As one who currently lives and works in Uptown, I'd like to say that lots of these areas look familiar today, that we were wise to stay out of the neighborhood as much as possible 40 years ago, that all of us have many stories we could tell about Uptown.
I was on the development team that visited this building to decide whether to recommend accepting this gift. I remember Phll Townley, Fred Buss and I and I'm no sure who else came to look at it and decided it would be a usable gift. I remember that the 100 of us who didn't have small school children moved in from the alley during a night, bringing our personal belongings and our mattresses only - We intended to sleep on the top of desks in the various rooms on all the floors in the building and use filing cabinets for dressers..
I remember that the restaurant in our building at the corner of Lawrence and Sheridan was closed and we used that as our kitchen and dining room. I remember there were only two showers in the building one on 4 and one on 8 so we named one "men" and one "women" and waited in line to shower. There was and still is a shower in the basement which some people used.
I better stop this but I think it would be great for several of us to look at this man's book and bring back our memories of living here in the 70s. We always felt lucky to have a parking lot.
Marge Philbrook