Jeffery-Cyril Historic District

Six apartment buildings of five to thirteen stories stand together around Cyril Avenue and Jeffery Boulevard in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood. Built between 1927 and 1929 on land that had remained vacant until the 1920s, they rise above the low-rise commercial, apartment and single-family buildings around them. Each uses a different style: Georgian Revival, Tudor Revival, Spanish Colonial Revival, Gothic Revival and Art Deco. Three of them, the Gothic Bedford Villa, the Spanish-style East 71st Place Building and the Art Deco Jeffery Terrace, were designed by Paul F. Olsen for realtor Walter F. Kinnucan. The Jeffery-Cyril Apartments were built as a cooperative, offering home ownership in an apartment. The nomination presents the group as an illustration of 1920s apartment design, when revival styles were meant to suggest domestic comfort and Art Deco pointed toward modernism. Cyril Avenue, a one-block street, gives most of the buildings a courtyard-like setting. The buildings keep their original character, with few alterations apart from one modern storefront.