La Salle Apartments 2005 Restoration
March photo gallery
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The beginning days of our work to restore the La Salle apartments delivered a few unexpected but very welcome surprises. Many of the walls have to be replaced and while working in the hallways, we uncovered the original "ice doors" that were used in the 20's & 30's to allow delivery of block ice directly into the kitchens for placement in ice boxes.
Prior to starting our work, it appeared that only one of the 16 apartments, shown below on left, had its original kitchen tile counter top and colorful backsplash remaining.
The others had been replaced over the years with formica, above right, and what little of the tile borders that still remained were white tiles. We soon discovered that much of it had simply been covered up and the colored tiles were still in place but had been painted white. We also found that the bathroom tiles were also painted and when exposed, each apartment had matching colors in their kitchen and bathroom. Below are the three colors (yellow, aqua blue and pink) that we found.
