The Purple Hotel, on Touhy and Lincoln in Lincolnwood IL. It's been closed since 2007 and probably would have been torn down by now if not for the collapse of the real estate market. It's famous for a couple of reasons that have nothing to do with its unusual color. It was the site of a mob hit in 1983 when Allen Dorfman was fatally shot seven times in the parking lot. More recently, Stuart Levine (testifying in the Tony Rezko trial) claimed that he had participated in daylong drug parties at the hotel. Fun times!
Depending on your taste, this is either a good or a bad example of 1960s modernism, but I rather like this building and find the purple facade strangely fascinating. I drive by here periodically and finally decided to stop and take a few photos.
I used a Nikon D90 for all of these, with a Nikon 55-200mm lens for the first photo (zoomed to 200mm), and a 16-85mm lens for the second two. I corrected a touch of barrel distortion in the second photo and also (mostly) straightened the perspective via Photoshop. The third photo was, obviously, cropped square.
2 comments:
Good to know it's still there; I thought had already been torn down. Personally, I think it looks hideous, but for whatever reason, that's kinda why I like it.
Looks like the design style of a wonderful guy I worked for as a fledgling architect in the late 70's, John Macsai, who among other things was a Holocaust Survivor. Taste changes, but he is (I think he survives) a talented, great guy.
~Steve Sundman
http://www.artic.edu/aic/libraries/research/specialcollections/oralhistories/macsai.html
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