Overview
Eighteen records is the whole set this site covers, and the number is deliberate. It is not every document a Chicago building can generate; it is the list of records that exist as named objects a reader can actually find — a row in a published City dataset, a certificate the Department issues, a citation with a docket behind it, a list the City publishes twice a year. If a record cannot be pointed at, it is not here, because a record you cannot locate is one you cannot check.
How the directory is ordered
After the record’s name a row carries two further columns. The first is what the record proves, stated as one of three verdicts rather than as a score. Proves the work was inspected means a person attended the building and the record says so. Proves it was permitted, not inspected means the paperwork exists and nobody necessarily looked. Proves less than it appears to means the record is commonly read as establishing something it does not establish at all, and the page's job is to say precisely what the gap is.
The second is what the record is evidence of, which is this site's own organizing idea. Some records exist because permission was granted. Some exist because somebody physically attended. Some exist only because something was found wrong. Those three origins decide a record's weight far more reliably than its title does, and sorted that way the list reads as an argument rather than as an index.
Two categories, created by two different acts
Eight of the eighteen are made when work is approved and ten are made when somebody looked, and the split matters because the two halves are produced by different parts of the Department under different duties. An approval is a decision taken in advance on the basis of a submission. An inspection is a person in a building forming a judgment about what is there. The published permit data carries no inspection outcome in any field, and the City publishes no standalone buildings inspections dataset at all, so the two halves do not meet in the public record even when they met in reality.
That is also why two records that sound alike are not interchangeable. A permit and a closed-out permit are different states of the same file. A plan review and a self-certified submission produce the same kind of permit record and represent opposite answers to the question of who read the drawings. A violation and a hearing disposition describe the same dispute at two stages, and only the second one is adjudicated.
What is not on the list, and why
Several things a reader will meet are covered inside a record page rather than given one. Trade licenses and the registration of a self-certifying professional are conditions on who may file rather than records about a building. Contractor bonds and insurance filings belong to the applicant, not to the address. A building's property-tax or title history is a county record, not a Department of Buildings one, and belongs to a different system. Each of those is described where it bears on a record that is on the list, which is where a reader searching for it will find it in context.
How to read a profile
Every one of the eighteen pages opens with the verdict and the grouping, then answers the same four questions in the same order: what the record is, who creates it and under what duty, what it establishes about the building, and what it is routinely read as establishing but does not. The pages are written for somebody looking at a specific address with a specific question, so the limit on the record comes before the background rather than after it.
Each one is also meant to be read next to the guides. The record pages describe the documents; the guides describe the situations — what a permit history shows when you read the whole column, what a violation record's status fields actually mean, what the published datasets leave out, and what to make of a building whose record and whose condition do not agree. A reader who needs to know what a certificate of occupancy is should stay in the record pages. A reader trying to interpret a whole file will get further in the guides.
What this page is not
Nothing here is advice about a building, a purchase or a City process. This site performs no inspections, pulls no records for anyone and refers nobody; it has not seen the address you are looking at, the file behind it or the condition of the building, and no page on it can tell you whether a particular record is a problem in your circumstances. What it can do is make sure that when you read a record, you know who made it, what duty they were under, and what it does not say.
| Record | What it proves | What it is evidence of |
|---|---|---|
| The building permit | Proves it was permitted, not inspected | Permission was granted |
| Standard Plan Review | Proves it was permitted, not inspected | Permission was granted |
| The self-certified permit | Proves less than it appears to | Permission was granted |
| The Easy Permit | Proves less than it appears to | Permission was granted |
| Developer Services review | Proves it was permitted, not inspected | Permission was granted |
| The zoning certificate | Proves it was permitted, not inspected | Permission was granted |
| The porch permit | Proves the work was inspected | Permission was granted |
| The demolition permit | Proves it was permitted, not inspected | Permission was granted |
| The certificate of occupancy | Proves the work was inspected | Somebody attended |
| The permit inspection | Proves the work was inspected | Somebody attended |
| The final inspection | Proves the work was inspected | Somebody attended |
| The annual inspection certificate | Proves the work was inspected | Somebody attended |
| The elevator inspection | Proves the work was inspected | Somebody attended |
| The boiler inspection | Proves the work was inspected | Somebody attended |
| The life-safety inspection | Proves the work was inspected | Somebody attended |
| The building violation | Proves it was permitted, not inspected | Something was found wrong |
| The administrative hearing record | Proves it was permitted, not inspected | Something was found wrong |
| The scofflaw list | Proves less than it appears to | Something was found wrong |