Mystery Illustration 43

Interestingly enough, 3601 Michigan Avenue is listed on Zillow: 3601 S Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL is a single family home that contains 9,402 sq ft and was built in 1885. It contains 7 bathrooms. This home last sold for $60,000 in September 1997.

But get this current price estimate: The Zestimate for this house is $2,384,184.

And, I suspect that this in 1928 was a mail-order business run from a private home.

Hey, JohnD1, what inspired you investigate the address given in the advert? It would not occur to me to do the same - I usually assume that the address given is a P.O. box or a legitimate business address. To find a "private" residence at the address surprised me.

An early attempt at cryogenic preservation? He looks to be dressed for a funeral.

To KDP: No reason for looking up the address, except that I live in the Chicago area, and happened to recognize that that area was more or less residential.

Sidebar: That area is now the Bronzeville restoration area. If you haven't looked at the streetview in Google, do so. The area is mostly empty lots. So, it is even more amazing that that particular building survived.

Additional comment: scroll down that issue and look more closely at the addresses of the advertisers. You will start to see the same address for various types of mail-order studies. For many of them, I suspect that they are the 1928 versions of some of the scammier for-profit educational instutions today.

Some of the more reputable places have survived until today.