The Optimo Hat Company is located in a former firehouse in Chicago. Photo © Tom Rossiter
Photo © Tom Rossiter
Photo © Tom Rossiter
Chicago’s Beverly neighborhood lies just 11 miles southwest of the SOM-designed Willis Tower, which was the world’s tallest building for the last quarter of the twentieth century. But the Chicago-born architecture firm hadn’t completed a commission anywhere nearby until it recently repurposed an old fire house as a bespoke boutique hat maker’s factory for Optimo Hat Company.