Date: April 21, 2010
Trip: 15
Landmarks Visited: 1
Landmarks To-Date: 21
Landmarks Remaining: 332
On Tuesday I took the bus to work because Shawn wanted to use the car. I have a couple of options on which bus to take, but I took the Halsted bus to the Armitage bus because that way I would change buses in the middle of the Armitage-Halsted District. While I was waiting for the Armitage bus, I took a few photos.
The neighborhood is basically a high-end shopping district and the architecture is similar to the Milwaukee Avenue District that I visited earlier. Both neighborhoods are mainly 2 to 4 floor buildings with storefronts on the first floor, and apartments above.
The Armitage-Halsted District is smaller and I think not extremely architecturally interesting. I think it was probably landmarked to preserve the scale of the buildings. Without landmark status most of the buildings in the neighborhood probably would have been torn down to be replaced by bigger buildings for chain stores. It would have turned into an area of strip malls like North Avenue located not far away.
The shop you're standing in front of for all these photos used to be my father's flower shop. 852 West armitage was Fischer's Flowers up until an unheard of rent hike kicked us out in 2005. We had owned the business since the 80s but the shop was a prominent Lincoln Park fixture and in turn so was the Fischer name since the turn of the century. I've been searching for photos of the shop online and was struck by yours as they are the exact view I knew for so many years from our big front windows.
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