When I discovered that Potbelly Sandwiches was moving into the old Erickson jewelry store on Clark Street in Andersonville, I felt a little nauseated. Not because I care so much about chain stores moving in to “real” Chicago neighborhoods, but mostly because you can pretty reliably count on Potbelly to slap a garish, back-lit plastic sign on just about any storefront it occupies. And the old Erickson jewelry store isn’t any ordinary storefront. 
[Before photo by Mark Susina via Flickr]
There are only a handful of Carrara glass [Vitrolite was the actual trade name that Libbey-Owens, the leading manufacturer of the stuff, used] storefront facades left in Chicago. They were fairly common in the 1920s and 30s, but I think they must have been easy targets for vandals, because not a lot of them survive.
My favorite is the Belle Kay, on Lincoln near Grace,
which until about 10 years ago was the Belle Kay dress shop. Actually it had been shuttered for years, but about 10 years ago a furniture store moved into the space, and the owner just decided to call the place Belle Kay Antiques, because she couldn’t bring herself to cover up the Deco-flavored name etched into the facade. When the antique store vacated, a vintage clothing dealer who calls herself Lulu took over the space, and named her venture Lulu’s at the Belle Kay.
A few blocks further up Lincoln is the Ouetschke real estate/ mortgage company, whose sign makes it look as if it’s been there, unaltered, for 70+ years. [In the many years of passing by, I have never seen anyone inside.]
Although I’d seen its outlets popping up everywhere in Chicago, I didn’t realize Potbelly had expanded to places as far away as Pennsylvania and Texas. Its chain-wide design program seems to be aiming for a turn of the century tavern [without a liquor license]/ general store [without merchandise] vibe — dark wood, glass lamps, tin ceiling. In fairness, I guess that’s what its original location on Lincoln near Webster must have looked like, but in general their stores look cheap, phony and Disney-fied; certainly not what you’d expect to find behind a Deco facade.
I guess it would have been asking too much for Potbelly to adapt its graphic presentation in a way that would have complemented the glass surface as much as the Erickson sign did. But hey, that’s their branding, and it’s a big part of the chain restaurant thing. So I am surprised that it’s nowhere near as bad as I would have expected— you have to be relieved that the logo on the facade is a simple outlined white mass, rather than three different colors against a patterned background, as it could have been. And the Potbelly franchisee here gets extra points for saving the sign and mounting it inside the store.
The Edgewater Community Buzz blog offers a shout out to the way they adapted the clock.
Here’s a before:
And here’s the after:
While I can’t completely share their enthusiasm — the potbelly stove image really pales by comparison to the neon-outlined diamond, and the Potbelly graphic is emblematic of how bad the chain’s design aesthetic is — at least it’s still there.
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