Balcony Railing Section from the Mecca Apartment Building, Chicago, Illinois
1891-92 (demolished about 1951)
Medium
Painted cast iron
Dimensions
74.7 × 106.1 cm (29 3/8 × 41 3/4 in.)
Classification
architectural fragment
Department
Architecture and Design
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
38861
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Designed prior to the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1891, the Mecca Apartments featured distinctive interior light courts and balconies with decorative cast-iron railings. The structure became famous for its many afterlives, first as a popular residential building in the heart of a Bronzeville, a prominent African American neighborhood in Chicago’s South Side, with a thriving jazz music scene in the 1920s. The building was immortalized by the song “Mecca Flat Blues” and later a poem “In the Me...