James Charnley Residence

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The original symmetrical facade as it appeared in 1892 - the adjacent building was later demolished

An additional bay was added on the right side after the demolition of the adjacent building

The James Charnley Residence is located in Chicago's Gold Coast neighborhood, at 1365 North Astor Street, and is now called the Charnley-Persky House. Officially an Adler & Sullivan design, the townhouse is the work of Louis Sullivan and a young junior draftsman working in his office by the name of Frank Lloyd Wright. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1970 (building #70000232).

The house was completed in 1892 for Charnley, a Chicago lumberman who lived in the house with his family for only ten years. The building was later owned by members of the Waller family, who invested in real estate. The house was purchased by the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and restored during the 1980s. Seymour Persky purchased the house in 1995 and donated it to the Society of Architectural Historians who renamed the building to the Charnley-Persky House to honor their benefactor.

The plain brick facade with simple ornamentation was quite different than other houses on the Gold Coast, but the interior is distinguished by rich ornamentation that is typical of Sullivan's work.

[edit] References

• First and second floor plan
• Historic American Buildings Survey HABS ILL,16-CHIG,12-
• Richard Longstreth (ed.) 2004. The Charnley House: Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and the Making of Chicago's Gold Coast, University of Chicago Press, 249 pages

[edit] External links

• Charnely House Website
• A site about the James Charnley House

	U.S. National Register of Historic Places - (List of entries)
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