{"nrhp_refnum":"86001090","name":"Chicago Bee Building","other_names":[],"category":"building","location":{"address":"3647--3655 S. State Ave.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Chicago","county":"Cook County","state":"IL","lat":41.82807149700005,"lon":-87.62623485599994,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1986-04-30","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Commerce","Black","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A three-story concrete-framed commercial and apartment building at 3647-55 South State Street in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, built 1929-31 for the Chicago Bee newspaper and faced in glazed terra cotta.","why_significant":"It was the last major structure erected in the State Street commercial district (Black Metropolis), built by Black entrepreneur Anthony Overton to house his newspaper, the Chicago Bee. It is also the only Art Deco structure in the Black Metropolis group, with a richly detailed terra cotta facade.","narrative":"Rising three stories on South State Street in Chicago, this concrete-framed building combined a newspaper plant, shops, offices and apartments. Anthony Overton, a businessman whose career began in cosmetics and extended into banking, insurance and publishing, commissioned it in 1929 to consolidate operations of his newspaper, the Chicago Bee, which had been competing with the Chicago Defender. Construction continued through the early Depression years, and the building was ready for full occupancy in 1931. After the 1932 failure of Overton's Douglass National Bank, his cosmetics company moved in to share space with the paper, and the two stayed together until the newspaper ceased publication in the early 1940s. Architect Z. Erol Smith gave the building a facade entirely of glazed terra cotta in four colors, with incised ornament, produced by the Northwestern Terra Cotta Company. It is the only Art Deco building among the Black Metropolis group and the last major structure built there.","period_of_significance":"1929-1931","architect_builder":"Z. Erol Smith, architect","architectural_style":"Art Deco","criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"South storefronts and entry were boarded around 1970; the building still stands largely as originally designed, and the Overton cosmetics firm was said to still maintain quarters there at the time of the form.","vacant_flag":null,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:55:35.419478-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/37/8908/28890837/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_IL/86001090.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/86001090/5153ea131e-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/86001090/5153ea131e-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"User:TonyTheTiger","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20070601_Chicago_Bee_Building_(3).JPG\" rel=\"noopener\">User:TonyTheTiger</a>, <a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20070601_Chicago_Bee_Building_(3).JPG"},"district":{"nrhp_refnum":"12000040","name":"Chicago Park Boulevard System Historic District","url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/districts/illinois/chicago-park-boulevard-system-historic-district-12000040/"},"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/28890837","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Bee_Building","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5095503"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/illinois/cook-county/chicago-bee-building-86001090/"}