decoarchitecture: Lakewood Branch, Chicago Public Library, Chicago, Illinoisfrom Chicago Public Library Digital Collections (repro rights) 1940s photo of a woman ID’d as Esther Barlow on the (Streamline) front steps of a Chicago branch library built in a boxy style with details that relate to both Deco, Bauhaus and Midcentury Modern. The library is now called the John Merlo Branch Library. From the CPL: The Lake View Branch Library was designated a bomb shelter at its opening on September 12, 1942. Large barrels of crackers and emergency supplies were found in the basement of the building nearly 40 years later, as the Library was preparing the building for renovation. The box-like 1940s architecture of the Lake View Branch Library’s facade changed with a 1988 renovation: a glassed greenhouse-style loggia with an entrance ramp to the building’s brick front was constructed, along with a new elevator, a first floor children’s library, and a new auditorium. The library’s name was changed at the opening of the newly renovated building to the John Merlo Branch Library, after a past Alderman and State Senator.

decoarchitecture:

Lakewood Branch, Chicago Public Library, Chicago, Illinois
from Chicago Public Library Digital Collections
(repro rights)

1940s photo of a woman ID’d as Esther Barlow on the (Streamline) front steps of a Chicago branch library built in a boxy style with details that relate to both Deco, Bauhaus and Midcentury Modern. The library is now called the John Merlo Branch Library.

From the CPL:

The Lake View Branch Library was designated a bomb shelter at its opening on September 12, 1942. Large barrels of crackers and emergency supplies were found in the basement of the building nearly 40 years later, as the Library was preparing the building for renovation.

The box-like 1940s architecture of the Lake View Branch Library’s facade changed with a 1988 renovation: a glassed greenhouse-style loggia with an entrance ramp to the building’s brick front was constructed, along with a new elevator, a first floor children’s library, and a new auditorium. The library’s name was changed at the opening of the newly renovated building to the John Merlo Branch Library, after a past Alderman and State Senator.