1021 W Bryn Mawr Ave
Chicago, IL 60660, USA

Manor House - National Register of Historic Places

Statement of Significance:

The Manor House is one of the architecturally most interesting luxury apartment buildings on Chicago's North Side. In its Edgewater neighborhood it is also one of the earliest and best known such buildings. In its planning, front-courtyard configuration, and Tudor Revival style, it is representative of several currents in Chicago apartment-house design, particularly for the period between the turn of the century and World War I.

The North Side community of Edgewater began as a commuter suburb late in the nineteenth century. One of its focal points was the railroad station at Bryn Mawr Avenue. When density and land value rose to the point where apartment buildings became attractive investments, the area near Bryn Mawr between the railroad and the lake was a prime development area.

Samuel Dalton and his wife, Kate Margaret Dalton, were among the developers who led the trend toward apartments in Edgewater. In 1902 they commissioned the English-born architect J. E. 0. Pridmore (1867-1940) to design a high-grade apartment building for them at the northeast corner of Hollywood and Winthrop, at that time a quiet residential intersection two blocks from the Bryn Mawr station. This was not the first apartment at that corner; a six-flat had been erected on the northwest corner in 1901.

The Daltons. lived in this building, 11 The Hollywood, 11 and when it proved a success, they built an annex north of it on Winthrop in 1905. The pace of development was quickening; for example, a large-scale developer, William Barry, built three six-flats on adjacent lots at the southeast corner of Bryn Mawr and Winthrop in 1905.

The Daltons' architect, John Edmund Oldaker Pridmore, was born in England and educated in Birmingham. He came to the U.S. in 1880, and 'located in Chicago in 1883. Within a few years he was practicing architecture. He designed apartment buildings in Woodlawn, Austin, and Logan Square as well as in Edgewater; but he is best known for his theaters. Among them are the Bush Temple of Music at Clark and Chicago (the building still stands, much altered, but the theater has been demolished); the Cart and the Clark in the Loop (both demolished); the Empress and the National in Englewood, and the Vic, the Sheridan, the Nortown, and the Adelphi on the North Side. Few architects have built so many of Chicago's major theaters.

He wrote on architecture, especially on theater design, and he traveled extensively and wrote about his travels and as a war correspondent. He lived for many years (at least from 1905 to 1931) at 5959 Winthrop, within walking distance of the Manor House.

The Daltons in 1908 engaged Pridmore for a distinctive project: an exceptionally large and luxurious courtyard six-apartment development at the southeast corner of Bryn Mawr and Kenmore, two short blocks east of the station. This was "The Manor House" and it was obviously intended to be the great house of the neighborhood. The Daltons moved into one of the apartments and remained untiI Samuel Dalton's death in 1917.

Pridmore was to build two more unusually interesting apartment complexes nearby in 1912: a group of four connected fla t buildings for the Daltons at the southeast corner of Hollywood and Winthrop, across from The Hollywood, and a large complex called "The Gables" for Thomas Balmer at the southeast corner of Hollywood and Kenmore, exactly one block north of The Manor House. (The Gables has been demolished.)

To situate the Manor House in its proper context we must consider open-front-courtyard apartment buildings and luxury walk-up apartment buildings in Chicago, and particularly on the North Side. The references include an article by Herbert Croly in 1907 in the Architectural Record about recent apartments in Chicago, and a series of articles by Frank Chouteau Brown in the Architectural Record in 1921-22 about current trends in apartment construction in the United States. There are also recent articles about Chicago apartments by C. W. Westfall, and a 1917 "directory" to North Side luxury apartments. Westfall's articles establish the period from about 1900 to the First World War as the "golden age of Chicago apartments" and that is the proper setting for the Manor House. Comparison between the 1917 Pardridge & Bradley book and a similar book published in 1928 shows how much the scene had changed by the later date.

Luxury apartments came to Chicago not much earlier than they came to Edgewater. On the North Side, three famous early examples were the McConnel 1 Apartments at 1200 Astor Street by Holabird & Roche in 1897, the Raymond Apartments at Michigan and Walton by Benjamin Marshall in 1900, and the Marshall Apartments, owned and designed by Marshal I, at 1100 Lake Shore Drive in 1905.

MarshalI liked to use French names for the rooms on his plans. At 1100 he introduced the word "orangeries" for a conservatory or solarium. While the French flavor was de rigueur on the Gold Coast, the Daltons and their English-born architect chose to draw on the English heritage for the Manor House. Nevertheless, they called their distinctive round sun parlors "orangeries." Actually, the English styles were generally more popular in Chicago, especially for more "domestic'' projects in neighborhoods away from the city center.

The open front courtyard arrangement of apartments is a familiar one in American cities, as Brown's articles demonstrate (at least for New York, Boston, and Chicago, which supply most of his examples). And the six-flat is a very common building type, especially when two three-story tiers are set side by side. Typically, al 1 six flats are accessed from a single central entrance and front stair. The Manor House is however most unusual for Chicago in being a combination of these two types: a courtyard six-flat. It has separate front and back stairs for each wing. This is an expensive arrangement, as Brown remarks, and helps to characterize the "deluxe" type of apartment building.

In most six-flats the parlor is at the front near the main entry; the kitchen and service areas are near the service stairs at the back. This is especially typical in Chicago, with its alley services, which lead to outside wood stairs at the rear. The dining room must then be either far from the front parlor or far from the kitchen. An alternative plan puts service stairs in the middle so that the kitchen and dining room can be moved forward, and the bedrooms and other private spaces collected together at the back. This however deprives the family rooms of a view of the street.

Given the generous lot size of the Manor House property, Pridmore was able to swing his apartments around in the back so that the part of the apartment furthest from the front regained a full view of the street. This view while remote is thus quiet and withdrawn. In the Manor House this central rear location becomes the site of a large family recreation room (called "family room" on one version of the plan and "billiard room" on another). These rooms have massive brick wood-burning fireplaces, and have large art-glass windows both forward to the courtyard and rearward to the south. This also gives these rooms cross ventilation, an important consideration in the days before mechanical air conditioning.

The family room drew the special attention of Frank Chouteau Brown. He published a page of text on the Manor House with a plan and three pages of photographs.

The rest of the plan is an expert working out of a simple design. Orangeries, library (front parlor), reception hall, and dining room are arranged on a diagonal axis from the outer corner toward the heart of the courtyard. From this public area a corridor leads through the units to the rear where it turns and culminates in the family room. Four master bedrooms and three baths are ranged on the outside; kitchen and service areas and servants’ quarters follow an inside axis leading from the dining room to the rear.

The architectural style is called Tudor. This is not the Tudor Revival of stucco and half-timbering, based on domestic prototypes, but - as the name Manor House implies - a style drawn from the large houses, castles, and colleges of the early 16th century, as epitomized by Hampton Court Palace with crenellated towers, angle turrets, mullioned windows and other details that we find adapted here to Chicago requirements.

Pragmatic Chicago eclecticism turned to the past for romantic inspiration, but the real estate market apparently called for all the modern conveniences. The Manor House had shower rooms, central refrigeration, and a central vacuum cleaning plant.

Comparison with other six-flats on the North Side will give an idea of the extraordinary size and cost of the Manor House. Its cost is variously given as $75,000 or $95,000. The three six-flats bait by Barry a block away cost only $30,000 each. In the upper-middle-class neighborhood called Sheridan Park, Amile to the south (now a National Register district), a dozen six-flats were built in 1908; the median cost was only $18,000, with a range from a low of $12,000 to a high of $30,000. No comparable cost has been found on the North Side for a walk-up six-apartment building.

In 1917, Albert Pardridge and Harold Bradley, real estate agents on the Near North Side, published a "Directory to apartments of the better class" on the North Side. While not necessarily comprehensive, this book provides an excellent context against which to evaluate the prominence of the Manor House. There are 61 buildings listed in Chicago (and 6 in Evanston). The buildings are not listed in alphabetical order, or in any other apparent scheme, but one presumes that the buildings listed at the beginning of the book served to start the reader off with the cream of the cream. The first building is Marshall 1 s 1550 State Parkway; then come five building on Lake Shore Drive, three of which are by Marshall and two (both now demolished) by W. E. Walker. After this impressive start, the next three building are all in Edgewater and all designed by J. E. 0. Pridmore: The Gables, the Manor House, and a smal I building at 5733 Kenmore.

If we look at the book from the point of view of the largest apartments (by number of rooms), we find 12 buildings containing apartments of II rooms or more. The only IS-room apartments are in 1550 State; the only 13-room apartments are in 936 Lake Shore Drive (now demolished); the Manor House is one of the five building with 12-room apartments. Seven of the twelve building with the largest apartments are among the eight-building listed first in the book. So, it seems likely that the prominent place of the Manor House derives at least in part from its exceptionally large apartments.

The conversion of the Manor House into a larger number of smaller units naturally affects the force of these comparisons. However, changes in building and real estate have had sweeping effects and not just on this property. Of the seven building in the Pardridge book with apartments of 12 or more rooms, the three on Lake Shore Drive (936, 942, 1100) and one at 250 East Chestnut have all been demolished. At 1550 State most of the apartments have been converted into smaller (though still substantial) units. The seventh of this group is 2344 Lincoln Park West, a remarkable 6-story building built i n 1916 across from the Lincoln Park Conservatory. This is quite different from the Manor House, being located much closer in, and sharing party walIs on both sides with other apartment building.

The building in Pardridge & Bradley that are most nearly comparable to the Manor House may be the following: At 1214 Astor, a 3-story 3-flat with 9-room apartments, with rents in the same range as the Manor ($225-250 per month in 1917). At 1235-45 Astor, a 3-story 9-flat with 10- and all-room apartments. At 39 East Schiller, a 6-story building that was virtually rebuilt a few years ago. At 196 East Delaware, a 3-flat since demolished. All these are in the Near North. Then at 2350 Lincoln Park West, a 3-story 16-apartment corner building with 8- and 10-room apartments, with some Tudor details. Further north, a 3-story corner building at Briar and Sheridan with 7-, 8-, and 10-room apartments, also faintly Tudor in style, and a 3-flat at 712 Junior Terrace. Finally, the Manor House, the Gables (demo! ished), and at 1020 Ardmore (corner of Kenmore), a 3-s tory 9-f l at with 9- and l 0-room apartments, where the original 9 units have been converted to 36.

None of these buildings has the same picturesque approach to exterior design as the Manor. Most of them reflect a subdued and reserved notion of good taste. Indeed, Croly and later Westfall argue that 11 good tastes 11 in Chicago generally meant quieter and less picturesque designs than that of the Manor House. The illustrations in Pardridge & Bradley corroborate this general rule.

Croly 1 s 1907 article discusses the tendency of American and particularly Chicago apartment designers to choose simple, sober designs suggesting 11 the seclusion of Anglo-Saxon domestic life 11 in contrast to the 11 architectural display 11 and 11 metropolitan gaiety 11 of Paris. He cites with disapproval an exuberant French-inspired building on Grand Boulevard. AI 1 his other six examples have open front courtyards, a point that he emphasizes with approval, and most of them are Tudor in style. In particular the Alva, at 45th and Drexel, designed by Sandreen, is a very bold Tudor building with large gables in front and round bays with crenellated parapets. The Patio by Henry Newhouse, also on the South Side, is a very large courtyard building with the octagonal bays and crenellated towers that characterize this flavor of Tudor.

All Croly 1 s examples are on the South Side except for the 5-story Lessing and its 8-story annex on Broadway at Surf. They al 1 appear to have many more units than the Manor House and most of them do not seem to have such large apartments - except probably for the despised French example.

The only courtyard buildings in Pardridge & Bradley besides the Manor House are the Loch by Court, 3200 Sheridan Road, with 30 apartments, demolished; the Oak Ridge in Evanston, also a larger building; the Stirling, at 4103-27 Sheridan Road, with 78 apartments; and the Regina, a small 24-apartment building at Rush and Elm on the Near North.

In Brown 1 s series of eight articles, he cites 18 examples from Chicago (and one from Evanston). Besides the Manor House, the only ones with front courtyards are the Chesterfield, at Surf and Pine Grove, and the Oak Ridge, which are much larger buildings with many more apartments, and the Somerset at 5001 Sheridan Road, a high-rise hotel built in 1919.

In 1928 Baird & Warner published 11 A portfolio of fine apartment homes, 11 a listing comparable to that of 1917 by Pardridge & Bradley. The Manor House does not appear. Only about a dozen buildings are common to both books (1020 Ardmore is one). Perhaps this reflects different clienteles of the real-estate people involved. In any event the Baird & Warner book emphasizes tall buildings. Of the 15 3-story Chicago buildings listed, perhaps the one most nearly comparable to the Manor is the 9-flat at 515-521 Roscoe, dating from 1920 and standing inconspicuously in mid-block, though it features finely detailed sun porches. Another instructive comparison is the luxurious 3-flat at 521 Stratford, over 50 feet wide, designed by Sandegren. It uses a Georg i an vocabulary but with an over-scaled boldness that is quite contrary to the tropical Georgian manner.

Only a few of the Baird & Warner buildings in Chicago have front courtyards, and they are all much larger buildings than the Manor House with smaller apartments: 2335 Commonwealth, 6 stories, 48 apartments of 4 to 6 rooms each; the Pattington, 4 stories, 72 apartments, 6 to 8 rooms each, and the Kenmore-Rosemont (one and one-half miles north of the Manor House at the northern end of Edgewater), 3 stories, 24 apartments of 5 rooms each. This last has a corner site and is a symmetrical L in plan, with the courtyard oriented to the corner.

In Westfall's 1980 article only four Chicago courtyards are discussed. Three of them are the Pattington, where Westfall lived at the time, and the Kellshore and Frontenac, all on the same part of Irving Park Road; the fourth is the Casa Bonita of 1927 at 7340-52 Ridge Avenue. These are all very large buildings. Westfall also discusses the Tudor style, but most of his examples, such as 2350 Lincoln Park West or 3122 Sheridan Road, are much less bold and picturesque than the Manor House. In his 1985 article he returns to the Pattington, and also mentions 523-33 Melrose, which is not a true courtyard but is L-shaped in plan. His only other courtyard examples are two examples from the 1890s on the South Side.

Croly's rule about severe and sober good taste, and Westfall's observation that the typical courtyard building has perhaps 5 entrances and 30 apartments, are belied by the Manor House. It thus stands in an important tradition but is best understood as a dramatic exception to the general rule.

In 1984 the systematic survey of Chicago buildings administered by the Commission on Chicago Landmarks completed a survey of the 48th Ward, which includes most of Edgewater; the Manor House lies near the center of the ward. The Manor House was identified as having landmark potential, with the following rationale: "Exceptionally detailed multi-residential building, with unusual overall design. Demonstrates high quality of craftsmanship."

Ten buildings are listed on Map 5: the Manor House, a single-family residence, a double house, two clubs, a Moderna drugstore, two church buildings, and two 1920s high-rise apartment hotels. Nothing really comparable to the Manor House. (The survey passed over the three-flat at 5510 Kenmore, a 1912 design listed in Pardridge & Bradley, converted to 10 apartments in 1949.)

The context of the Manor House is more vivid just north of Bryn Mawr, an area covered by survey map 7, from 5600 to 6000 north, east of Broadway.
There are 11 Listings on Map]. Two are on Broadway, a commercial street. Of the other nine, at least three and possibly five are by Pridmore. There are two single-family residences, a luxury 3-flat by Pridmore at 5825 Kenmore, the Dalton-Pridmore group at Hollywood and Winthrop, a high-rise apartment, three church buildings, and a school. The parish house of the Episcopal Church of the Atonement is by Pridmore, and the church itself is attributed to him, as is the Stickney School (with a Tudor front reminiscent of the gatehouses of several colleges at Cambridge), both with some uncertainty.

If we survey this part of Kenmore Ninth the Manor House in mind, we find several distinctive small apartment buildings that the official survey passed over. There is 1020 Ardmore, listed i n both Pardridge & Bradley and Baird & Warner, its clean lines less remarkable now than in 1914, and converted from 9 flats to 36. There is 5733 Kenmore, a sumptuous two-flat by Pridmore, disguised as a single residence, Listed in Pardridge & Bradley. There are several other striking 3- and 6-flats, such as 5610 Kenmore, a fine 1908 6-flat; 5630, a luxury 3-flat of 1909; 5641-43, a 1912 sun-porch 6-flat by Sandreen with Tudor flavoring; 5713-15, a 1902 six-flat (converted to a rooming house in 1944); and 5719, an extraordinarily bold 3-flat of 1909. This constellation of apartments built in the period of the Manor House and in its immediate vicinity, with a small number of large apartments in each building, provide the best context against which the Manor House can be understood as an exceptionally bold, rich, and interesting representative.

It should also be noted that almost all of these other buildings are on mid-block sites, whereas the Manor House stands on a very prominent high-traffic corners its bringing it into unusual visual prominence and accounting in part for its local renown.

Also in 1984, the Art Institute of Chicago and the American Institute of Architects had an exhibit of 11 150- year awards 11, i.e., a Listing of "lesser-known" distinguished residential commissions in the Chicago area. (This writer was on the jury. The epithet ''lesser-known'' caused considerable difficulty; see pilot of the catalog.) The jury tried to choose the "best of breed11 in each type or style of residential building. The Manor House is one of about two dozen apartment buildings chosen for this exhibit, excluding high-rises but including everything from two-flats to very large courtyard complexes like the Pattington. Seven Chicago courtyard buildings were selected: the Manor House, the Pattington, the Kellshore, the 1911 "Crescent" at 839-51 Belle Plaine, and three large projects from the late 1920s.

This selection is also useful for luxury buildings. The building at 515-521 Roscoe appears. There is also a "six-flat" at 4850-58 Drexel Boulevard, on the South Side, built 1916 at a cost of $130,000. Predictably, it has been drastically converted: a permit was taken out in 1940 to convert 6 apartments to 36. This is to be compared to the 1947 permit to put 30 apartments in the Manor House. The present configuration of the Manor House is about 18 units.

If the interior of this unique six-flat has been altered so that the original apartments can no longer be seen as a whole, does that disqualify it from national recognition? First, only a fraction of the luxury apartment buildings of this period in Chicago remain in anything like their original condition; we have cited many examples that have been demolished or substantially altered. Second, the exterior of the Manor House is largely intact; the only major changes are to the front gate and the roof. From the exterior one can read the original plan in all its clarity and luxury. The orangeries, the fireplaces, the stair towers, and even the shower baths are all still plain to the outside observer. Finally, the Manor House plays a special role in the history of the community of Edgewater. Its location, probably chosen for its proximity to the railroad station, is conspicuous today for the same reason but also because it lies on a major traffic artery just off the north end of the Outer Drive.

The original tenants did not give their address as 1025 Bryn Mawr Avenue. They simply told their correspondents that their address was "The Manor House, Edgewater."