Leo John Heenan, a Pontiac architect, designed the Strand and it opened in 1921. Twenty-eight years later C. Howard Crane, one of the great theater architects, was brought in for a major renovation. The building wasn’t a failure and Heenan’s work wasn’t wrong. It had simply been in use for nearly three decades, and things in use need revising.
Clothes are treated differently, and shouldn’t be
A suit that needs altering is widely felt to have failed at something, when the truth is that any garment worn over years will need adjusting, and adjusting it is ordinary maintenance rather than a correction of a mistake.
What ordinary maintenance covers
A waist that has moved in either direction, sleeves that need resetting, a jacket brought closer through the sides, a length recut for different shoes. All routine, all reversible in most cases, and all done in the building by Roman, master tailor at Lincoln Tailor, on site in our store.
The one thing that isn’t maintenance
A shoulder seam that has ended up out on the arm, which no revision reaches. Everything short of that is Crane coming back in 1949.
More on alterations, or plan your visit to our Oak Park showroom.
