Brick-by-Brick
You know what’s hard to do? Get a team of masons to show up for the smallest job in Chicago during the middle of summer construction season. The building has sat largely inactive for the past few weeks, as the masons were (understandably) quite busy with much, much bigger projects around town.
In the meantime, we were able to get rough plumbing completed for the bathroom and kitchenette. This means that all interior piping is now in-place - hidden within the walls and ceiling, waiting for fixtures to be installed near the end of the process.
Over the past week the 3-man team of brick masons have been on-site to cover the new addition in brick. This brick is 100% recycled - each one salvaged from the large hole that we cut in the north side of the building, and from the small (and very illegal) basement stairway that we removed early in the construction process. It’s great to see this rich, solid material being put back to use less than 5-ft away from where it sat for the past 80+ years. We love the visual combination that this creates - how the slick, deep-red face brick that covers the 3-flat and the tiny triangle gives way to the rough, buff-colored Chicago Common Brick at this semi-hidden addition. It’s almost as if someone has taken a giant “bite” out of the building, allowing us to see the raw materials that make up the guts of this historic building.
