.

Hodgson was a contractor and built many fine homes around Chicago.  Silsbee may have known him through his association with construction at Edgewater as Hodgson worked on homes for J. L. Cochran there.  

Store and Flats for John Scovel

Silsbee is well known for the Shingle Style homes that he designed in the Edgewater Suburb in Chicago.  These are the homes that Frank Lloyd Wright cut his design teeth on.  Some have asserted that Silsbee even introduced the style to Chicago.  All of the buildings he designed in Edgewater were not in this style though.  In 1892, he designed a simple flat building for Edgewater resident and investor, John Scovel.      

The design of the building is almost vernacular in nature and has no stylistic ornamentation.  Instead, Silsbee relies on the building mass, with it's prominent corner tower (once topped with a conical roof) and careful detail of materials as keynotes to this design.  Note the fine metal trim and banding and use of fairly complex metal profiles framing windows and panels in the bay and turret.  This same attention in metal work is seen in a band of metal trim at the roof level and another at the coping.      

Though the turret roof is missing and the storefront and windows have been completely altered, the building still retains much of its detail and it is the last known surviving work by Silsbee in Edgewater.  It stands just blocks from the site of Silsbee's former home and would have been within a short walking distance of dozens of other Silsbee designed structures.  You can find more information about Scovel's building and other structures in Edgewater in the "Articles" on the Edgewater Historical Society website.  

Apartments for James S. Norton

In 1891, Silsbee designed two attached apartment buildings for James S. Norton.  Norton was a close friend and lawyer and had a longstanding professional relationship with the architect.  They face two streets, one Lill St. and one Lincoln Ave. and back up to one another, forming a V-shape plan.  The buildings are similar in construction and arrangement, differing only in the pattern of the bay and wall area and the presence of an arched porte-cochere on the Lill St.building.   

The careful detailing and fine construction of the simple facades is less apparent on the Lincoln Ave. building as it has been painted. The buildings are faced with buff-colored Roman brick and have simple terra cotta cornices.  Three story copper-clad bays on each building have a horizontal arrangement of copper, giving them a "shingled" appearance.  A unique detail is the use of exposed fasteners arranged at the upper panel of the bay to look like classical swags.  The same exposed fasteners are also placed regularly on each piece of horizontal copper cladding.