The musical legacy is so rich, that the city of Chicago has declared the building an historical landmark. The area where it is located is a couple miles south of Chicago’s downtown area and is conveniently referred to as ‘south loop.’
The 12th street south on Michigan avenue to the 24th street south on Michigan avenue was once called ‘Records Row.’ It is where most, if not all of the major record companies offices was located in Chicago. In addition there were a slew of other independent subsidiary record labels there, like Brunswick Records and Vee-jay Records that had companies there.
To try to put it in perspective, the atmosphere that surrounded this area, would be crazy, maybe a modern day Atlanta could compare, but I doubt it. Consider that early Beetles records came from Vee-jay records, Jackie Wilson recorded at Brunswick along with the Chi-Lites, and everybody from Louis Armstrong, Eric Clapton and The Rolling Stone recorded at Chess Records.
The latter recorded a song at Chess Records and named it 2120 after the address. The buildings that once occupied the south loop area were big and spacious because they were home to car dealerships, which in turn used the space to drive the cars in and out. In fact before the records companies moved in, south Michigan Avenue was called ‘Motors Row’ due to all the car dealerships and repair shops that were there.
