Building file · River North
John Sexton & Co.'s wholesale grocery plant, built 1913–15 with Alfred S. Alschuler's terra-cotta trim, converted in 1999 into 235 loft condominiums with a new tower added on top.
John Sexton & Co. was a Chicago wholesale grocer with national reach, and its six-story plant at Illinois and Orleans did everything under one timber-framed roof — offices, laboratory, warehouse, and production floors that cooked preserves and cured pickles. Alfred S. Alschuler designed it with the terra-cotta ornament he was known for, and returned in 1928 to double it with a matching addition.
In the late 1990s Concord Homes converted the complex, adding five new floors above the 1928 wing — the “Tower” — and a row of townhomes along Kingsbury. The Sexton opened as condominiums in 1999.
The Sexton gives River North its big timber-loft option: brick-and-timber homes in the vintage floors, contemporary construction in the tower above, about 235 homes in all. For buyers the vintage-versus-tower split is the first question to settle — the lower floors carry the wood columns and factory windows, the tower trades them for newer systems and views. Either way you are two blocks off the river with the East Bank Club and the Brown Line close.
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