441-449 North Clark Street

441 N. Clark 

This narrow stone-fronted building was originally a four-story building, erected in 1872 as the store and warehouse of G. Dassler's china, crockery and glassware business.  For a brief period in the 1920's, the building was home to the famed "Hobo College" an educational and social institution.  Dedicated to providing refuge and intellectual exchange for Chicago's transient community, the college provided a library, recreational facilities, lectures, musical events, and a variety of diverse activities for its "students."  The Hobo College's debating team frequently challenged those of the University of Chicago and other institutions of higher learning, usually ending with devastating defeat for their opponents.

445 N. Clark 

This building duplicated an earlier structure that stood on the site and was destroyed by the Chicago Fire of 1871.  Rebuilt the following year by Chicago manufacturer Samuel G. Taylor, the building incorporated stores on the ground floor, offices on the second floor, and a large top floor assembly hall.  The simple treatment of the sandstone façade is characteristic of the work of the building's architects, Burling & Adler.  Edward Burling was one of the pioneer architects of Chicago, and Dankmar Adler later gained fame as the partner of Louis H. Sullivan in the design of the Auditorium Theater on South Michigan Avenue and other landmark structures.  At the turn of the century, the top floor hall was used as a dance studio, and in the 1920s operated as a "taxi dance hall," a type of business made famous in the popular song "Ten Cents a Dance."

Today, 445 North Clark is home to Frontera Grill and Topolobambo, winner's of the James Beard Award for Best Restaurant.

447 N. Clark 

Architect William Arend's design for this narrow structure could be said to be "two-faced," having a sandstone façade on Clark Street and a finished face-brick and stone façade on the alley.  The unusual alley façade can be explained by the fact that it was visible from Illinois Street due to the low height of the Cook County Jail situated immediately east of it.  Erected in 1872, the building was originally occupied by the firm of Hartung, Klussman & Nelson, dealers in wines and liquors. A half century later, liquor again played a role in the building's history.  In the depths of prohibition in the 1920's, the building was used as the warehouse of the Old Rose Distillery and was the scene of an attempted heist by gangster "Ragtime Joe" Howard.  After loading the last of ten heavy barrels into a truck parked in the alley, Howard was apprehended by policemen from the Chicago Avenue Station.  Ragtime Joe was tried and eventually acquitted at the Criminal Courts Building, within view of the scene of the crime, but his luck ran out in 1924 when he was murdered during a barroom dispute with Al Capone.

Today, 447 North Clark is home to Frontera Grill and Topolobambo, winner's of the James Beard Award for Best Restaurant.

449 N. Clark  

The grocery firm of Joyce and Cunningham shared this building with a meat market and plumbing business when the structure was completed in 1872.  Designed by architect O.H. Placy, the exterior is of inexpensive common brick, camouflaged to look like expensive face-brick by coating the surfaces with yellow stucco and delineating false thin mortar joints, painstakingly applied by hand.  Although largely worn away, close examination of the brickwork will reveal traces of these false joints, many of which do not even fall on the actual brick joint lines.