1712 Sheridan Road

1712 Sheridan Road; Signs of A More Prosperous Time

Sheridan Road passes along the eastern edge of North Chicago, and was once home to a bustling strip of businesses that attracted sailors from the nearby Great Lakes Naval Base. While still charming in many ways, the strip has fallen on hard times, and is peppered with unoccupied storefronts and buildings, and empty lots owned by the municipality.

Glazed terra cotta ornamentation like that shown on the facade of this building on Sheridan Avenue in North Chicago was popular in architecture from the late 1800s to the early 1930s. It’s not known where these pieces were manufactured, and records show that this building was erected in 1940, however thirty miles to the east of North Chicago near Crystal Lake, Illinois, American Terra Cotta Corporation fabricated architectural terra cotta like these pieces for more than 8,000 buildings throughout the US and Canada during its eighty-five years in operation (shuttered in 1964).