Franklin Building exterior printing-themed terra cotta - Chicago, IL - Frieze Art on Waymarking.com

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"The main mural over the entry entitled “The First Impression” depicts men working at the Gutenberg press. An inscription executed in terra cotta tile over the doorway reads, “The excellence of every art must consist in the complete accomplishment of its purpose.” Other picture tiles represent printing and publishing activities from Benjamin Franklin’s time. Chicago artist, Oskar Gross, designed all of these picture tiles specifically for the Franklin Building. Born in Vienna, Austria in 1870, Gross was a portrait artist. In 1898 he won a competition to paint murals for the Austro-Hungarian state pavilions at the World’s Fair in Paris. These murals attracted wide attention and he was invited to Chicago in 1903 to work on several orders for murals. Through contacts with Chicago architects Daniel Burnham and Louis Sullivan, Gross executed murals for public buildings all over the United States. His most famous ones were done for Louis Sullivan at the National Farmers Bank at Owatonna, Minnesota. After 1910, Gross returned to portrait painting. One of his paintings, a portrait of Dankmar Adler, hangs in the lobby of Roosevelt University. Several of the Franklin Building's tile images have been reproduced, framed and are displayed in the lobby.

When the building was rehabbed, Nancy Berryman, a ceramicist and a faculty member at University of Illinois at Chicago, restored the tiles."

Building History
"Designed in 1912 by George C. Nimmons, 720 South Dearborn Street was built in 1916 by the Franklin Printing Company and housed presses until 1983. It is a fine example of the 'Chicago School' style of architecture. In 1987 the Franklin Building was purchased from the Borg-Warner Corporation for $2.7 million by developer Duncan Henderson who recognized the building’s unusual architectural features and potential. In 1976, Henderson moved to Chicago from New York City where he had lived in a loft in SoHo. He became a pioneer of loft development in Printers Row when he and architect Harry Weese rehabbed the Donohue Building (711 – 727 S. Dearborn Street) in 1977.

The 14-story Franklin Building underwent an extensive $9 million renovation. The structure’s interior was gutted and 65 residential units were created. The restored Franklin Building opened for occupancy in September 1989, the last major renovation of loft space on Printers Row, the two-block area along Dearborn Street, beginning south of the Congress Parkway and ending at the Dearborn Station."

The Franklin Building is located in what is know as Chicago's Printer's Row District.
Printers Row: Decline and Revival
"Printers Row or Printing House Row as it is sometimes called developed between 1883 and 1912 as the area for printing and publishing companies, just as nearby State Street grew to be Chicago’s major retail area and LaSalle Street emerged as the financial hub of the city. Built in 1885, the Dearborn Station, the oldest surviving rail terminal in the city, attracted commercial development in the last half of the 19th Century. In addition to printing and publishing businesses, there were also subsidiary trades that employed scores of workers, each with a particular expertise including typesetters, etchers, mapmakers and bookbinders to name some. Some of the more well-known businesses in the neighborhood included the catalog printers R.R. Donnelley and Sons and the Lakeside Press, Rand McNally which produced maps and atlases as well as railroad timetables and shippers guides, Fleming H. Revell, the country’s largest publisher of religious works, and Donohue and Henneberry which produced children’s books. The old hand printing press located at the intersection of W. Harrison and S. Federal Streets is a tribute to the once thriving printing houses.

Technological advances and rapid changes in the social fabric, including the decline of the railroad industry, forced the printing companies to leave the Printers Row area during the 1930’s and ‘40’s. Many moved to the suburbs. By the 1960’s urban blight had set in. In 1971, Dearborn Station was closed for lack of traffic and Printers Row became virtually a ghost town.

In 1978, Chicago Mayor Michael Bilandic committed to the revitalization of Printers Row with a $30 million project to be privately financed. Two years earlier, architects Harry Weese and Lawrence O. Booth, real estate magnate John Baird of Baird and Warner Co. and developer Ivan Himmel formed the Community Resource Corporation, a lynchpin of Mayor Bilandic’s plan. In 1977, the Donohue Building became one the first buildings to be converted to residential space. For more details on the revitalization of the South Loop, consult Lois Wille’s book, At Home in the Loop.

The Printers Row Book Fair, established in 1985, is today the largest event of its kind in the Midwest and one of the largest in the country.

In 1996 the Printing House Row District was designated a Landmark District by the Commission on Chicago Landmarks. Many of the neighborhood’s buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places."

Park on the street to take a look.

Artist: Oskar Gross Address: 720 S. Dearborn Chicago, IL Web URL to relevant information: [Web Link]

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