I looked at the pictures and wondered how anyone could fail to see that they were once commercial buildings. In fact, I wonder if at least a goodly number weren't corner shops so much as they were dram shops or corner bars. That's the case in Chicago, where the corner shops still survive, as do many, many of the bars.

In fact the term "corner bar," or "corner tap," while they get used elsewhere, are used almost exclusively to mean "neighborhood bar," even if the bar's in the center of a block and not on a corner.

There aren't as many of either as there once were, or so I'm told. But since Chicago is still a true city of neighborhoods, you're going to see them dotting the landscape - and when someone decides to turn one into a residence or an office, not much is done to disguise what the building once housed.