Shoreline Apartments

Shoreline Apartments
  1. About the Shoreline Apartments in Chicago
    1. Building Catalogations
  2. Architect and team
  3. Architectureal style
  4. Spaces and uses
  5. Structure and materials

The Shoreline Apartments is a Neogothic skyscraper designed by Henry K. Holsman and built in 1928 in Chicago, IL.

Its precise street address is 2231 E. 67th Street, Chicago, IL. You can also find it on the map here.

The Shoreline Apartments is a structure of significant importance both for the city of Chicago and the United States as a nation. The building embodies the distinctive characteristic features of the time in which it was built and the Neogothic style. Because of that, the Shoreline Apartments was officially included in the National Register of Historic Places on September 5th 2017.

The building underwent a major restoration between 2016 and 2019.

Building's timeline

Construction completed
1928
96
Added to the NRHP
2017
7
a
Restoration
2019
5
years ago
2024
  1. 2016 to 2019 - Restoration.

Architect and team

Henry K. Holsman was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

Architectural Style

The Shoreline Apartments can be categorized as a Neogothic building.

The Neo-Gothic style, also known as Gothic Revival, emerged in the United States during the late 19th century, taking inspiration from the Gothic architecture found in Europe from centuries prior.

The Gothic Revival movement took elements characteristic of the Gothic buildings, such as pointed architect, ribbed vaults and flying buttresses, and applied them to newer buildings, even those belonging to typologies that did not exist during the original Gothic period, such as skyscrapers.

Neg-Gothic buildings usually feature pinnacles, gargoyles and other decorative elements that emphasize the verticality of the structure, and include stonework that features the craftsmanship of skilled artisans of the time.

The Shoreline Apartments was completed in 1928. These were the late days of the Neogothic movement, which had been around for almost 200 years at the time.

Art-deco would soon take over US architecture, and therefore, even though Henry K. Holsman didn't venture into what was cutting edge in terms of style at the time, and took instead a more conservative approach to the design of the Shoreline Apartments, it is possible that the design already started showing some traits that would later become characteristic of the art-deco movement.

Spaces & Uses

It has a total of 16 floors. .

Materials & Structure

The Shoreline Apartments uses a frame structure made of columns and beams.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade is non-load bearing either, as it is common in frame structure type buildings.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a light-colored stone on the first two levels and red brick on the rest of the facade.

Another material found at the Shoreline Apartments is wrought iron, found in the lobby's lighting fixtures.