nailhed: Jack Tyme

April 2006.

Ironically, Highland Street might just be the most depressing street in the entire city of Highland Park. It is lined with a high number of architecturally gorgeous, but almost completely abandoned buildings.

I couldn't find a name anywhere on this particular apartment building, but I figured the address to be 70 Highland Street.

According to some real estate websites I found, this snazzy Spanish-Revival style building was built in 1930 with 42 living units, and most recently listed for sale on May 16th, 2014 with an asking price of $350,000, which they calculate out to being $21 per square foot. I'm going to hazard a wild guess and say that they may have to be willing to come down a bit on that price.

We did not have an especially easy feeling about going into this one, but we were lured in nonetheless by the building's fancy Mediterranean architecture as if by a tractor beam. My gut feeling is that she was designed by the prolific Charles N. Agree.

Sadly we were about to find out that all of the building's attractive features were to be found on its exterior, and that the insides were not only mostly devoid of interesting details but also very dark and hard to photograph. The presence of actual gang graffiti (not just the kid stuff) kept us on edge more than usual, so this time photography would have to take a backseat to paying attention to other more important matters anyway.

There was however this cool doodle in pencil on one of the walls of an apartment on the 4th floor:

"Jack Tyme BREAK"...the 187th Street sign is a reference to the police radio dispatcher code for homicide.

We went almost straight to the roof for a look about.

The brown-brick Kumber Apartments next-door at 60 Highland were built in 1926.

Looking south toward downtown and New Center:

Almost every other building or house in the immediate vicinity was also abandoned:

Across the street was the destroyed G.W. Ferris School:

There's the Roselawn Apartments in the distance:

So many neat little details on these buildings.

At the time we were here in 2006, this place probably stood a good chance of being renovated with a minimum of expenditure...probably not so much now.