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| The Fair Store at State and Adams |
German immigrant Ernst Johann Lehmann began his career in
Chicago by opening a small jewelry store on Clark Street. By 1875 he had been so successful that
he had moved his business, right along with the big boys, to the prestigious
corner of State and Adams. He
called the new store “The Fair,” a name that assured customers that they would
be treated fairly.
By 1882 The Fair occupied every building along the north
side of Adams between State and Dearborn Streets where The Citadel Center
stands today. But such amazing
success did not come without some difficulty, and Lehmann’s story does not end
happily.
The year of 1890 was not a good one for the great
merchant. On April 7 at 2:00 in
the afternoon Lehmann was driving a “pair of spirited horses attached to a
phaeton,” according to The Chicago Tribune
of that date. South of Grand
Crossing on the south side, he got stuck in the mud. As he urged the team to pull the carriage out of the mire,
one of the horses flipped out, broke loose and headed off into the marsh. Mr.
Lehmann was dragged from the carriage but was able to chase after the
horse. Neither the merchant nor
the horse reappeared in a reasonable time, and there was some concern for his
safety.
A little over a month later it was announced that the entire
south half of the block bounded by Dearborn, State, Monroe and Adams streets
had been leased to The Fair in a deal amounting to a little over three million
dollars. On the site a great
emporium would be constructed, twelve stories high, costing two million
bucks. The building would be the
largest in the city and, in fact, the largest in the world devoted to
merchandising.
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| Commodore Apartments Oculus (JWB, 2011) |
By May 23 a Probate Court jury agreed to the following writ,
“We, the undersigned jurors in the case of Ernst J. Lehmann, alleged to be
distracted, having heard of the evidence in the case, find from such evidence
that Ernst J. Lehmann is distracted and is incapable of managing and
controlling his estate; that he is a resident of Cook County, and is aged about
41 years, and has been in such condition for the period of about three months
prior to this date.” [Chicago Tribune,
May 23, 1890]
The three witnesses at the hearing agreed that Mr. Lehmann’s
“special mania” seemed to involve spending money. “While walking along the street he would stop and purchase a
horse which happened to catch his eye, or drop into a jeweler’s and buy
valuable diamonds, and he would carry the jewels around loose in his trousers
pockets.”
Mrs. Augusta Lehmann was appointed as the conservator of her
husband’s estate, and he was carted off to the Bloomingdale Asylum for the
Insane in White Plains, New York.
Ernst Lehmann died of heart failure ten years later at the asylum.
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| The Commodore Apartments (formerly The Lessing) at Surf and Broadway (JWB, 2011) |
With an estate of ten million dollars at their disposal, the
Lehmann clan had become interested in real estate even before poor old Ernst
passed on to his greater reward. It was in 1897 that the uber-swank Lessing
Apartment building was finished on Surf and Evanston Street, now Broadway. Seven years later the Lessing Annex was
finished just to the south. The
Lessing is now the Commodore; the Lessing Annex is called the Green Briar
today.
The Lessing was marketed to an upscale clientele and had 86
apartments, some of them with as many as eight rooms. Architect Edmund R.
Krause broke the huge six story complex into a series of projecting units with
deep, but narrow, courts between them to provide light and ventilation. The Roman brick façade is organized
into the classic three part design of the Chicago School and is minimally
decorated although there is a nifty oculus centered at the top of each
projecting bay.
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| Light Court at The Commodore (JWB, 2011) |
When The Lessing was completed, it boasted 86 apartments,
some of which had eight rooms. The
apartment building was marketed to an exclusive clientele, folks who had moved
to the north side of the city, having discovered the peaceful quality of life
in Lakeview, along with its proximity to the city and to the lake.
Even an upscale apartment building is not without its
troubles, and trouble came five years after the building was finished when on
January 26, 1902 a fire started in the basement and moved quickly from there to
the second floor by means of an air shaft. Smoke filled the building as residents fled in their
nightclothes, finding safety in the frigid darkness of the street.
The quiet of the apartment building was disturbed once again
in 1915 when a lurid tale of deceit and betrayal led to a murder that reads
like an Erle Stanley Gardner story.
The story of the Commodore, the physician, and the cabaret singer in the
next blog.
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1 comment:
Love the architectural design! It's something that the residential owners should be proud of!
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