Chicago Bee Building | |
Location | 3647-55 S. State St. Chicago, IL |
---|---|
Coordinates | 41°49′40.94″N87°37′34.26″W / 41.8280389°N 87.6261833°W Coordinates: 41°49′40.94″N87°37′34.26″W / 41.8280389°N 87.6261833°W |
Built | 1929 |
Architect | Smith, Z. Erol |
Architectural style | Art Deco |
MPS | Black Metropolis TR |
NRHP reference No. | 86001090 [1] |
Significant dates | |
Added to NRHP | April 30, 1986 |
Designated CL | September 9, 1998 |
The Chicago Bee Building is a historic building on Chicago's South Side. It originally housed the Chicago Bee , a newspaper serving the African Americans of Chicago. The building now houses the Chicago Bee Branch of the Chicago Public Library. [2] [3] The building was named a Chicago Landmark on September 9, 1998. It is located in the Black Metropolis-Bronzeville District in the Douglas community area of Chicago, Illinois.
The Chicago Bee was founded by the African American entrepreneur Anthony Overton in 1926. This building was Overton's affirmation of his confidence in the viability of the State Street Commercial district. This three-story building was one of the most picturesque in the district, and the one designed in the Art Deco style of the 1920s. All of Overton's enterprises shared this building until the early 1940s when the newspaper went out of business. The cosmetics firm continued to occupy the building until the early 1980s. The City of Chicago purchased the building and it is now a Chicago Public Library. It originally had upper-floor apartments. It also housed the offices of the Douglass National Bank and the Overton Hygienic Company, during the 1930s. The Overton Hygienic Company was nationally known as a cosmetics firm.
Overton Hygienic went out of business in the early 1980s. In the mid-1990s, the building was reused as a branch of the Chicago Public Library. It is one of nine structures in the Black Metropolis-Bronzeville Historic District. [2] It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 30, 1986.
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Illinois Institute of Technology is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to 1890, the present name was adopted upon the merger of the Armour Institute and Lewis Institute in 1940. The university has programs in architecture, business, communications, design, engineering, industrial technology, information technology, law, psychology, and science. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity".
Douglas, on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, is one of 77 Chicago community areas. The neighborhood is named for Stephen A. Douglas, Illinois politician and Abraham Lincoln's political foe, whose estate included a tract of land given to the federal government. This tract later was developed for use as the Civil War Union training and prison camp, Camp Douglas, located in what is now the eastern portion of the Douglas neighborhood. Douglas gave that part of his estate at Cottage Grove and 35th to the Old University of Chicago. The Chicago 2016 Olympic bid planned for the Olympic Village to be constructed on a 37-acre (150,000 m2) truck parking lot south of McCormick Place that is mostly in the Douglas community area and partly in the Near South Side.
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Black Metropolis–Bronzeville District is a historic African American district in the Bronzeville neighborhood of South Side, Chicago, Illinois.
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Hygienic Manufacturing Company, also known as Overton Hygienic Company, was a cosmetics company established by Anthony Overton. It was one of the nation's largest producers of African-American cosmetics. Anthony Overton also ran other businesses from the building, including the Victory Life Insurance Company and Douglass National Bank, the first nationally chartered, African-American-owned bank. The Overton Hygienic Building is a Chicago Landmark and part of the Black Metropolis-Bronzeville District in the Douglas community area of Chicago, Illinois. It is located at 3619-3627 South State Street.
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The Eighth Regiment Armory, located in the Black Metropolis-Bronzeville District of Chicago, Illinois, was the first armory in the United States built for an African-American military regiment, known as the "Fighting 8th". The building later was used by a division of the Illinois National Guard, and during World War I was incorporated into the US Infantry. After closing the armory in the early 1960s, it became the South Central Gymnasium. In 1999, following an extensive renovation, it was reopened as a public high school military academy. The restoration and conversion into a school has been recognized by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
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The South Side Community Art Center is a community art center in Chicago that opened in 1940 with support from the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project in Illinois. Opened in Bronzeville, it became the first black art museum in the United States and has been an important center for the development Chicago's African American artists. Of more than 100 community art centers established by the WPA, this is the only one that remains open.
Anthony Overton Jr., a banker and manufacturer, was the first African American to lead a major business conglomerate.
Walter Thomas Bailey was an American architect from Kewanee, Illinois. He was the first African American graduate with a bachelor of science degree in architectural engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the first licensed African-American architect in the state of Illinois. He worked at the Tuskegee Institute, and practiced in both Memphis and Chicago. Walter T. Bailey became the second African American that graduated from the University of Illinois.
The Supreme Life Building is a historic insurance building located at 3501 S. Dr. Martin Luther King Drive in the Douglas community area of Chicago, Illinois. Built in 1921, the building served as the headquarters of the Supreme Life Insurance Company, which was founded two years earlier by Frank L. Gillespie. The company, originally known as the Liberty Life Insurance Company, was the first African-American owned insurance company in the northern United States. Since white-owned insurance firms regularly denied black customers life insurance when the firm was founded, the firm played an important role in providing life insurance to Chicago's African-American community. The company ultimately became the largest African-American owned business in the northern states and became a symbol of the predominantly black Bronzeville neighborhood's economic success from the 1920s to the 1950s.
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