I have the sad news to deliver that the old Lincoln square bowling alley ..it be gone. a massive fre destroyed Chicago's oldest bowling alley a stellar building that I had the fortune of going into one time and ascending the long staircase upstairs from ground level. I remember thinking a few years what a gem this building is and how lucky the city is to have these old buildings with bowling alley bars on the second level and shit you would never see allowed zoned in boring suburbia. This bowling alley was opened in 1918 and served beer and frolics for generations having seen its original blue collar clientele displaced by educated yuppie migrants from Iowa who move to Chicago because their home state offers no jobs.
Generations of the Drehobl family owned this and they had spent a ton of money redeveloping this building making some contractors wealthy but before they got to showcase this remodeling a fire in the kitchen urned this place down. I still say whenever there is a transition of ownership as was the case here and major remodeling work was done to a building that may have had many problems to sustain everything needs to be examined to why this gem burned down now. in 2012 this same family had spent a million bucks upgrading the place only to decide it needed it again this year. this place had a really cool looking bar and interior although I wondered how it could make money as young people are about into bowling as they are into classic cars. This fire was easy to see coming and I am surprised I didn't predict this. clearly this fire was set to put up a non-descript CVS or Walgreens maybe who knows another Dunkin Donuts.
No comments:
Post a Comment