1. History of the Chicago built environment
The best place to begin for a history of the built environment of the Chicago metropolitan area

•Harold Mayer and Richard Wade, Chicago, Growth of a Metropolis, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969,a durable classic still unsurpassed as a treatment of the built environment of a large American city. The maps in this book are particularly helpful in understanding what was built up at any given time.

2. Chicago Architectural History: During the decades between the 1950s and 1970s Professor Carl Condit of Northwestern University created a large corpus of work on the architecture and infrastructure of the city that is still a valuable resource. Among the most important books are

• Carl Condit, The Chicago School of Architecture, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964
• Carl Condit, Chicago 1910-1929 Building, Planning and Urban Technology, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1973
• Carl Condit, Chicago 1930-70, Building, Planning and Urban Technology, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974.

Since the 1970s a number of books have appeared that look into other parts of the story of building the Chicago region from new perspectives. Among these are

• Ann Durkin Keating, Building Chicago, Suburban Developers and the Creation of a Divided Metropolis, 1988, which gives an excellent account of the relationship between city building, metropolitan services and governmental structure.
• Daniel Bluestone, Constructing Chicago, 1991, which has excellent chapters on aspects of Chicago development that had been somewhat neglected earlier, notably the park system, public buildings and religious, civic and cultural facilities as well as an excellent treatment of the history of the skyscraper
• Miles Berger, They Built Chicago, Entrepreneurs Who Shaped a Great City’s Architecture, 1992, a very good account of the financial underpinnings of Chicago’s famous buildings.
• Robert Bruegmann, The Architects and The City Holabird & Roche of Chicago, 1880-1918, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997 discusses a wide variety of building types in the urban fabric as seen through the lens of the work of a single large firm.

Finally, a two volume set of exhibition catalogs created for exhibitions held at the Art Institute of Chicago and edited by

• John Zukowsky, Chicago Architecture 1872-1922, Birth of a Metropolis, 1987, and
• John Zukowsky, Chicago Architecture and Design, 1923-1993, Reconfiguration of an American Metropolis, 1993,
provide multiple perspectives on a wide variety of subjects connected with the built environment of the city.

3. Architectural and Neighborhood guidebooks: Another important source of information is found in the guidebooks to Chicago architecture and to neighborhoods

• Franz Schulze and Kevin Harrington, Chicago’s Famous Buildings, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, Fourth Edition, 1993
• Alice Sinkevitch, Ed., AIA Guide to Chicago, Orlando Fla.: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1993
• Dominic Pacyga and Ellen Skerrett, Chicago City of Neighborhoods, Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1986

For an older view, an older guide book

• John J. Flinn, The Standard Guide to Chicago, also known as Chicago-The Marvelous City of the West, Chicago, 1893, is a very good source.

4. Sources on specific building types in Chicago

Books on specific types of buildings, neighborhoods and landscapes include:

•Chicago Department of Public Works, Chicago Public Works: A History, 1973, which provides a good overview of public infrastructure development.
•Devereux Bowly, The Poorhouse
•George Lane and Algimantas Kezys, Chicago Churches and Synagogues, Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1981

5. Some other sources of information on Chicago built environment

Local Community Factbook: This compilation of neighborhood and community histories and census data has been put out periodically since the 1930s. It is an excellent source of information on many neighborhoods that are not covered in most published histories.

The Chicago Landmarks Commission inventory. The city of Chicago has compiled a large listing of buildings of note in the Chicago area. This can be accessed online at: http://w7.ci.chi.il.us/landmarks/SilverStream/Pages/landmarks.html

Chicago Imagebase
http://www.uic.edu/depts/ahaa/imagebase/
This site, being developed by the City Design Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has a good deal of information about certain parts of the city, notably the North Lawndale area. It also has a large collection of aerial photos of the city and the suburbs by Alex MacLean

The Cook County assessor’s office has put up a web site which apparently contains valuable information about construction dates. To access the site go to http://www.cookcountyassessor.com/ Click assessment search. You will be able to search for any property in the County. The dates given appear to be the dates of construction. Unlike many other sources, these dates appear to be accurate in most cases. A related Web site, which gives information in the city of Chicago’s Harris file, is the Neighborhood Early Warning System site maintained by the Center for Neighborhood Technology at http://www.cnt.org/news/.The information about building dates on this site often seems to be faulty.

The 1939 WPA survey of Chicago. This excellent source entitled The Chicago Land Use Survey contains a vast amount of information for the city and its buildings. The most important volume is likely to be Vol. II, Land Use in Chicago which has detailed maps describing the types of buildings, their use and their occupants at that time.

Building permits: although it can take a good deal of time, a search of building permits is sometimes a very valuable source of information. Most municipalities in the Chicago area claim that they have thrown out old permits. Some, however, have kept old permits in one form or another. The city of Chicago threw out its permit records before 1954 but microfilmed them before throwing them out. A copy of the microfilm of permits issued by the city before 1954 can be consulted at the library at the University of Illinois at Chicago, 3rd floor. To use these permits it is usually necessary to consult the index to streets first to get an indication of the date or the ledger book and page number that will actually contain the permit itself. The Library has a good set of instruction sheets that you can consult there or you can find at
http://www.uic.edu/depts/lib/documents/services/mapguides/buildingpermit/

6. Sources of information for specific parts of the city

• Frank A. Randall, History of the Development of Building Construction in Chicago, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, Second Edition, 1999. This is the best source for information about buildings in the Central Business District.

7. Aerial Photographs

A place to start on air photos is Microsoft’s Terraserver site with aerial images from around the world including the Chicago area. You can find it at http://terraserver.microsoft.com/default.asp

Old aerial views of parts of Chicago can be found at a site maintained by the maps library of the University of Illinois at Urban Champaign at http://images.library.uiuc.edu/projects/aerial_photos/

A number of government agencies have commissioned aerial photographs for various purposes over the years. Many of these photos can be found in the maps library at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Main library, 3rd floor.

8. Maps

a. United States Geological Survey (USGS) topographic maps, 15 and 7.5 minute series. These maps can be found in a number of major libraries, for example on the third floor of the library at UIC. The maps printed before World War II will give a good quick indication of where buildings were located in the community. There may be maps for the 1900’s through the 1930s but probably not before 1900. After the 1940s they are not very useful because they indicate urban areas with pink tints rather than showing individual buildings. This may be the quickest snapshot of the area for the years in which they are available. You can find a large set of these at the UIC library in the maps collection. You will need to look at the state index to see where the quads you need are.

b. Fire Insurance Maps. In many ways the single best source of information on Chicago area built environment can be found on fire insurance maps. There is a union list of maps for the Chicago area where you can find out the location of all of these maps. There are excellent collections of original maps at the Chicago Historical Society and at Northeastern Illinois University. These are large and fragile volumes and consulting them usually requires a considerable amount of time. For many purposes, the even larger collection of Sanborn Fire Insurance atlases from the collection of the Library of Congress and reproduced in microfilm by the Chadwyck Healey company will be a more practical option. A set of these microfilms can be found at the UIC library in the microforms department on the third floor of the main library. Although this will take a lot of looking, these maps give a very good idea of the patterns for Chicago neighborhoods in the years in which they were issued. You will probably want to use the Finding Guides in the library to identify which volumes deal with which neighborhoods at which dates.

c. Olcott’s Blue Books of Chicago. These volumes, issued yearly by George C. Olcott, Park Ridge, Illinois, are valuable for giving a sense of land values.

d. Sidwell maps. The atlases published by the Sidwell Company of West Chicago, Illinois, show platting and provide excellent information on the subdivision and resubdivision of land in the metropolitan area.