When demand exceeds supply in the housing market, as it did for quite a while after the Second World War, apartment buildings can be plain brick boxes. It is enough to say, “Here is a place to live, and if you pinch your pennies you can probably afford it.” But in the 1930s, it was necessary to give people a good reason to pick your building over any of the other places people could live. Thus apartment buildings tended to sell a fantasy: live here and you will be the kind of aristocrat you always knew you deserved to be.
Bellevue Gables peddles that fantasy and does a good job of it. Especially on the Sprague Avenue side, the stone terraces and lush landscaping make the approach to the entrances feel like walking into one of the Stately Homes of England.
Rudolph Berg, Jr., was the owner, the builder, and the architect. He had suffered much in the Depression: when old Pa Pitt went looking for his name in the papers in the 1930s, he had to plow through pages and pages of sheriff’s sales before he came across any construction listings. But by 1939, when Bellevue Gables opened, he seems to have recovered and was ready to get back into the apartment-development business on a grand scale.
The complex is two buildings, one along Sprague Avenue and one along Hawley Avenue.
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