Blum Vogue promotional brochure, 1930 Courtesy, Columbia College Chicago Blum’s Vogue was a fashionable women’s clothier featuring high end imported and domestic women’s fashions. This store and stores like it gave Michigan Avenue its reputation as an elegant shopping district during the age of the railroads.

History

624 S. Michigan Avenue was built by Eckstorm in 1908 as an eight story building to house the Chicago Musical College, a concern headed by Florenz Ziegfield Sr., father of Broadway Follies producer Flo Ziegfield, Jr. A seven-story addition was designed and built in 1922 by Alfred Alschuler. The building was renamed the Blum Building and housed the studios of a dance school and boutique women’s clothiers. Tenants in the building in the 1920s included Augustus Eugene Bournique’s dancing schools and two select women’s clothiers, Stanley Korshak’s Blackstone Shop and Blum’s Vogue. Brick clad with classical detailing, this 15-story building retains its stunning a marble and brass lobby. Columbia College acquired the building in 1990 and it now houses a five-story library, classrooms, departmental offices, student and faculty lounges and the college’s bookstore.

Blum Vogue promotional brochure, 1930 Courtesy, Columbia College Chicago

The 624 South Michigan Building is a neoclassical style building facing one of Chicago’s most prominent public amenities, Grant Park. As originally designed, it was detailed with classical motifs in terra cotta on its lower floors, with brick walls and terra cotta quoins at the corners of its bays, bracketed terra cotta sills and flat arch voussoirs on all of its windows, and a terra cotta cornice crowned with a balustrade and Greek urns.

The building as transformed by its new firstand second floor façade and seven story addition, is in fact a restatement of the original design philosophy. The style, quality of materials, scale, and location of the 624 South Michigan Building makeit an exemplar of the City Beautiful movement. Its original date of construction, 1908, made it a contributor to the ideal of civic conscientiousness that anticipated the famous Plan of Chicago of 1909, by architect Daniel Burnham. Its addition of 1922 continued the design philosophy and material detailing of the original, thereby reinforcing, rather than interrupting, the associations the design had sought to make manifest.

"At the Ball That’s All" sheet music from the Ziegfield Follies, 1914. Link to song. Dr. Ziegfeld’s son, Flo Ziegfeld, Jr., got started in his professional career as the business manager of his father’s Chicago Musical College. The son briefly toured with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Revue, then began managing other acts that toured across the country. By 1908, the year his father built the new 624 South Michigan Building for his school, he was the biggest and most well-known producer on Broadway in New York City. His shows always featured the latest in musical theater and elaborately costumed young women dancers. This period sheet music cover depicts one of the dancers discarding last year’s outfit for the new model while applying her make-up.

Description

The 624 South Michigan Building is a fifteen story steel frame structure. On its principal facade, facing South Michigan Avenue, it is faced with Bedford limestone on its first two floors, and red brick with white terra cotta and limestone detailing on its third through twelfth floors. Its top floors are fronted by a two story limestone engaged colonnade; the original cornice has been removed, its pediments, balustrade and urns replaced with a simple red brick parapet. The side elevations are largely not visible, as they stand against the neighboring buildings.

Overall, it would be difficult to see the building as having a distinct style. The classical revival details on the façade are called “Italian Renaissance” in the only published reference to this building, an advertisement in the Chicago Central Business and Office Building Directory for 1929. This attribution owes its inspiration to the modest scale of the ornament, which is reminiscent of that found on Northern Italian buildings of the 1400s. Terra cotta trim is used for window sills on the upper floors, and the piers between every pair of windows have simplified classical capitals in terra cotta under a pressed metal cornice.

The 624 South Wabash Building is one of the three buildings that make up the most significant cluster of buildings on the Columbia campus, which stand on the block bound by Harrison, Michigan, Balbo, and Wabash avenues, and includes the 600 South Michigan and 623 South Wabash buildings.

Campus Preservation Plan

• Volume VI: 624 South Michigan Avenue [132 pages]
• View entire plan