Richard Nickel

Nickel's home at 1810 West Cortland Street in Bucktown, Chicago served as his base for photography and salvage operations.

Infatuated with the brick building's front elevation, simple floor plan, and history, Nickel referred to it as his "Polish Palazzo".

He worked hard to restore the building.

He was raised by first-generation Polish Americans with his grandfather John Nikiel, born in Posen, Germany in 1880.

Richard's father, Stanley, a driver for the Polish Daily News, Americanized the surname to Nickel in the face of Anti-Polish sentiment.

The family soon moved to 4329 W. Crystal where a young Richard attended grammar school at St. Cyril and Methodius.

It was here that Richard first became fascinated by light as he stared at the saintly figures drawn in stained glass.

Richard Stanley Nickel (May 31, 1928 – April 13, 1972) was a Polish American architectural photographer and historical preservationist, who was based in Chicago, Illinois.

He is best known for his efforts to preserve and document the buildings of architect Louis Sullivan, and the work of the architecture firm of Adler & Sullivan.

Richard Nickel was born in the Chicago neighborhood of Humboldt Park in a two-flat located at 4327 W. Haddon.

In 1948 after leaving the Army, Nickel was given a victory medal and subsequently enrolled at the Institute of Design, which became part of IIT- The Illinois Institute of Technology.

The school was housed in the former Chicago Historical Society building, located at 632 N. Dearborn (northwest corner of Dearborn and Ontario streets).

Nickel married a young Polish American girl named Adrienne Dembo at St. Wenceslaus Church, noted for its Art Deco design, on June 10, 1950.

Shortly after, Richard was recalled to serve in the Korean War.

After Richard's return a few years later, he was a changed man, with recurring nightmares that he was still in Korea.

His mother-in law commented that she saw him as a "casualty of war."

The marriage finally ended in divorce.

During the urban regeneration of the 1960s and 1970s, scores of 19th century buildings in Chicago were being demolished.

Among these were the works of Louis Sullivan and of other architects designing in the Prairie School style.

By this time many of the buildings were neglected, with little public interest in their retention.

Nickel encountered Sullivan's work while photographing the architect's buildings for a school project at the IIT Institute of Design in Chicago under Aaron Siskind.

Studying and photographing Sullivan's buildings quickly became an obsession for him.

Ultimately, he devoted much of his life to photographing them, hoping to produce a comprehensive photographic compendium.

Some were documentation projects for the federal HABS—Historic American Buildings Survey.

Richard Nickel came to believe that such buildings were an important part of Chicago's architectural and cultural heritage.

Realizing that the pace of urban renewal and development seriously threatened many of these historic buildings, Nickel campaigned and lobbied for their preservation.

Celebrated buildings such as the Garrick Theater and the Chicago Stock Exchange were torn down despite the best efforts of Nickel and others to preserve them.

However, after Nickel's death, his crusade gained momentum and was responsible for many of Sullivan's buildings eventually being spared.

Of the ongoing threat to Chicago's buildings Nickel said "Great architecture has only two natural enemies: water and stupid men."

In the cases where he was unable to protect a building, Nickel extensively photographed both its interior and exterior to archive the craftsmanship and attempt to preserve the buildings' character in his images.

He also stripped some of the doomed buildings of their distinctive ornamentation before their destruction.

Dozens of such items were sold to Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) and are still on display.

Richard Nickel documented many of the architectural masters of Chicago, photographing the work of Burnham & Root, Holabird & Roche, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, C. F. Murphy Associates, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

Nickel would tell a reporter in 1969 "That makes an impression on you that you never completely forget. It might be subconscious and, at some point, something triggers it."

The family moved to a second floor apartment at 2457 N. Rockwell in the Logan Square community, while Nickel was in fifth grade and enrolled at St. John Berchman's School.

At the time the neighborhood was predominately Polish, and years later Nickel described it as the "Polish neighborhood where I became happily abnormal".

The family lived near Logan Boulevard, an area lined with historic mansions and wide parkways that would later become recognized as a Chicago Landmark.

More important was his father Stanley's acute interest in photography which Richard would take up as well.

Richard Nickel was killed on April 13, 1972, while attempting to salvage more architectural items when a portion of the old Chicago Stock Exchange building collapsed on him.

His body went unnoticed for some four weeks, until it was uncovered by demolition workers on May 9.