Lawson House

Lawson House
  1. About the Lawson House in Chicago
  2. Architect and team
  3. Architectural style
  4. Spaces and uses
  5. Structure and materials

The Lawson House is an Art-deco skyscraper designed by Perkins, Chatten & Hammond, and built in 1931, for a reported $2.75 million dollars, in Chicago, IL.

Lawson House is not the only name you might know this building by though. It is common for companies to want to attach their names to iconic buildings when they move in, or for the general public to come up with nicknames, and this one is no exception. The Lawson House is also known, or has been known as, Lawson House YMCA, or Victor Lawson YMCA Building.

Its precise street address is 30 W. Chicago Avenue, Chicago, IL. You can also find it on the map here.

The building underwent a major restoration between 2022 and 2024. The architect commissioned to undertake this restoration was Holsten Real State.

Building's timeline

Construction completed
1931
93
a
Restoration
2024
0
years ago
2024
  1. 2022 to 2024 - Restoration. The architect in charge was Holsten Real State.

Architect and team

Perkins, Chatten & Hammond was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but at the very least we know that there was one other part involved, that was YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago as the Main Developer.

Architectural Style

The Lawson House can be categorized as an Art-deco building.

The Art Deco movement flourished during the 1920s and 1930s, with many historians marking the outbreak of World War II as its final decline. Even though a couple of decades might not seem as much, the Art Deco movement had a great impact on architecture, and it's widely represented in many American cities due to the development boom that happened during that time.

Art Deco marked the abandonment of traditional historicism and the embracement of modern living and the age of the machine. In architecture, that meant leaving behind the ornaments of Beux-Arts and Neo-Gothic buildings and instead favoring simplicity and visual impact through geometric shapes, clean lines, and symmetrical designs. Ornaments were still an important part of the design, but they became bold and lavish, and were often inspired by ancient cultures or industrial imagery, instead of nature.

The Lawson House was completed in 1931, right when the Art Deco movement was at its peak, so it kind of went with the trend at that time.

Spaces & Uses

The Lawson House reaches an architectural height of 272ft (83m). It has a total of 24 floors, which combined offer a total of 207,743 sqf (19,300m2) of usable space.

When it opened its doors to the public in 1931, the Lawson House was primarily used as Residence space. That however, is no longer the case, and today it mainly provides Residential space.

About the residences

The Lawson House has a total of 408 residential units throughout its 24 floors.

272ft (83m)

Materials & Structure

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a limestone cladding on the lower three floors and red colored bricks from there on.