North Wells Street Historic District

This block-long row of seven buildings on North Wells Street in Chicago, between Scott and Goethe streets, dates from 1871 to 1888. It includes a two-story frame storefront built right after the Chicago Fire, an 1870s Italianate enginehouse for Engine Company No. 27, and a three-story brick loft built in 1875 by Anton B. Fiedler to make dress trimmings. Later additions include storefront-and-flat buildings, a carriage maker's factory from 1886, and a Queen Anne building of 1888 designed by Emil Riegert and Charles Knorr. The row was listed because it preserves a commercial street of the post-fire rebuilding period, a type that redevelopment and land clearance have nearly erased on the Near North, Near West and Near South sides. Other Chicago districts from the era are residential. Many buildings have been painted, resurfaced or partly bricked up, but their original designs can still be read, and the block shows how a neighborhood shopping street grew one lot at a time, often with owners living above their shops.