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Chicago's Fine Old Brick Buildings in Danger
Chicago's brick buildings in peril
Chicago is, mainly, a brick city.  Oh, sure, there thousands of wood frame and brick veneer houses and buildings throughout our city, but travel the neighborhoods (Chicago is also a city of neighborhoods, from Lincoln Park to Beverly).  Most of this city was built with bricks and mortar. Properly built masonry buildings need very little repair or maintenance but, as these houses age it is obvious there will be needed repairs.
And therein lies the problem.
Seems simple enough, doesn't it?  Take out the old stuff and put in some new stuff, or smear some new stuff over the old stuff. The problems come from the "stuff". Most folks don't realize it, but the masonry materials we use in modern construction are completely different, (like, down to a molecular level different), than the materials our masonry homes were built with several decades ago.  And, many times, the new "stuff" is not nearly as good as the old stuff was.
Chicago was built with brick.  This is, in large part, because of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.  Hundreds were killed and over 4 square miles of the city were completely destroyed.  The fire's northward expansion stopped at what has become ... more

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