1900 W Addison // Lorenzo Yario's Website

Long ago, I remember being driven around Chicago's North Center neighborhood, or maybe it was Roscoe Village. It was Addison avenue, that's what's important and we saw the building. I remember being told in the car one thing: That building is haunted.
Well, was it? I forgot that building existed or really what it was for a very long time, until I was on the brown line and decided to get off at Addison again... Why was I out there? I'm not actually sure, there's not much off that station besides houses, and some Thai place that I do want to try (they better not renovate--that place is peak 2009). Similar story with the Cork Lounge.
But back to getting off at Addison, that building was staring me straight in the face again.

A surface-level look.

A night exterior shot of 1900 W Addison, taken from the side closest to the addison brown line. — The apartment in all its glory.

(A little side note I had both Gemini and ChatGPT try and generate images of this place, but even scarier, but they basically generated the apartment with no changes)
Now, walking towards the place at night, my first small irk was that the businesses on the first floor all were not places you would ever go to: A chiropractic place and an antique store called hip cat that feels like it's never open.
Now these places are probably pretty cool, and I might need the former eventually, and do want to visit the latter when I can (maybe they know something about this!), but it only played straight into my wonders about the building.
Why my thought that the building's haunted? I'm a big haunted house person, least much anymore, but the story comes from a family friend who lived there in the 80s or 90s and heard lots of weird things while there while living there, causing her to move out.
Not sure of much else with that story, as they've lost touch, but I do want to know more about the building.

More??? A Haunted House???

An interior picture of the place, showing the living, dining, and kitchen. Very 1970s. — The inside, at least of this unit is a 1970s time capsule, if anyone renovates (or renovated it) the ghosts are DEFINITELY going after them.

A Google search shows absolutely nothing else relating to any hauntings for this building, but a general search shows an off-market Zillow listing of the place.^[1] With that listing, we get a few photos of the interior of one of the apartment. What a nice looking spot, minus the ghosts that is.
Besides that initial search, nothing else about the place is shown, we do know that the complex was built in 1923 however. So it's time to go deeper: Old newspaper archives. And once again, pretty empty handed, except for one advertisement via the Chicago Examiner from 1916 Bartlett Bonds, showing this address had a drug store at one point.
But since this ad was before 1923, that means this place predated the current structure.^[2]
This means findings are pretty empty-handed, right? Well, maybe, but then again maybe the mystery of the building, why it looks the way it does, and other things contributes to its hauntedness. If everything was known about the building, then maybe it would lose its mistique.
Perhaps, just imagining makes more sense, and that not knowing means knowing more... Stay haunted, and happy halloween!