A photo of mine — the first mini/urban Home Depot, on Halsted in Lincoln Park — made it into the Kansas City Star, of all places. Thanks to Kevin Klinkenberg for making the connection. (It’s a Knight-Ridder “RealCities” site; use username null@carskill.com / pwd carskill to get in.)

Ironically, the author writes: “The Chicago Home Depot has windows rather than blank walls. Its facade is properly scaled to fit the street… The people in that Chicago neighborhood got something different, in part because they had some notion of what they wanted their city to look like. Those desires were written into development rules.” In fact, the neighborhood went up in arms over a previous proposal to rezone the commercial site to build condos; the developer retaliated by plopping (as of right!) a giant gray box which generates even more traffic.

I kind of like how the angles of the buildings are contrasted. It’s hard to get a full-on shot of the store, since it’s so broad and fronts a two-lane road, but in this case it works.