What is the saying, “I’ve gone down a rabbit hole”? That happened to me this week when I was searching for a building in the digitized Architectural Forum archives and found myself spending far too much time looking through random issues. Originally titled The Brickbuilder, the magazine covered architecture and the home-building industry from 1892 until 1974. It is a great resource for learning about historic structures, mainly residential designs. But the most fascinating part for me is the advertisements. So many of them feature Chicagoland buildings. Here are just a handful of examples from various issues published between the 1930s through the 1960s while I was deep down in my rabbit hole. If you’ve subscribed to my substack, then you’re probably an architecture geek. Whether it’s the acoustical products of Celotex or suburban Harvey’s Brasco Store Fronts, I know you’ll enjoy these ads as much as I do.