Overton Hygienic Building

The Overton Hygienic Building stood as one of the most significant and influential places within Chicago's African American community. Born into slavery at the end of the Civil War, The building's owner and namesake, Anthony Overton, became a prominent Black entrepreneur who owned multiple successful enterprises (a few of which operated in the Hygienic Building), including a bank, insurance company, two publications, and one of the largest Black-owned cosmetics business.

Born into slavery on March 21, 1865, in Monroe, Louisiana, Overton later moved to Kansas where he completed a bachelor's degree in 1888 at the University of Kansas and later served as judge of the municipal court in Shawnee County, Kansas. Overton temporarily operated a general store in Oklahoma before moving to Kansas City. In 1898, he founded the Overton Hygienic Company, one of the first companies to specialize in creating cosmetics for African Americans. The Hygienic Company's success pushed Overton to find larger facilities, which led him to move from Kansas City to Chicago in 1911.

Featuring a line of women's makeup and perfume, the Overton Hygienic Company became one of the nation's largest producers of cosmetics designed for African American women. The company distributed its products as far as Egypt, Liberia, and Japan. Building on the success of the Overton Hygienic Company, Overton launched The Half Century Magazine in 1916, marking the start of an expansive publishing enterprise. The Half Century Magazine, a variety magazine targeting a Black audience, included fiction, news reports, homemaking features, and essays on the problems of succeeding in Black business ventures. Years later, Overton established the Chicago Bee in 1926, a Black newspaper that competed with the influential Chicago Defender. Likewise, Overton delved into the struggling Black insurance market by launching the Victory Life Insurance Company, and Overton founded the Douglass National Bank in 1922. Overton's businesses thrived in the growing Black communities of Chicago, a larger community that scholars have labeled the Black Metropolis. With Chicago's Black population growing in the Great Migration, Overton and other entrepreneurs filled a significant need in an era when many retailers merely tolerated Black customers by providing equal service. Perhaps most importantly, Overton and others filled a need for home and business loans in an era when most banks were white-owned and rarely approved loans to Black residents. 

Overton first operated the company (and all his enterprises) in a former apartment building in Chicago before needing to find a larger facility again in the early 1920s. In 1922, Overton announced plans to erect the Overton Hygienic Building, a projected six-story structure (only four stories could be built due to financial reasons) that would house his various business enterprises and provide modem office space for rental to professionals, the first office spaces made available to Black professionals, notably lawyers, doctors, and architects. Indeed, Walter T. Bailey, Illinis' first licensed African-American architect, had his first Chicago office on the second floor. The Hygienic Building acted as a prime business address within Chicago's Black Metropolis, a commercial district established on the city's south side in response to the restrictions and exploitation of Black residents experienced in the rest of the city.

Overall, Overton founded a diverse set of enterprises that included the Overton Hygienic Company, one of the nation's largest producers of African American cosmetics; the Victory Life Insurance Company; the Chicago Bee, a prominent Black newspaper; The Half Century Magazine, a Black-oriented monthly magazine; and the Douglass National Bank, the first nationally-chartered Black bank. Overton's bank and life insurance company occupied the lowest floor, the second floor housed the rental offices, and Overton's remaining businesses occupied the third and fourth floors.

The Overton interests grew steadily during the 1920s. As a result, Overton was given two awards for his advancement of African American business, the Springarn Medal in 1927 and the Harmon Business Award in 1928. Initially, Overton's carefully managed business ventures weathered the Great Depression reasonably well, but his bank and insurance company eventually failed. Although he maintained control of the Overton Hygienic Company and the Chicago Bee, the financial losses tied to the bank and insurance failures forced Overton to vacate the Overton Hygienic Building and move one block south into the smaller Chicago Bee Building.

"Overton Hygienic Building." African American Heritage Sites. Accessed March 7, 2023. https://africanamericanheritagesites.stqry.app/en/story/55607.

Samuelson, Timothy. "Nomination Form: Overton Hygienic/Douglass National Bank Building." National Register of Historic Places. archives.gov. 1985. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/28890968. 

--- --- ---. "Nomination Form; Black Metropolis Thematic Nomination." National Register of Historic Places. nps.gov. 1985. https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/64000173_text.