Home of Leg­ends Under­goes a Leg­endary Ren­o­va­tion: Rosen­wald Courts

Rosen­wald Courts, an apart­ment com­plex that once housed, Nat King Cole, Joe Louis, Quin­cy Jones, Jesse Owens and many oth­er leg­endary musi­cians and ath­letes, was built in the 1930s when Chica­go was a seg­re­gat­ed city. While this once thriv­ing build­ing was list­ed on the Nation­al Reg­istry of His­toric Places more than 35 years ago, it had fall­en into dis­re­pair and had been aban­doned for near­ly 15 years.

In 2015 a group of devel­op­ers began ren­o­va­tions on Rosen­wald Courts. Their vision was to cre­ate afford­able hous­ing for seniors and fam­i­lies and revive office space and retail oppor­tu­ni­ties in the neigh­bor­hood, while hon­or­ing the his­to­ry of Rosen­wald Courts.

Urban Restora­tion with an Eye for Design

As part of this $123 mil­lion his­toric restora­tion project, Paragon Com­mer­cial Inte­ri­ors tasked Lat­i­tude Sig­nage with the design, pro­duc­tion, and instal­la­tion of all the inte­ri­or ADA and wayfind­ing, as well as the exte­ri­or park­ing signs.

Inspi­ra­tion was all around and ulti­mate­ly found in the orig­i­nal iron­work design on the bal­conies and gates through­out Rosen­wald Courts. In the true spir­it of archi­tec­tur­al design, Lat­i­tude’s design team devel­oped a series of ini­tial con­cepts that incor­po­rat­ed the build­ing’s sig­na­ture style. These con­cepts, once turned into pro­duc­tion draw­ings, led to a myr­i­ad of pro­to­types to test both mate­ri­als and process­es, as well as to feel the sign in three dimensions.

The Process of Innovation

The col­lab­o­ra­tion of design and man­u­fac­tur­ing in the pro­to­typ­ing phase is key. Work­ing togeth­er, under one roof, both design and man­u­fac­tur­ing is pushed to new heights. Togeth­er they can ideate, test mate­ri­als, and con­struct pro­to­types that push bound­aries but hold true to the archi­tec­tur­al design.

One pro­to­type used sur­face paint­ed acrylic, and in an inno­v­a­tive maneu­ver, the design team col­lab­o­rat­ed with pro­duc­tion to pro­duce raised tex­ture details print­ed with a lay­ered ink technique.

To cre­ate the illu­sion of depth, anoth­er pro­to­type made use of both sides of ¼‑inch clear acrylic. The back­ground col­or and pat­tern are print­ed on the back of the acrylic — the front, a red line and brushed alu­minum text pan­el — and pol­ished edges com­plete the high-end look.

The ​“win­ning” pro­to­type design, was con­struct­ed with two lay­ers of acrylic. The top lay­er, a ¼‑inch mat­te black acrylic, was laz­er cut to imi­tate the look of the orig­i­nal iron­work design. This pan­el, placed over a sol­id red acrylic pan­el, gives the icon­ic pat­tern a dimen­sion that draws on the archi­tec­tur­al fea­tures of the building.

The archi­tec­tur­al design of this his­toric build­ing made it easy to pro­vide cre­ative sign options for Rosen­wald Courts to stay con­sis­tent with its ele­gant look and all of the oth­er design fea­tures through­out the space. Today res­i­dents are able to enjoy apart­ments with mod­ern ameni­ties, a large pro­fes­sion­al­ly land­scaped court­yard, and take pride in the his­to­ry of the leg­endary Rosen­wald Courts.