Artifacts Of Louis Sullivan Building, Demolished In The ’50s, Are Protecting South Shore’s Lakefront

SOUTH SHORE — The lakefront limestone at Promontory Point and Morgan Shoal is covered in hundreds of mostly anonymous, amateur creations that residents have both added to and meticulously documented over the years.

But until recently, few South Siders knew their shoreline was home to another set of artistic limestone carvings. The shoreline barrier guarding the Sawyer Water Purification Plant, a few miles south of the Point, is home to several such carvings — though their creator is neither a novice nor unknown.

Massive impost blocks, which are remnants of the demolished Walker Warehouse, are early examples of famed architect Louis Sullivan‘s work. The Bedford limestone ornaments, which date to 1889, have been hidden among the rubble that serves as the Sawyer plant’s lakefront revetment since the warehouse’s 1953 demolition.

“This is a very early and unusual salvage,” said Eric Nordstrom, the owner of Urban Remains in West Town who began photographing and documenting the remnants in summer 2025.

‘Architectural Significance’ Along The Shore

James Clarke first spotted the Walker Warehouse remnants in 2018 as he landscaped the area around the Sawyer plant, Crain’s Chicago Business reported.

Awareness of the artifacts largely stayed within a circle of historians like Tim Samuelson and other architecture buffs in the years that followed, Nordstrom told Block Club.

Nordstrom learned the general vicinity of the artifacts, but the push to photograph and catalog them came from his partner, Jaime Szubart, he said.

Szubart took some initial photos on a trip back from Southwest Michigan, and on subsequent visits Nordstrom “began taking notes and documenting all the pieces that have carved ornament,” he said. “I was able to find two or three impost blocks and a capital near the entrance.”

The six-story Walker Warehouse was located at 200 Market St. — now Wacker Drive, the street whose extension led to the warehouse’s demolition.

Designed through Sullivan’s partnership with Dankmar Adler, the warehouse “absolutely” has historical significance, said Tom Drebenstedt, a Chicago Architecture Center docent who has co-created tours for the center around Sullivan’s work.

The warehouse’s ornamentation showcased Sullivan’s “philosophy of introducing nature into architecture,” Drebenstedt said, which is also seen in his other works like the Auditorium Building and the Carson Pirie Scott headquarters — the latter of which lives on as the notorious “Goth Target.”

Sullivan was “interested in new technology, but he’s also thinking: Should [buildings] remind an urban dweller about nature? How can he enliven the outside of a building? How can he make you think about the natural world when you live in a city that’s growing as quickly as the city of Chicago?” Drebenstedt said.

Two extant artifacts from the Walker Warehouse were previously identified. One resides in the Gold Coast, at the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and one serves as a bench near the University of Illinois’ architecture building in Champaign.

Both were salvaged by Sullivan scholar Ralph Marlowe Line, who upon the warehouse’s demolition arranged to preserve one of each ornamental block design: a leafy pattern, and a pattern of connected circles, Nordstrom said.

However, because of a miscommunication, both salvaged remnants feature the natural design, Nordstrom said. The South Shore find was particularly special, as it included three blocks with the geometric design once thought to be lost, he said.

Seven decades of weathering has taken its toll on the former warehouse’s ornamental stone, but by a stroke of luck, at least one has spent that time “facing away from lake, so its detail is very crisp,” Nordstrom said.

“Everyone just assumed that the two pieces were saved and the rest was [used as] fill, but no evidence any of this was seen,” he said. “It’s really quite interesting. There’s just a small amount of material [at the lakefront] and that the material happens to be … three impost blocks of the design we’ve never seen in person until now.”

A Loss, Or An Afterlife?

The discovery of Walker Warehouse remnants is a “disappointing” reminder of how much architectural history Chicago has lost to demolition, some local preservationists said.

Nordstrom’s work to catalog the warehouse is nice, but documentation “pales in comparison to saving the buildings that future generations can use,” said Adam Rubin, senior director of public engagement for the Chicago Architecture Center and commissioner for the city’s landmarks commission.

“Chicago being a community that is very aware of its architecture and very excited about its architectural history, it’s exciting to know that there are potentially these Easter eggs out there to discover,” Rubin said.

He added: “[But] as preservationists, the best thing you can do to ensure that we don’t end up with piles of architectural relics for somebody to come and photograph one day — when it’s too late to save the building — is to show up and advocate for the places that are important to you.”

Drebenstedt agrees. The Walker Warehouse’s demolition was “a loss, there’s no doubt about it,” he said.

The demolition came in the ’50s, a decade that was “all about postwar progress,” Drebenstedt said. Nineteenth-century architecture was considered passé, and preservationists like Marlowe Line or colleague Richard Nickel were a rarity.

“The reason the Walker Warehouse got torn down was to extend Wacker Drive … it’s modernism, it’s, ‘Build the high-speed road; we’re headed out to the suburbs, and this old stuff is in our way,’” Drebenstedt said. “Serious preservationist thinking doesn’t happen for another 10 years.”

Nordstrom isn’t as mournful about the artifacts’ current state. He appreciates the ongoing opportunity to admire the detail and scale of the impost blocks while reflecting on the warehouse’s construction, demolition and ultimate use as a revetment, he said.

“I feel good knowing it’s there,” Nordstrom said. “[Even if] it’s in bits and pieces, I’m glad that a part of it is still there. It doesn’t just live in a photograph. I can go visit it in some form — which, in this case, is a pile of big stones next to a lake.”

The use of an Adler and Sullivan design as a buffer against Lake Michigan’s power raises “interesting and important” questions about architectural losses and preservation, said Rebekah Coffman, the Chicago History Museum’s curator of religion and community history.

“I believe we’re in an age where we need to recognize there are many ways in which buildings can have afterlives of meaning and contribute to our collective public memory,” Coffman said via email. “I support the reuse of standing buildings over their demolition as much as possible and, of course, would have loved to see this impressive and beautiful building still standing.

“That said, its demolition took place decades ago. … Where the remnants are now [fulfills] a purpose: To keep the shoreline safer from flooding or erosion.”

Preservationists noted the ongoing battle to save another Adler and Sullivan artifact — the full trading room of the demolished Chicago Stock Exchange — as another example of the ways Sullivan’s buildings have found life after demolition.

The trading room, carefully deconstructed and reinstalled between the stock exchange’s demolition in 1972 and 1977, could be moved or removed as the Art Institute plans an expansion, the Sun-Times reported in March.

Like the Walker Warehouse artifacts, the trading room is at this point far removed from its initial setting and purpose. However, its recreation has “been at the Art Institute for a long enough time for it to present as its own architectural space deserving of protection,” Rubin said.

“Discussions around the trading room demonstrate that even when something is perfectly ‘preserved,’ there are always vulnerabilities to physical loss, and it takes ongoing advocacy and memory work to keep history alive,” Coffman said.

By documenting the Walker Warehouse artifacts, Nordstrom hopes to attract attention — and funding — needed to extract the blocks and put them on public display, he said.

Much like the rebuilding and reframing of the trading room, salvaging the warehouse artifacts could “raise awareness about demolition and the senseless destruction of old buildings,” Nordstrom said. “It would also be a way to honor the efforts of people like Nickel and Marlowe Line.”

A prior effort to move the ornamental blocks to the Chicago Riverwalk proved “impractical,” while Andrew Schneider, the Chicago Park District’s director of historic assets, said the agency is open to storing or displaying the blocks “if a funding source could be identified,” according to Crain’s.

In the meantime, Nordstrom is content appreciating the artifacts’ survival on the lakefront, even in their weathered and decontextualized state.

“When you get that moment to sit next to one of those impost blocks and admire it, admire the scale, how it landed there — from the time it was built, time it was demolished and trucked off and dumped there — playing that through your head … it’s nice,” Nordstrom said.

“It’s nice to be close to this building, whether it’s in parts or not. I feel very calm. It’s a very peaceful experience.”