Motor Row Historic District

Motor Row is a three-block stretch of Chicago's Near South Side, centered on South Michigan Avenue between Cermak Road and the Stevenson Expressway, with parts of Wabash and Indiana Avenues. It contains dozens of brick and terra cotta buildings put up mostly between 1909 and 1915 to sell, service and store automobiles. Built to the sidewalk edge with large display windows, the showrooms form a nearly continuous streetwall. Designs range from simple Chicago School facades to Renaissance Revival, Spanish Revival, Sullivanesque and Moderne examples. Architects included Holabird & Roche, Alfred Alschuler, Jenney, Mundie & Jensen, and Albert Kahn, whose Cadillac service building is described as his only intact industrial work remaining in Chicago. The district was listed for its commercial history and its architecture. It is described as the largest surviving collection of early automobile showrooms in the country, showing how this building type developed through the 1930s. Upper floors are largely intact, while altered ground-level storefronts are considered reversible.