It is a popular, if probably apocryphal, story in Chicago that Charlie Chaplin lived in the penthouse of this historic apartment building while he was working on silent films with Essay Studios.
The landmark reads:
Chicago Landmark
Brewster Apartments
Enoch H. Turnock, architect
1893
The principles of skeleton-frame construction that made possible tall commercial buildings were used here for an early high-rise apartment building, originally known as the Lincoln Park Palace. Behind its heavy masonry walls is an exceptionally innovative interior, a light and airy construction of cast-iron stairs, elevator cages, and bridges, paved with glass blocks, and topped by a skylight.
Designated a Chicago Landmark on October 6, 1982 by the City Council of Chicago.
Jane M. Byrne, Mayor
Commission on Chicago Historical and Architectural Landmarks
Here is an excerpt from an interesting article about the building:
The Chicago Tribune on January 22, 1893 announced that “E. Hill Turnock is preparing plans for the Lincoln Park Palace apartment building for B. Edwards, proprietor of the American Contractor. The article went on to disclose that the structure would be 100 feet high, “ornamented with twelve larges bays.” Two entrances were planned, one on Diversey and “the ladies’ entrance,” facing Lake Michigan to the east on Park Street, what is now Pine Grove. Each of the building’s nine floors was planned for six apartments of six, seven or eight rooms.
The optimism faded quickly. On July 31, 1895 the developer, Bjourne Edwards, died when he stepped on a piece of loose scaffolding and fell from the roof of the partly finished structure. The next day The Trib reported, “The unfinished building rears its somber, majestic proportions above its surroundings, to be completed by some one else, but it is a monument to the struggles and trials and the pride of the man who conceived its plans.”
Edwards was a Norwegian immigrant who did manual labor until he had enough money to enter school. He spent several years in seminaries in Illinois and Iowa. Then he became a book agent. In 1886 he began The American Contractor. Seven years later he was rich enough to build one of the great apartment buildings on the north side of the city.
The neighbors in the “fashionable residence district” had been against the building from the beginning. They must have smugly nodded when Edwards hit the pavement. Trouble followed. The two great entrances were spanned by arches composed of a single piece of polished Jasper stone from Minnesota. But as the building settled, the arches broke into pieces.
Despite what the neighbors thought, the Lincoln Park Palace was luxurious, every inch of it deserving the “Palace” that was a part of its name. The Chicago Tribune of 1896 raved about the “richness, beauty, and everlasting qualities” of the rusticated pink Jasper granite from which it was built. Telephones connected each apartment with the building’s office. Electric and gas lights were used throughout the building.
And it was successful. In October of 1897, following its completion in 1896, the Palace, according to The Tirb had all but one or two of its 60 apartments rented.
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118 years to the day that Edwards fell to his death, a water tank fell off the top of the building, injuring three. Many consider the building haunted.