The Produce Terminal Cold Storage Company Building is a historic refrigerated warehouse at 1550 South Blue Island Avenue in the Near West Side neighborhood of

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...

. Built in 1928–29, the warehouse was the largest cold storage facility in Chicago when it opened. As Chicago was a major shipping and transportation hub, refrigerated storage played a key role in preserving perishable goods so they could be sold year-round. Architects H. Peter Henschien, a designer of refrigerated facilities, and Robert J. McLaren designed the

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...

building. The top two stories of the eleven-story building feature extensive

terra cotta Terracotta, also known as terra cotta or terra-cotta (; ; ), is a clay-based Vitrification#Ceramics, non-vitreous ceramicOED, "Terracotta""Terracotta" MFA Boston, "Cameo" database fired at relatively low temperatures. It is therefore a term used ...

and tile ornamentation, including chevrons, Egyptian-inspired

colonette A colonnette is a small slender column, usually decorative, which supports a Beam (structure), beam or lintel. Colonnettes have also been used to refer to a feature of furnishings such as a dressing table and Grandfather clock, case clock, and eve ...

s, and a

dentil A dentil (from Lat. ''dens'', a tooth) is a small block used as a repeating ornament in the bedmould of a cornice. Dentils are found in ancient Greek and Roman architecture, and also in later styles such as Neoclassical, Federal, Georgian Rev ...

lated

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative Moulding (decorative), moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, ar ...

with

cymatium Cymatium (from Greek κυμάτιον "small wave"), the uppermost molding at the top of the cornice in the classical order, is made of the s-shaped cyma molding (either ''cyma recta'' or ''cyma reversa''), combining a concave cavetto with a con ...

molding. In addition to its extensive refrigerated space, the interior plan also included processing and office space, improving efficiency and lowering costs for the building's tenants. The building was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

on June 22, 2003.

References

Industrial buildings and structures on the National Register of Historic Places in Chicago Warehouses on the National Register of Historic Places Art Deco architecture in Illinois Industrial buildings completed in 1929 Cool warehouses {{CookCountyIL-NRHP-stub