Logan Square, in warm wood and slow brass.
Sawyer Avenue is a pair of four-story buildings at 2414 and 2424 N Sawyer — one block east of the boulevard, one block west of the square. We drew them together as a single project with a shared vocabulary: fluted walnut, rift-sawn white oak floors, full-slab quartz, and brass warmed so it never reads as gold.
The two buildings run a quiet counterpoint. The south building is the brighter of the pair — paler millwork, globe pendants, quartz that catches the light. The north building is its warmer sibling, weighted in walnut, with black hardware and a bronzed ceremony at the front door. Between them: a shared alley, shared parking, and a shared conviction that an urban building is first a home and second a façade.
Every residence was delivered with a private outdoor area. Penthouses step up to full rooftops with unobstructed views across Logan Square to the downtown skyline.
Sawyer runs the quieter north-south line between the boulevard and the square — brick two-flats and greystones on modest lots, a corner grocer, a school two blocks up. The rhythm is low, consistent, and forgiving of newer neighbors if they are willing to match its scale.
We chose to build two buildings on adjacent lots rather than one deeper one. It keeps the street wall reading at the same cadence as its neighbors, and it gave every residence a proper corner exposure — light on at least two sides, always.
We wanted the block to keep its breath — two buildings, not one, standing lightly next to the brick that was already there.
Both buildings share a palette of charcoal-stained fiber-cement siding, deep bronze aluminum windows, and a tall third-floor parapet that hides the rooftop massing from the street. Stand across from them and they read as a pair — related, unmistakably siblings, but with distinct personalities.
The south building is lighter. Pale walnut slats in the living rooms, warm-white cabinetry, brass hardware, cream-quartz islands. The north building is warmer and moodier — denser walnut, darker floors, matte-black hardware, a black front door with brass numerals. Every residence regardless of building gets the same kitchen, the same bath, the same floors. It is the same home, in two tempers.
Each residence was planned on a long, uninterrupted axis — front door to rear balcony — but the axis itself is cut differently in every unit. Some open the kitchen and living room into one great room; others keep the dining room closed; the penthouses lift the axis vertically into a private rooftop. The constant is the walnut slat wall; the variable is almost everything else.
Bedrooms are tucked off a private corridor behind the kitchen, so the public rooms stay public and the primary suite stays genuinely quiet. Penthouse residences step up one more floor to a rooftop of their own — an open platform with a grill kitchen and an unobstructed view of the downtown skyline.
A walk through, room by room.
Each residence is drawn for a day's use. Below, a tour of the rooms — drag or use the arrows to see more angles of each space.
A short material list, used end to end.
Three floor plates, nine residences.
Between the boulevard and the square.
The two buildings sit on adjacent lots of North Sawyer Avenue — a block east of the Logan Square boulevard system and a short walk to the Blue Line, the farmer's market, and the restaurants that line the square itself.
Sawyer is the quieter of the two north-south streets in this stretch. A working block — two-flats, a school, a corner grocer — that accepted two new buildings without losing any of itself.