July 2018 Month-in-Review Newsletter
|
|
THREATENED: From Parkway Boulevard to Interstate Highway; Massive Changes Considered for North Lake Shore Drive
|
|
Proposed Chicago Avenue Interchange, Rendering Credit: North Lake Shore Drive Project
|
|
Proposed North Lake Shore Drive Road Configuration, Rendering Credit: North Lake Shore Drive Project
|
|
Since first established over 80 years ago as a parkway boulevard along Chicago’s lakefront, planners have struggled to strike a balance between increasing traffic volumes and preserving the character and feel of this legendary, scenic roadway. While Lake Shore Drive has been updated and improved throughout the decades, the City of Chicago has always voiced an interest in remaining sensitive to the character of the historic boulevard parkway along the route.
The current proposal from the Chicago Department of Transportation represents a radical departure from the past and would completely overhaul North Lake Shore Drive from Navy Pier to its northern terminus at Hollywood Avenue. The estimated $2 billion to $3 billion overhaul is being referred to as “Redefine the Drive”. While still in the early planning phases, one primary objective would be to bring North Lake Shore Drive up to current highway grade standards. According to the design team, another stated objective is to increase traffic flow at peak rush hours, between 7:30 and 8:30 am on weekdays. To help pay for the cost, CDOT is considering adding possible “tollway” features to Lake Shore Drive.
Instead of calming traffic and reducing traffic speeds to prevent accidents, the focus is on increasing traffic speeds and increasing traffic volumes. Increasing travel speeds will cause greater risk of serious accidents, require massive investment to rebuild the roadbed to meet highway speed standards, and further exacerbate the real cause of traffic delays; the bottlenecks caused by the traffic signals just past the off-ramps and along the Grant Park section of the Lake Shore Drive.
The proposed work includes the potential to widen Lake Shore Drive from its current four lanes in each direction to five in each direction. For comparison sake, the Eisenhower Expressway is primarily three or four lanes in each direction with the CTA running in the median.
To accommodate this significant widening, other proposed "improvements" include the demolition of all the historic Art Deco bridges to be replaced with new, interstate-grade highway standard bridges and a trenched roadway. Like the Eisenhower Expressway, proposed plans include sinking the Drive below surface grade at each interchange and removing all the elevated bridges that block views towards the lake.
In order to straighten out the Oak Street curve near historic Oak Street Beach and increase traffic speeds, the Oak Street Beach would be “relocated” and sections of the Drive sunken into lengthy subterranean tunnels. New traffic signals at on-ramps and dedicated bus only lanes will also likely be added. An above-grade pedestrian bridge is proposed to span diagonally from Oak and Michigan Avenues for nearly a city block to Oak Street Beach.
Other more radical ideas being considered include relocating the Drive to the west side of the Lincoln Park Lagoon and create a “real Lake Michigan dune landscape, with camping”, reconfiguring the Chicago Avenue interchange to eliminate the traffic signal, and eliminating the Wilson Street interchange to reduce interference with the Lakefront Trail. Other ideas include converting Clarendon Park into a high-density, mixed-use development to help “provide revenue” for the proposed improvements and create a new multi-story parking structure at Montrose Beach to serve new transit riders.
Preservation Chicago is very concerned that the plans for the reconstruction of North Lake Shore Drive appear to be "very heavy-handed" and will adversely and negatively impact the historic winding, tree-lined nature of both the park greenspace and lakefront, extending from Navy Pier to Hollywood Avenue. Lake Shore Drive, which is part of the Chicago Boulevard System, will look and feel less like a parkway boulevard when plans are developed and much more like an interstate highway, as sections of Lake Shore Drive will inevitably be forced to comply with current highway grade standards. If these changes are made, perhaps it will come to be thought of as the Lake Shore Highway or Lake Shore Tollway.
It seems that each time Lake Shore Drive is rethought, it takes on an increasingly Interstate-quality, rather than a park-like boulevard effect. This seems to occur whenever sections of Lake Shore Drive are considered for “improvement”. For example, the area around the old “S Curve” near Navy Pier, where traffic lanes were expanded, portions of the drive now have confusing, dark, visually unpleasant, series of upper and lower ramps. The near Another example is near McCormick Place, where the soaring flyovers ramps and viaduct-like structures have been totally rebuilt, and they look much like the Interstate highway ramps that were implemented in the 1960s, modifying the previous pastoral Lake Shore Drive.
That experience is completely different from the pleasant tree-lined boulevard which one experiences when driving past Grant Park or Lincoln Park and along one of Chicago’s most beautiful boulevards. The “improvements” near Navy Pier in the past have resulted in a highway style tangle that is discouraging to pedestrians, bike riders and even cars, trying to both enter and exit Lake Shore Drive from below.
On a variety of metrics, most of these “heavy-handed solutions” have proved unsuccessful and many "great improvements” have resulted in expensive ongoing maintenance. Now we are forced to spend millions of dollars to correct the bike paths that were ignored during the reconfiguration 25 years ago. That plan “pitted" cars, pedestrians and bike riders in the same path for decades. And even this project is only partially complete and is stalled at this time. This project was so poorly designed that the iconic Lake Shore Drive Art-Moderne Bridge towers are now being considered for demolition to allow the bike path to continue southward across the Chicago River.
If the currently proposed North Lake Shore Drive “improvement” studies are accepted, it will likely result in the loss of acres of parkland in Lincoln Park, the cutting of hundreds of trees, including many bordering the Drive with a mature tree canopy to make space for extra lane expansions and straightening. Additional landfill parkland is proposed to compensate for the loss, but there is a real concern that this wildly costly new parkland will never be built.
The North Lake Shore Drive “Improvement” proposals will also require the destruction of the thirty years ago tree-lined and flower-planted median which have now matured nicely, and are a source of pride for many Chicagoans. These mature trees and planting will all be cut down completely and destroyed.
The North Lake Shore Drive “improvement” proposal calls for all of the historic Art Deco bridges and spans at North Avenue, Fullerton, Belmont, Montrose and continuing up Lake Shore Drive to be completely destroyed. We agree that due to profound neglect and consistent failure to provide routine maintenance, many of these historic bridges are suffering from decades of deferred maintained. However, these bridges and their unique historic design features can and should be repaired and restored with appropriate ornament, rails and light standards, much like the repairs to the historic bridge at 47th and South Lake Shore Drive. The cost for maintenance is a fraction of the cost for new construction.
Many of the plans to date include removing these bridges and sinking Lake Shore Drive into a deep trench or tunnel, significantly below lake levels at various locations between Navy Pier and Foster. To avoid flooding, these new sub-surface roadways will be controlled by pumps, which will remove the water following both rainstorms and flooding. However, we all know that systems break down and these recessed roadways will also be susceptible to flooding over time. After all, it’s usually flooding at the Oak Street and Michigan Avenue tunnel to the Outer Drive that hampers traffic and shuts down after heavy rains and high waves from Lake Michigan. In a time of rising sea and lake levels, sinking an essential arterial roadway into a trench below the adjacent lake level is highly risky. The current occasional heavy storms that cause flooding on Lake Shore Drive are inconvenient and scary, but if the roadway were to be sunken into a trench below grade, flash floods caused by these storms could prove catastrophic.
These proposed plans would add more pavement, more lanes for cars, more traffic, and remove many of the wonderful sight-lines, vistas, lookouts, hills, bridges, special features, some old growth trees and the enjoyment, one currently experiences on North Lake Shore Drive. It will turn this very special street and boulevard into another version of the Eisenhower Expressway and take away many of the beautiful aspects of experiencing the park and Lakefront shoreline in a vehicle, which is important to both residents and visitors alike.
Why must we rethink a pastoral Lakefront boulevard which is currently an amazing place to enjoy and experience? Let’s reconstruct what we have as required, repair the historic bridges, and encourage a calming of traffic, rather than add dedicated bus lanes, extra on-off-lanes and introduce highway standards to Lake Shore Drive. To add more capacity has often shown to further add additional cars and traffic, often leading to more delays, and greater bottlenecks at just past the off-ramps. Let’s instead try to rebuild the features which are in need of repair and protect one of Chicago’s most picturesque boulevards.
Prioritizing , or even considering the winding roadways, hills, and historic landscapes and features that make Lake Shore Drive one of the Nation’s most beautiful roadways would benefit the planning. Lake Shore Drive is worth preserving. Please let our elected officials and the associated agencies know that we must preserve the boulevard-like features of North Lake Shore Drive, as it really does appear to be in great danger.
Interesting, the same design teams that are threatening to expand South Lake Shore Drive south of 57th Street to accommodate the closing of Cornell Drive in historic Olmsted-designed park space for the proposed Obama Presidential Center. Many of these ideas are encouraged to meet standards for possible state and federal highway funding, instead of focusing in how to best protect and restore this amazing lakefront drive.
Additional Reading
|
|
WIN: West Side YMCA/YWCA Complex at Ashland and Monroe to be Adaptively Reused
|
|
West Side YMCA/YWCA complex, 1513-1539 W. Monroe Street, Rendering Credit: Cedar Street Companies
|
|
West Side YMCA/YWCA complex, 1513-1539 W. Monroe Street, Photo Credit: City of Chicago
|
|
West Side YMCA/YWCA complex fronting Ashland Avenue, Historic Photo Credit: City of Chicago
|
|
The Chicago Plan Commission approved the adaptive reuse of the former West Side YMCA/YWCA and Salvation Army complex at Monroe and Ashland by Cedar Street Companies on June 21, 2018. The $30 million transit-oriented plan will include ground floor retail, 260 residential units including 46 on-site affordable units. Cedar Street Companies has started the process to designate the building complex as a Chicago Landmark.
“The West Side YMCA/YWCA complex is a handsome and intact grouping of Classical Revival and Georgian Revival buildings. Stretching over two city blocks, the West Side YMCA/YWCA buildings form a cohesive complex. The complex served as a regional headquarters for the Chicago YMCA and an important center for social, educational, and recreational activities on the Near West Side neighborhood for nearly seventy years.”
“During the first half of the twentieth century, the YMCA and YWCA developed a comprehensive roster of programs and services at its West Side complex that helped young men and women, many of whom were recent immigrants, to assimilate, learn English, find jobs, and maintain a moral compass while living in the city. With dormitories for men and women, the West Side YMCA/YWCA also offered clean and safe lodging for hundreds of young people. During World War I and World War II, “the Y” was also an importance center of services and activity for soldiers and returning veterans.
“Architecturally, the buildings in the West Side YMCA/YWCA complex reflect a range of classical influences, with each building designed with slightly different but compatible ornament and detailing. The organization took seriously their responsibility to build facilities that were not only functional but also visually pleasing and an asset to their neighborhoods. The various architects that designed the different phases of the West Side YMCA/YWCA complex were all well respected Chicago firms that designed other “Y” facilities in Chicago and throughout the country.”
‘The complex is located at the corner of Monroe Street and Ashland Avenue on Chicago’s Near West Side. The buildings, which range in height from three and a half to six stories, are all faced with red brick and have limestone and/or terra cotta trim, offering a fairly uniform appearance from the street.” (Preliminary Landmarks Report, City of Chicago, June 7, 2018)
1513-15 W. Monroe was designed by architect Robert C. Berlin in 1907. The façade is trimmed with brick-quoins at the corners, and has a limestone belt courses. 1521 – 1529 W. Monroe was designed by architect Robert C. Berlin in 1912. This building combines Classical Revival features with stone detailing characteristic of the Prairie Style. Duncan Hall at 1531 – 1539 W. Monroe was designed by architect Perkins, Chatten & Hammond in 1928 with Georgian Revival-style building elements. (Preliminary Landmarks Report, City of Chicago, June 7, 2018)
Preservation Chicago provided public comments in support of the reinvestment and reuse plans proposed by Cedar Street Companies and fully supports the possible Chicago Landmark Designation of this important series of historic buildings.
Preservation Chicago wishes to applaud Cedar Street Companies for their ongoing focus on the renovation of Chicago historic residential buildings, and the adaptive reuse of historic Chicago buildings such as the Bush Temple of Music on Chicago Avenue and former Agudas Achim North Shore Synagogue on North Kenmore Avenue in Uptown. (Chicago 7 2015)
Additional Reading
|
|
LIKELY LOSS: “Spotlight on Demolition”
Nearly 2,000 Signatures to Oppose Demolition of 1441 W. Carmen Avenue!
|
|
Save 1441 W. Carmen from Demolition Change.org Petition
|
|
1441 W. Carmen Avenue, Photo Credit: Leyla Royale
|
|
“It’s an old, common cry in a city where demolition and development are often spoken in the same breath, and where trying to save historic homes from the wrecking ball can feel as futile as trying to stop the snow. My Twitter feed teems with beautiful houses doomed to vanish in the time it takes to say ‘bulldozed’. Bungalows, two-flats, three-flats, greystones, workers’ cottages. The photos, posted by people who lament the death of Chicago’s tangible past, flit through my social media feed like a parade of the condemned en route to the guillotine”, mused Mary Schmich in her Chicago Tribune column on July 12, 2018
In the face of overwhelming odds, Leyla Royale took action when she learned about the pending demolition of a beautiful 1890’s, three-story, orange-brick Victorian Queen Anne, with a high-pointed gable, bay window, front porch with slender columns. “The yard is lush, shady and, most important for a developer, really big.” (Schmich, Chicago Tribune, 6/12/18)
“[I] loved walking by the house, thinking about all the people who had passed through it, all the history it contained. Tearing it down seemed crazy." said Royale. (Schmich, Chicago Tribune, 6/12/18)
Apparently, she was not alone, as within a day or so of her starting the petition, and with the support of Preservation Chicago’s Rapid Response advocacy, the petition received over 1,200 signatures! Now the number of signatures has grown to nearly 2,000. Royale and the Winona Foster Carmen Winnemac (WFCW) Block Club presented the petition to 47th Ward Alderman Ameya Pawar.
“I think a lot of people in neighborhoods are tired of buildings like this being torn down for cookie-cutter condos and cookie-cutter million-dollar single-family homes,” Royale said.
“Now we’re really in a crisis where we’re seeing fine quality buildings being demolished across the city,” said Ward Miller, executive director of Preservation Chicago. The massive new constructions change the light, the air, the mood of neighborhoods; steal our visible connection to the past. Stopping the trend may be impossible, but it could be slowed.” (Schmich, Chicago Tribune, 6/12/18)
“Martin Tangora, a longtime Chicago preservationist, suggests extending the demolition holds on orange-rated buildings from 90 days to 180. Strengthen the public notice process to make sure neighbors hear of the notice. Expand the number of buildings covered by the demolition delays.” (Schmich, Chicago Tribune, 6/12/18)
The historic Queen Anne home at 1441 Carmen is under threat of demolition! (From the Save 1441 Carmen Avenue Petition)
One of the oldest (if not the oldest) properties on the block, this Victorian gem is the last of its kind on Carmen Avenue in Andersonville. It was built at the turn of the century on a double lot and offers valuable green space to the neighborhood. It’s a rare example of a building type which was more common in the area before the rapid development of Uptown/Andersonville in the 1910s and 1920s.To lose this structure would be to lose part of the beauty of the neighborhood.
Most homes in the Andersonville area just west of Broadway and east of Clark are courtyard buildings, workers cottages, and two and three flats. 1441 Carmen is the only Victorian Queen Anne style house in the neighborhood. With the rise of popularity in Andersonville and Uptown, developers are coming in to purchase these homes, tear them down, and put up condo buildings possible in the same lot space, often building nearly from lot line to lot line. This is slowly but surely destroying the architecture of the neighborhood and what makes Andersonville so unique in Chicago.
This house was rated Orange by the City of Chicago, meaning that it’s a building containing potentially significant architectural and historic value or interest, and is of significance to the local community. Other Chicago buildings with the Orange designation include the Palmer House Hotel, Orchestra Hall/Symphony Center, Chicago Athletic Club, and more. Currently, research is underway to learn more about the exact year of construction, architect, and former residents of the home.
Please sign this petition to let your voice be heard that you are against the demolition of 1441 Carmen. Time has nearly run out on this historic house — it’s important that we do all we can to save it for future generations in the neighborhood. This petition will be presented to the Winona Foster Carmen Winnemac (WFCW) Block Club, said to be of the oldest block clubs in the city of Chicago, and handed to 47th Ward Alderman Ameya Pawar’s office.
Additional Reading
|
|
THREATENED: Urgent Action Needed to Protect 70 Historic Buildings Near Lincoln Yards Development
|
|
Horween Leather Company Building, originally Loescher Leather Tannery, 2015 N. Elston Avenue, Photo Credit Ward Miller
|
|
SiPi Metals Company Building, formerly the Schoenhofen Brewery Building, Wabansia and Elston Avenues, Photo Credit Google Street View
Purchased by Sterling Bay in 2017
|
|
1701 N. Elston Avenue at Wabansia, Photo Credit Google Street View
|
|
1529 W. Armitage Street at Mendell Street, Photo Credit Ward Miller
|
|
1401 Wabansia Demolition (1666 W. Ada) Photo Credit: Nate Lielasus
Purchased by Sterling Bay on February 21, 2018 and Demolished April 4, 2018
|
|
“There was an electric atmosphere among the standing-room-only crowd of 500 people at Wicker Park’s Near North Montessori School Wednesday night. The school hosted the first community meeting for Sterling Bay’s planned $5 billion redevelopment of Lincoln Yards, 70 acres it controls along the North Branch Industrial Corridor.”
“Sterling Bay Managing Principal Andy Gloor and Director of Development Services Erin Lavin Carbonargi framed their presentation in personal terms. Gloor, a 25-year Lincoln Park resident, said he understands the concerns residents have about how Lincoln Yards will impact quality-of-life issues like traffic congestion, population density and having the infrastructure in place to support the influx of new residents, workers and tourists Lincoln Yards will eventually attract.” (Sudo, Bisnow Chicago, 7/19/18)
Lincoln Yards, a project aimed at redeveloping 70 acres of prime riverfront real estate, will transform both banks of the Chicago River’s North Branch between Lincoln Park and Bucktown. Developed by Sterling Bay and master planned by architect Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the mega-project is slated for industrial land formerly occupied by Finkl Steel, General Iron, Lakin Recycling, and the city’s Fleet and Facility Management (2FM) complex. Lincoln Yards will include new offices, hotel rooms, residential units, park space, and an entertainment district anchored by a 20,000-seat stadium. The development will rehab the nearby Metra station, extend the 606 Trail/Bloomingdale Trail eastward over the River, and may include a light rail connection to downtown. (Curbed Chicago, StoryStream, 5/25/18)
“Gloor said Lincoln Yards presents a unique opportunity to redevelop a former industrial site and activate the North Branch riverfront. He said the site was largely preserved by the city's planned manufacturing district zoning restrictions, and much of the site was a steel mill for a century. "Very rarely do we get a blank slate like this," Gloor said.
“While much of the former steel mills that make up Lincoln Yards have been razed, Preservation Chicago Executive Director Ward Miller said he obtained a list of 70 architecturally significant buildings along the North Branch Industrial Corridor that could be threatened by new development.” (Sudo, Bisnow Chicago, 7/19/18)
As massive changes are underway within this former industrial corridor, it’s essential that the City of Chicago quickly move to protect these 70 architecturally significant buildings along the North Branch Industrial Corridor. They need to be preserved in order to maintain a connection to the corridor’s history, to insure “quality of life issues”, and to promote healthy communities. Preservation Chicago is actively working with community organizations and is an official member of the North Branch Park Preserve Coalition.
Already, we’ve seen the rapid sale and demolition of architecturally significant industrial buildings in the area, including the prairie school industrial building located at 1401 W. Wabansia Street, (also known as 1666 N. Ada Street) which was sold on February 21, 2018. Despite being a highly regarding and highly successful wedding venue, the building was clearly bought for the underlying land. The demolition permit was released on March 27, 2018 and the building was demolished on April 4, 2018. It is believed that this property is owned by Sterling Bay.
Link to full story in the Preservation Chicago April 2018 Newsletter.
Many of these 70 identified buildings are in fact very important industrial buildings, designed by noteworthy architectural firms and individuals. These include Adler & Sullivan Architects and Louis Sullivan structures at 1440 N. Kingsbury Street Complex/Carbit Paints, originally constructed as the Euston & Company Linseed Oil Plant in 1899 and the Chicago Linoleum Company Plant in 1903 as the plant of the Carbit Paint Company. At 2013 N. Elston/Horween Complex, originally the Herman Loescher Leather Tannery, now the Horween Leather Company complex. The architect of Horween needs to be definitively confirmed, but in past research the taller structure, with a decorative cornice and angled facade elevation appears to be connected to Adler & Sullivan).
Also, Louis Lehle, a famous brewery architect designed the SiPi Metal Corp Site, built and once associated with Schoenhofen Brewery in Pilsen (Schoenhofen buildings in Pilsen are Designed Chicago Landmarks, with the Power House designed by Richard E. Schmidt), at 1700 N. Elston Avenue and the adjoining buildings of the complex, also fronting a side street.
The 2001 N. Elston Avenue complex, now known as the “Self-Storage Building,” which was designed by Simeon Eisendrath, for the Eisendrath Leather and Glove Company. Eisendrath (yes, CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times, Edwin Eisendrath’s relative), worked in the Adler & Sullivan firm and also designed the Chicago Landmark “Plymouth Building” on South Dearborn Street, between the Old Colony Building and the Manhattan Building---all Designated Chicago Landmarks. The Plymouth Court side of the building still has its original cast “Sullivanesque” foliated ornament, by the Winslow Brothers Company, who worked with Louis Sullivan on the Carson Pirie Scott Store cast iron ornament. And needless to say, this is only a very few of the architects and buildings noted in the list of 70 buildings.
Preservation Chicago encourages Chicago Department of Planning and Development Historic Preservation Division/Landmarks also agree to designate some of these buildings as Chicago Landmarks as part of these on-going discussions and agreements for Lincoln Yards/North Branch Corridor area, in tandem with open space and parklands.
A thematic Chicago Landmark “Tannery District” of buildings and another protected district tied to beer brewing and manufacturing could protect many of these significant buildings.
However, the steps must be taken as quickly as possible, as one of the historic buildings identified on the list, 1666 N. Ada, has already been demolished.
Additional Reading
|
|
THREATENED: Effort to Raise Funds to Save St. Adalbert Church(Chicago 7 2014 & 2016)
|
|
St. Adalbert Roman Catholic Church, 1650 W. 17th Street, Henry Schlacks, Historic Photo Credit: St. Adalbert Roman Catholic Church
|
|
St. Adalbert Roman Catholic Church 1650 W. 17th Street, Photo Credit: Leroyesha Lane/ Block Club Chicago
|
|
The Society of St. Adalbert is looking to raise $1 million dollars to acquire the church property at 1650 W. 17th St. The “11th hour” plan to save the church comes as the Archdiocese of Chicago confirms the church will be put back up for sale soon.
St. Adalbert was founded in 1874 by Polish immigrants, and the current church building was built in 1912 at 1650 W. 17th Street. The church is known for hosting a weekly Mass in English and Spanish and a monthly Mass in Polish. (Pena, Block Club Chicago, 6/18/18)
Originally constructed for a Polish congregation in the Pilsen neighborhood, St. Adalbert Roman Catholic Church is a Renaissance Revival building designed by noted church architect Henry J. Schlacks, who worked for a time in the offices of Adler & Sullivan. It’s soaring 185- foot twin towers are the highest structures in the Pilsen neighborhood and easily recognizable for miles in every direction.
The parish was founded in 1874 and the earlier church structure originally located on the corner to the west. After St. Adalbert was built in 1912, the churches stood side-by-side for decades. “St. Adalbert is not only a fine example of Renaissance Revival architecture but also a chronicle of Polish history. The central figure of the church is a large statue of St. Adalbert and murals, stained glass windows and even the interior color scheme celebrate important Polish national heritage. (Pena, Block Club Chicago, 6/18/18)
Fronting the street, the two buff-colored brick towers are ornamented with finely detailed terra cotta, pierced by arcades and capped by copper cupolas. Visitors enter the church through a portico defined by a series of polished granite Corinthian columns. Once inside, the interior is a soaring rectangular space based upon the form of Roman basilica. (Pena, Block Club Chicago, 6/18/18)
“The Society of St. Adalbert presented the idea to repurpose the convent into a B&B hotel to the Archdiocese of Chicago last summer and has been working to raise pledges to make an offer for the church. If their plan works, the group aims to repair the church and maintain the sanctuary as a religious shrine. Board Member Julie Sawicki said the bed and breakfast would generate enough money to cover the maintenance, community programming and provide jobs for neighbors.
“We can keep [the entire property] together, all we have to do is repurpose the convent and position it as our primary revenue generator,” said Julie Sawicki, who is a real estate broker. “This will give us the income we need and rely on every single month.” (Pena, Block Club Chicago, 6/18/18)
The group knows the $1 million likely isn’t enough to buy and repair the property, but it’s a start. “We need way more than $1 million in pledges, but it shows the archdiocese that we have some funds available to start this project and we have the support with the community,” Sawicki said. (Pena, Block Club Chicago, 6/18/18)
The church holds particular significance for the Polish community, whose ancestors built the church more than a century ago, and for the Mexican parishioners who have long called the church home, Sawicki said. “Our ancestors built it, not just for the Polish community but for the entire Catholic community, including the Mexican community who now live in Pilsen,” Sawicki said. “We built it and the Mexican community helped sustain it.” (Pena, Block Club Chicago, 6/18/18)
“We shouldn’t have to buy our church back, we built it,” Anina Jakubowski said. (Pena, Block Club Chicago, 6/23/18)
The Resurrection Project in Pilsen and The Catholic Church Preservation Society have also expressed interest in a good outcome for St. Adalbert Church.
Additional Reading
|
|
THREATENED: Obama Presidential Center Lawsuit Reveals New Information and Groundbreaking is Postponed to 2019. (Chicago 7 2017 & 2018)
|
|
Obama Presidential Site, Photo Credit: Stephen J. Serio / Crain's Chicago Business
|
|
Fencing around Proposed Obama Presidential Site in Jackson Park, Photo Credit: Marc Monaghan / Hyde Park Herald
|
|
Obama Center City Hall Protest, Photo Credit: James Foster / Chicago Sun-Times
|
|
Jackson Park has been a Preservation Chicago 7 Most Endangered in 2017 and again in 2018. We are advocating for the protection of this important historic landscape designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux with contributions by Alfred Caldwell. Preservation Chicago does not oppose the Obama Presidential Center, but strongly prefers the 20-acre private facility to be constructed in a location other than historic Jackson Park.
Despite the federal court legal challenge and the Obama Foundation announcement that groundbreaking will be delayed until 2019, the Chicago Park District has set-up chain link fencing around the Jackson Park baseball field located across from Hyde Park Academy, as reported by Aaron Gettinger in the Hyde Park Herald on August 1, 2018.
Another important development was the filing of a federal lawsuit by a better government and parks advocacy group to block the Obama Presidential Center. On May 14, 2018, the nonprofit Protect Our Parks, Inc. filed a federal lawsuit in U.S. District Court. In the complaint, they accuse the organizers for the Obama Presidential Center of pulling an “institutional bait and switch,” by shifting away from an “official” presidential library overseen by the U.S. federal government.
“Although that original purpose of an official Presidential Library no longer exists,” reads the complaint, “the defendants continue to forge ahead to advance a totally different private nongovernmental project on public parkland.”
Furthermore, the suit claims that the Chicago Park District and the City of Chicago don’t have the authority to transfer public parkland, that public land is “prohibited by law” from being turned over to a private entity for private use, and that such a deal violates Chicago Park District code.
Additionally, the complaint argues that the City of Chicago and Chicago Park District’s intention to lease the land in perpetuity for a nominal amount is a violation of state law and represents “a short con shell game, a corrupt scheme to deceive and seemingly legitimize an illegal land grab.”
As reported in the Chicago Sun-times, the arguments presented for the proposed Obama Presidential Center didn’t satisfy Ward Miller; executive director of Preservation Chicago who argued that it does not belong in “historic Jackson Park, known the world over” for its Frederick Law Olmsted landscape design that “so beautifully connects” Jackson Park to the Midway Plaisance and Washington Park.
“Make no bones about it. The proposed plans…will backhoe and destroy almost 20 acres of this legacy park land,” Miller said, warning of the dangerous precedent.
“This green, leafy site will now be compromised…with three very large buildings, all on a concrete plaza, and a tall museum building which is over 200 feet tall. … No other presidential library is of this scale and magnitude.”
Miller urged Barack and Michelle Obama to consider “another nearby site in the heart of the community” rather than “sort of an extension of the University of Chicago into Jackson Park.” (Speilman, Chicago Sun-Times, 5/22/18)
Additional Reading
|
|
THREATENED: Facade Alterations Considered for the former Continental Furniture Building in Wicker Park Landmark District.
|
|
1425 N. Milwaukee Avenue, Rendering Credit: Baum Real Estate
|
|
1425 N. Milwaukee Avenue Black Vitrolite Sign Band, Photo Credit: Google Street View
|
|
1427 and 1429 N. Milwaukee Avenue, Photo Credit: Google Street View
|
|
More renovations are coming to the Milwaukee Avenue Chicago Landmark District between North Avenue and Division Street. The former Continental Furniture building will be renovated with first and second floor retail with offices above. Continental Furniture/Meyers’ Furniture closed its door in 2015 after 63 years in business. The upper floors had been used for storage with their windows filled with glass block.
Continental Furniture Building is actually three contiguous buildings all fronting Milwaukee Avenue. All three are “Contributing Buildings” to the Milwaukee Avenue Historic District, a Designated Chicago Landmark District approved by the Commission on Chicago Landmarks in 2008. 1427 N. Milwaukee Avenue is a four-story red-brick building built by George Strauss in 1887 with a decorative pediment reading “C. Strauss – 1887”. The adjacent 1425 N. Milwaukee Avenue is also a four-story red-brick building built in the 1880’s with a series of concentric masonry circles. The adjacent two-story red-brick was built in the 1910s and has lost its decorative cornice.
The buildings were purchased by Realterm, Maryland-based real estate firm in August 2017 for $3.7 million. In June 2018, a construction permit was issued for approximately $1.5 million worth of renovations, including brick masonry facade repair, replacing the glass block from the upper floor, and installing new two-story high storefront windows.
“We saw it as an opportunity to take a beautiful building from the late 1880s and restore it back to its original glory,” said John Tsiskasis, vice president of acquisitions for Realterm.“We’ve been working through designs and landmark commission to get [the renovations] approved. It’s going to look very different from what it looks like now. When we get new windows in, the storefront will look a lot taller,” Tsiskasis said. (Hauser, Block Club Chicago, 7/11/18)
Preservation Chicago applauds the developer’s interest in restoring the building to its “original glory”. However, the idea of making it look “very different” from its current historic appearance and radical changes to the current scale and massing of the historic storefront by adding two-floors of storefront glass to make it “look a lot taller” are directly contrary to the objective achieving its “original glory”.
Of the approximately 150 contributing buildings in the Milwaukee Avenue Historic District, the Landmark Designation Report specially highlights this cluster of buildings for the visual consistency.
“Despite the comparatively small size of these commercial buildings, surviving groupings of 1870s and 1880s buildings visually convey the “unbroken front” of commercial blocks that T. A. Holland observed in 1875 Directory of the Avenue. Good examples of these groups can be found from 1425 to 1439 N. Milwaukee Ave." (Milwaukee Avenue Historic District Landmark Designation Report, May 3, 2007, Page 18)
The immediately adjacent twin “J. Jensen Building" located at 1429 N. Milwaukee is a nearly identical match to 1427 N. Milwaukee with matching cornices, window openings, and decorative limestone sills. Despite modifications to the second floor window openings at 1427 N. Milwaukee, the original matching red brick and ornamental limestone sills extend the visual continuity.
The twin “J. Jensen Building" is not included in this project. According to Alisa Hauser in the Block Club Chicago, “Decibel Audio, a turntable and audio store next to the former furniture storefront at 1429 N. Milwaukee Ave., will not be part of the planned renovations, as the former owner of the furniture store still owns the portion of the building rented by Decibel and the southern half of the furniture store.”
The trio of buildings was building was unified as the Continental Furniture Building with a consistent, elegant, 1920’s, art deco, Vitrolite black and white glass storefront sign band located between the between the first and second floors. This is a high-quality storefront material that can be restored and should include as part of the renovation plans. If this historic material from the Designated Historic Landmark District’s Period of Significance from 1877 to 1929 is removed, then any new storefront must respect the historic massing and dimensions of the historic façade.
Preservation Chicago generally supports the renovation of this trio of Milwaukee Avenue commercial buildings; however the proposed storefront details illustrated in the rendering are inappropriate to the character of the historic buildings and the greater Milwaukee Avenue Corridor.
Despite the addition of a tree to attempt to hide this detail in the development rendering, the new second floor storefront is jarring in its contrast to the adjacent “twin building” at 1429 N. Milwaukee Avenue. By respecting the original building massing, the development team can avoid, what one observer commented, the “clownish appearance of a building wearing its pants up too high”.
While there are some examples of second floor retail uses on Milwaukee Avenue, there almost no examples of a two-story storefront anywhere on the Milwaukee Avenue Corridor and within the Designate Chicago Landmark District. The existing historic masonry window openings are large and were designed to maximize natural light, and would accomplish nearly the same development objective without compromising the historic integrity of the building.
Preservation Chicago encourages the City of Chicago Commission on Chicago Landmarks and developer Realterm to respect the historic appearance of these important contributing landmark buildings and modify their redevelopment plans accordingly to honor the building’s historic appearance.
Additional Reading
|
|
LOSS: State and Elm Building Demolished!
|
|
1139 N. State and Elm Street, Photo Credit: Ryan Ori
|
|
1139 N. State and Elm Street, Photo Credit: Bryan Weinper Photography
|
|
1139 N. State and Elm Street Proposed Construction, Rendering Credit: wwwNewCastleLimited.com
|
|
The historic three-story corner building at the corner of State and Elm Streets on the Gold Coast has been demolished. This brown brick building with ornamented, arched windows was built in the early 20th century. Located at 1139 N. State, this desirable and attractive 14,000 square foot building was occupied by RA Sushi on the ground floor with apartments on the second and third floors.
To avoid an upzoning process, the proposed new development is three-story building marketed for a multi-story restaurant. The plan received Plan Commission approval under Chicago’s Lakefront Protection Ordinance on April 19, 2018. The development team has released a conceptual rendering what the redevelopment of 1139 N. State might look like.
Despite extensive advocacy efforts by Preservation Chicago to developer, alderman and community, even a partial preservation success proved impossible.
The Gold Coast has been experiencing intense redevelopment pressure and highly stable and successful historic buildings will continue to be threatened by demolition unless they can be protected by a Chicago Landmark District. To the end, Preservation Chicago has been working to create a “Gold Coast Chicago Landmark District”, which will include historic research on the buildings of the proposed historic district and both advocacy and outreach to the community.
Additional Reading
|
|
WIN: South Side Community Art Center Wins Prestigious National Grant
|
|
South Side Community Art Center, 3831 S. Michigan Avenue, Photo Credit: Jacob Hand
|
|
Chicago’s South Side Community Art Center was one of 16 grant winners among a total of 830 applicants across 42 states to win a grant from the African-American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. An initiative of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the African-American Cultural Heritage Action Fund is a program which seeks to preserve and promote African-American historic places across the county. The exact amount to be granted to the South Side Community Art Center remains unclear, but the National Trust expects to raise a total of $25 million over five years to preserve and highlight African-American historical contributions.
From the South Side Community Art Center: National Treasures, National Trust for Historic Preservation.
“History of the South Side Community Art Center:
Dedicated by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in 1941, the South Side Community Art Center at 3831 S. Michigan Avenue was one of nearly 100 art centers established by the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project. Since that time, it has served as a cultural and artistic hub in Chicago, fostering emerging African-American artists and showcasing established talent while connecting South Side residents to art through exhibits, classes, lectures, and other educational programming. The center is the only Works Progress Administration art center still operating as established in its original building.
The center has been instrumental in showcasing works by prominent African-American artists of the 20th century, including poet Gwendolyn Brooks—the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize—and Life magazine photographer and filmmaker Gordon Parks. Other noted artists whose works were featured at the center include William Carter, Charles White, Archibald Motley, Jr., Dr. Margaret Taylor Burroughs, and Eldzier Cortor.
Despite the difficulties of segregation, a strong and active African-American middle class with a hunger for cultural resources emerged in Bronzeville. While the African-American arts community thrived with the creation of the South Side Art Association and the Arts and Crafts Guild, the Great Depression made employment in the arts especially difficult. Bronzeville’s community was primed for a federally funded arts program as artists and community leaders recognized the need for arts education.
Old Home Architecture, New Bauhaus Design:
By the time a house was purchased for the center in 1940, the South Side—despite its somewhat fluid boundaries—was well-known for its distinct cultural identity. The chosen structure, a 3½-story Classical Revival home constructed in 1892, was built in the then-wealthy neighborhood and was well-suited to the lavish lifestyle of George A. Seaverns, Jr., his wife Clara Seaverns, and their two sons. In the early 20th century, as wealthy white families moved away, the home was eventually converted into apartments in what had become an African-American neighborhood.
Credited with transforming the home’s interior into a modern art gallery as part of the Works Progress Administration were Hin Bredendieck and Nathan Lerner, two prominent figures in the New Bauhaus school. The Bauhaus school was founded in Weimar, Germany in 1919, and its principles brought art and architecture together through modern designs that radically departed from traditional styles. While the original Bauhaus school closed due to the rise of Nazism in Germany, the New Bauhaus school opened in Chicago in 1937 under the leadership of Laszlo Maholy-Nagy.
The building’s entry foyer and first-floor gallery were transformed using Bauhaus design principles of simplicity and functionality. The rooms included wide, vertical wood planks that ran continuously around the walls, even covering doors and some window openings with hinged panels that could be opened or closed. When closed, each room reflected an uninterrupted visual appearance.
Sustained by Artists, for Artists:
Once the center was officially dedicated on May 7, 1941, leaders began a full schedule of activities to accomplish its goals, including employment for African-Americans, engaging young people, cultivating new talent, and raising the Bronzeville community’s cultural and artistic awareness. The center’s programming focused on activities for children and adults, including music education classes, musical performances, creative writing and poetry classes, children’s theater, and art classes.
The center employed black and white faculty, and welcomed black and white patrons and students. However, the center primarily focused on supporting and encouraging the careers of African-American artists who were routinely denied the opportunity to exhibit their work in white-owned galleries. Additionally, children’s art classes were targeted toward African-American children in support of their cultural education.
The center's programming supported the work of many African-American artists, but artists also sustained its efforts to become a spotlight on the African-American community. Acclaimed artists Dr. Margaret Taylor Burroughs, Charles Wilbert White, and Eldzier Cortor were all charter members of the Center, and Rex Goreleigh served as the center’s director from 1944 to 1947.
Other notable artists whose works were featured at the center include sculptors Elizabeth Catlett, Richmond Barthé, Richard Hunt, and Marion Perkins; photographer and filmmaker Gordon Parks; painter Jacob Lawrence; book illustrator Vernon Winslow; poets Gwendolyn Brooks and Martha Danner; painter and printmaker Hughie Lee-Smith; and visual artist Archibald Motley, Jr.
Planning for the Center’s Future: Celebrating its 77th anniversary in 2018, South Side Community Art Center is at a critical moment. The Center remains an invaluable resource to Chicago’s South Side and continues to offer a wide range of programs for the community.
However, the South Side Community Arts Center’s Classical Revival style building hasn’t undergone a major rehabilitation in decades and requires substantial renovation. Its HVAC system is antiquated and isn’t adequate for either the center’s art exhibits or its expansive repertoire of public programs. The center is actively seeking support to address these issues so that its mission can continue to be fulfilled.
The National Trust will work together with South Side Community Art Center leadership, providing expertise to ensure that its rehabilitation includes preserving the building’s historic character. These two dynamic organizations will foster new opportunities for programming and events that will continue to serve, inspire, and enrich South Side’s community for generations to come.” (From the South Side Community Art Center: National Treasures, National Trust for Historic Preservation, www.SavingsPlaces.org)
Additional Reading
|
|
WIN: New Illinois State Historic Tax Credit Becomes Law!
|
|
Sunlight in the Illinois Capitol Dome, Photo Credit: Eddie Winfred Doc Helm / Illinois State Archives
|
|
On July 16, 2018, Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner signed SB 3527, a bipartisan bill improving and expanding the River Edge Redevelopment Zone Historic Tax Credit.
This legislation opens up millions of dollars in economic incentives in the form of tax credits for historic preservation projects throughout Illinois," Rauner said after signing the bill. "It is imperative that we add jobs and fuel economic development. This bill will help Illinois achieve those goals while also preserving our past and making our state even more beautiful to visit." (Quad-City Times, 7/26/18)
A statewide historic tax credit program incentivizes developers to choose Illinois and will breathe new life into older properties," State Rep. Mike Halpin, D-Rock Island said. "This new tax credit is based off an existing program in Illinois that saw tremendous success creating jobs and new economic activity by reviving structures in older downtown areas." (Quad-City Times, 7/26/18)
After nearly a decade of advocacy, Landmarks Illinois and the American Institute of Architects-Illinois celebrated the passing of this important tool for historic preservation. This important tool is even more important since the new recently passed federal tax code weakened the federal historic preservation tax credit.
SB3527 establishes a new statewide Illinois Historic Preservation Tax Credit. Historic preservation projects statewide that meet one of five targeted criteria and a project readiness test can apply for a 25 percent state income tax credit for qualified expenditures, up to $3 million in state credits per project. The Historic Preservation Division of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources will administer two application rounds annually to allocate the $15 million available per year. Credits will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis and applicants must reapply if not accepted. The program will be in effect from Jan. 1, 2019, through Dec. 31, 2023.
Rep. Steven Andersson (R-Geneva): "Historic Tax Credit projects are that rare win-win-win we look for. The design, construction and development team wins from the jobs created, the community wins by restoring a great local asset and the taxpayers win with a tremendous return on investment."
Historic tax credits work and are an important financing tool to allow historic projects to be economically feasible. “A behind-the-scenes scramble by Murphy and Cook County officials late last year illustrates the make-or-break importance of the old federal tax credit, which provided a 20 percent income tax benefit to developers of certified rehabs of historic income-producing properties. “If there’s ever a textbook case of a building that never would have survived without it, it’s the old Cook County Hospital building,” Murphy said.” (Kamin, Chicago Tribune, 6/1/18)
"For nine years, our coalition of architects and advocates championed the effectiveness of historic tax credits as a proven economic and community development incentive," said Mike Waldinger, Hon. AIA, Executive Vice President of AIA Illinois. "It is so gratifying to see those efforts finally succeed, and we look forward to the transformative projects to come."
"By an overwhelming majority, the Assembly has sent a bill to Governor Rauner that would open up communities statewide to additional private investment through a proven economic development and job-creation tool," said Bonnie McDonald, President of Landmarks Illinois.
Additional Reading
|
|
LOSS: “Spotlight on Demolition”
The Demolition of 4841 S. Champlain Avenue.
Photos by AJ LaTrace
|
|
4841 S. Champlain Avenue, Photo Credit: AJ LaTrace from Twitter
|
|
4841 S. Champlain Avenue, Photo Credit: AJ LaTrace from Twitter
|
|
4841 S. Champlain Avenue, Photo Credit: AJ LaTrace from Twitter
|
|
4841 S. Champlain Avenue, Photo Credit: VHT Studios
|
|
PRESERVATION IN THE PRESS
|
|
FEATURE ARTICLE:
The Brilliant Artist That Chicago, and the World, Nearly Forgot: The Idiosyncratic Art of Edgar Miller
by Zach Mortice in CityLab
|
|
Edgar Miller carving a bench, Photo Credit by Paul Hansen
|
|
The entry room in the Glasner Studio, Photo Credit by Alexander Vertikoff
|
|
Children playing on Miller’s animal sculptures at the Jane Addams Homes, public housing built by the Works Progress Administration, in 1938. Photo Credit: Peter Sekaer, United States Housing Authority / Library of Congress
These Edgar Miller sculptures are currently in storage and expected to be installed in the new National Public Housing Museum in Chicago.
|
|
By Zach Mortice
Excerpts from CityLab article published on June 18, 2018 and reprinted with permission
Edgar Miller was a virtuoso in any medium he chose: painting, sculpture, stained glass, architecture, interior design, printmaking, metalwork, cutlery, graphic design. He put those prodigious skills toward building a creative community on Chicago’s near-north side in the 1920s and beyond. Miller’s handful of architecture projects (a series of live-work lofts) stretched the boundaries of the city’s bohemian frontier, seeding a new hub for culture, art, and radical politics. This output never earned Miller a place in Chicago’s pantheon of culture. But now a non-profit, Edgar Miller Legacy, is celebrating his legacy and offering new ways for people to connect through Miller’s work.
Miller was a committed workaholic, churning out movie posters and children’s wallpaper. But he wasn’t just a commercial craftsman. He had philosophical aspirations for the role art should play in life. At the Art Institute, this caused him to mount a revolt with fellow students, including close friend Sol Kogen. Eventually, Miller dropped out. It wasn’t much of a detriment. He learned many new skills at the shop of artist, sculptor, and industrial designer Alfonso Iannelli. And Miller became closely aligned with some of the city’s premier architecture firms, such as Holabird & Root, contributing murals and installations to their projects.
Less lucrative, but more influential, was a wild idea that Kogen dreamed up. After spending down his stash of family money living in Paris, Kogen returned to Chicago in 1927 and proposed that he and Miller build a bohemian live-work artist complex like those he’d seen in Montmartre. Kogen, whose family owned a textile business, had just a portion of Miller’s raw artistic talent, but compensated with a voluble and magnetic personality—a Gatsby-esque bon vivant to the quieter, more thoughtful Miller. Together, they had the connections and talent to pull together a new kind of artistic community in Chicago.
Their proto-hipster set was already being priced out of the Tower Town neighborhood just north of the Loop (named for the 1869 Water Tower, one of the few structures to survive the Great Chicago Fire), so they set their sights on the neighborhood that would become Old Town, then a working-class German and Armenian district. Zac Bleicher, executive director of Edgar Miller Legacy, calls the project “the brainchild of Sol Kogen, but with the artistic direction of Miller.”
For this first venture—the Carl Street Studios—Kogen purchased an old mansion and converted it slowly, scrapping and saving, paying piece by piece. (Miller maintained until his death that Carl Street was still a work in progress.) Kogen would often salvage building materials off the back of a truck, and this handmade sense of upcycling persists. Many of Miller’s stained-glass windows display scraps of glass with different patterns and textures, as if each had its own fingerprint. It’s a mode that has been taken up again in Chicago by Theaster Gates, the contemporary multimedia artist, who uses the broken and discarded to create places for community within art.
With the Carl Street Studios and later projects, Miller sought to create an environment of total art—and he, uniquely, had the skills to do this himself. He was decidedly a maximalist, painting antelopes on the plates you ate from, carving frolicking weasels into ceiling beams, and slicing Edenic figures out of metal silhouettes on windows. He wanted art to be an all-encompassing “social adventure.”
Around this time, avant-garde Modernists in Europe were paring back architecture to a utilitarian and egalitarian ideal. This meant unadorned buildings of raw, abstract geometry.
Miller, by contrast, craved representation his entire career. To him, a shared and definite understanding of the things around us was what bound people together. Miller’s highest expression of his ambitions was the Glasner Studio(part of the Kogen-Miller Complex), which now hosts Edgar Miller Legacy’s headquarters. For arts patron and manufacturing magnate Rudolph Glasner, Miller built an art refuge topped by a third-story “ballroom” that, with its graceful ceiling beams, is equal parts stick-built chapel and medieval mead hall. It’s hard to imagine a better place for a ripping good dinner party with fringy artists and outcasts.
Lots of artist-studio conversions popped up in Old Town in Miller’s wake, and a sense of countercultural community pervaded the entire neighborhood. It was a constant presence at the Glasner Studio, no matter how many clumsy renovations it suffered. Through the late 1960s, it was something of a lefty and revolutionary hangout, often at the behest of reformed socialite Lucy Hassell Montgomery, who used her second husband’s Post Cereals company fortune to fund the Civil Rights Movement. Fred Hampton hid from the police here two months before he was assassinated. George McGovern and Jane Fonda stopped by; free jazz explorers Sun Ra and the AACM played private shows.
From 1927 to 1937, Miller lived mostly at the Carl Street Studios. He remained in Chicago and supported himself by his art until the late 1960s, when he went into semi-retirement and moved to Florida to buy and operate a hotel. After his wife died, he moved to San Francisco to live with his children. He largely faded from view until several artists familiar with his work sought him out in California. They celebrated his eventual homecoming in 1986, when Miller came back to Chicago, moved into one of his old buildings, and started working again. He died in 1993. Edgar Miller Legacy was founded in 2014, after Bleicher’s uncle Mark Mamolen restored the Glasner Studio.
Miller’s low historical profile is a result of temperament, geography, and the ascendance of Modernism everywhere. Unlike the Chicago luminaries Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe, Miller didn’t teach; he had no acolytes to perpetuate his legend. His few buildings are difficult-to-access private residences. The Glasner Studio “is his greatest work,” said Bleicher as we sat in it, “and we are [two] of thousands—two thousand, maybe—that have ever seen it.” Also, Miller never had access to the New York City public-relations machine that boosted the fortunes of many artists of his era. Edgar Miller Legacy does occasionally open up his buildings for tours. Miller’s Fisher Apartments are now a Chicago landmark, and the Carl Street Studios are part of The West Burton Place Historic District.
|
|
FEATURE ARTICLE:
Meet The Women Who Built Logan Square
by Mina Bloom
in Block Club Chicago
|
|
Evelyn Longman at work sculpting the Illinois Centennial Monument, Photo Credit: Art Institute of Chicago
|
|
By Mina Bloom
Excerpts from Block Club Chicago Article published on June 15, 2018
There’s nothing that says Logan Square more than the Illinois Centennial Monument, a nearly century-old, 68-foot-tall sculpted column standing proudly in the heart of the neighborhood. Some argue the sheer size of the monument, visible through the trees in any direction, is its defining characteristic, for which we have Lincoln Memorial architect Henry Bacon to thank. But Bacon is not the only talent behind the neighborhood’s most important landmark.
Look a bit closer and prepare to be dazzled by the work of Evelyn Beatrice Longman. The accomplished sculptor is not only responsible for the carved figures along the base, but also for the eagle perched atop the column, according to local historians. Longman went on to become the first woman to make a career of creating large-scale public sculptures — no small feat in the early 1900s.
“In that time period, to have a woman on board, you knew she was very special,” said Ward Miller, executive director for Preservation Chicago.
That got us thinking: What other women helped build Logan Square?
Across generations, a talented group of women have made a lasting impact on the neighborhood, in male-dominated fields no less. They would probably be thrilled to see how many woman-owned businesses, female artists and community leaders now call Logan Square home.
The Logan Square Blue Line station has seen better days. Thanks to decades of heavy use and typical Chicago weather, today’s station is known for its leaky ceiling, crumbling walls and cavernous feel. But when it was built in the late 1960s, the station was considered an architectural marvel, according to Miller.
“When it came time to design, those train stations at Logan Square and Belmont and other stations in the middle of the Expressway, they produced these wonderful steel and glass Mies van der Rohe style canopies — canopies that were meant to be glass boxes … pure white, very airy and lots of glass,” Miller said.
A design team led by Myron Goldsmith at the famous architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, or SOM, is responsible for the modern design. But it was Pao Chi-Chang, an architect said to have worked closely with Mies van der Rohe, who was so passionate about the project that she lost her job trying to maintain its integrity, according to Miller.
The preservationist said Pao Chi-Chang is the one who helped come up with the canopy design with all of the glass and white details. The rest of the team deemed the design too expensive, so they made cost-cutting changes. Convinced those changes would diminish the quality of the design, Pao Chi-Chang snuck into the office one weekend and changed all of the details back, according to Miller. The project went into production without noticing the switch, but Pao Chi-Chang was fired once they found out what she had done.
“She impaled herself for architecture’s sake,” Miller said. “If it cost a little bit more, in her mind’s eye, that wasn’t as important as having a pristine building along these transportation lines that would last several lifetimes, if not more.”
Last it would, but perhaps not as gracefully as Pao Chi-Chang had hoped. The canopy has been painted blue and the glass and steel pavilions have been replaced with plexi-glass. Those changes, coupled with harsh lighting overhead, makes the Logan Square Blue Line feel especially outdated.
But Miller said it wouldn’t take much to bring the Myron Goldsmith, SOM and Pao Chi-Chang bold vision back to life: “If you were to go back to the pure white paint, crystal clear glass, they would look like brand new stations, straight out of the vain of IIT and Mies van der Roe, one of the world’s most recognized architects of the 20th century.”
Miller’s story about Pao Chi-Chang changing the drawings back could not be confirmed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. The firm did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Much has been written about Martin Kimbell, the earliest settler of Logan Square, first arriving in 1836. But unbeknownst to many, his wife, Sarah Smalley-Kimbell, also played an important role in shaping the area that would become Logan Square.
Martin Kimbell built his 160-acre farm where Diversey, Milwaukee and Kimball avenues intersect today, establishing what was then called Jefferson Township. He is credited for opening the first schools in the area, drilling the first well and deeding Wrightwood Avenue west of Kimball Avenue, among other things. But he had some help.
Sarah Smalley-Kimbell, who arrived in Logan Square around the same time, was also instrumental in making sure various food provisions made it to the South during the Civil War, Miller said.
“What’s important to remember about [Sarah Smalley-Kimbell] is she was very much a partner in this with her husband even though her husband, because of the times, he got all of the credit,” Miller said.
Eva Calderon
- Longtime community leader Eva Calderon helped shape Mozart Elementary into what it is today….
Ada Sawyer Garrett
- Back in the early 1900s, a small baseball stadium known as Callahan’s Ball Park stood along the north side of Milwaukee Avenue from Sawyer Avenue to Diversey and Kedzie avenues. It was a charming stadium…
Carrie Gilbert
- On the west-facing side of the Logan Square Auditorium building, the name “Gilbert” is etched in big bold letters. But who is Gilbert?...
|
|
PRESERVATION IN THE MEDIA
|
|
TELEVISION: Al Capone Warehouse Demolished Reported by CBS 2 TV
|
|
Former Al Capone Bootleg Brewery Gets Demolished Photo Credit: CBS 2 News Chicago, July 18, 2018
|
|
“Decades ago, Al Capone ran the booze business in Chicago. Part of the operation was run out of a brick building south of the Loop along the Chicago River.
The walls are tumbling down, allowing the sun to pour into a building that used to hide Chicago’s most notorious gangster. Ozinga needs the space for its trucks to get around more easily.
“Back in the 20s and 30s, it was used to Al Capone to brew and store bootlegged liquor,” said Brian Lutey, the Vice President of Ozinga. “The story is Al Capone and crew would hang out in the upper part of the building. Back in 32, Eliot Ness raided the place, confiscated 140 barrels of beer and whiskey. He had to break through three steel doors to get in.”
“We gave many tours here,” stated Lloyd Meyer, the President of Ozinga. “That was always the highlight. You can smell the history in here – stale beer, you can smell it.”
|
|
FEATURE VIDEO: 60 Years Ago, the CTA Ran Its Last Streetcar. (June 21,1958)
|
|
Final Green Hornet run down Vincennes Avenue on June, 21 1958, “A Streetcar Named Retire.” Archival Footage Credit: Chicago Transit Authority
|
|
“60 years ago, the CTA ran its last streetcar.
So, you could call this final Green Hornet run down Vincennes Avenue on June, 21 1958, “A Streetcar Named Retire.”
Bus service gradually replaced streetcars throughout Chicago, but the old streetcar tracks are buried under many streets. Fascinating video of that last run.”
|
|
FEATURE VIDEO: Gertrude Lempp Kerbis: Modern Architect, A Short Film by Karen Carter
|
|
Rotunda Building, O'Hare Airport, Designed by Gertrude Kerbis, Photo Credit C.F. Murphy and Associates
|
|
Rotunda Building, O'Hare Airport, Designed by Gertrude Kerbis, Photo Credit C.F. Murphy and Associates
|
|
Rotunda Building, O'Hare Airport, Designed by Gertrude Kerbis, Photo Credit C.F. Murphy and Associates
|
|
Gertrude Kerbis was a groundbreaking architect and was one of the first women at the forefront of Chicago architecture working the modern style during the 1960s.
She studied with Mies van der Rohe at IIT in Chicago. She later worked with Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe at Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill and at C. F. Murphy before opening her own architectural firm, Lempp Kerbis, in 1967. One of the first women architects working in the modern style, Gertrude Kerbis, studied with Mies van der Rohe at IIT in Chicago. Kerbis was a founding member of Women in Architecture and received the AIA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008.
This short film produced and directed by Chicago-based filmmaker Karen Carter details the life and career of groundbreaking Chicago architect Gertrude Lempp Kerbis. The film was created for the AIA Chicago when Kerbis received the 2008 AIA Lifetime Achievement Award.
Preservation Chicago suggested Gertrude Kerbis’s Rotunda Building at O’Hare Airport to be considered for Chicago Landmark Status in an effort to recognize, appreciate and protect this important historic building and the trailblazing architect.
The Circular Rotunda Building at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport was designed by Gertrude Kerbis during her time at C. F. Murphy Associates. It was built in 1962 and is structurally unique with more than one mile of steel bridge cable integrated into its complex program as terminal, concourse, and restaurant facility. It is largely intact today; however, it’s largely faded from public use due to the closing of the original restaurants and the difficulty of accessing the building beyond modern security.
It is one the few remaining elements of O’Hare’s “Jet Age” design and represents C.F. Murphy’s contributions to this important airport design, in one of the world’s busiest airports.
Unless there is a greater appreciation for this iconic building, there is concern that it could be lost the massive $8 billion O’Hare modernization effort getting underway.
A few times per year, the City of Chicago Commission on Chicago Landmarks welcomes ideas and suggestions from the public for potential future landmark buildings and districts. Preservation Chicago looks forward to these opportunities to elevate well deserving, underappreciated Chicago historic assets into the conversation.
By ordinance, Chicago Landmarks must meet at least two of the seven criteria for designation, as well as the “integrity” criteria. The seven design criteria include Outstanding Heritage, Significant Event, Significant Person, Exemplary Architecture, Significant Architect, Distinctive Theme, and Unique Visual Feature.
Additional Reading
|
|
Mecca Flats Artifacts Discovered During Excavation Work!
“Shared History: The Mecca Flat Revealed at IIT Architecture”.
S. R. Crown Hall, Tuesday, August 7, 12:30 pm
|
|
Mecca Flats Historic Photo, Photo Credit: City of Chicago
|
|
Mecca Flats Historic Rendering, Rendering Credit: Tim Samuelson
|
|
Mecca Flats Residents Meeting to Oppose Demolition in 1950, Photo Credit: City of Chicago
|
|
Mecca Flats Revealed, Photo Credit: Joseph Altshuler/The Architect's Paper
|
|
“Designed in 1891 by Edbrooke and Burnham, the 96-unit Mecca immediately captured the public's imagination. It was Chicago's first residential building with a landscaped courtyard open to the street, a design that fused two seemingly incompatible ideals: to build densely while preserving and cultivating the natural landscape. In the late 19th century, Chicago's tenement reformers had demanded more light and fresh air for the city's apartments; they wanted small parks and playgrounds to be able to dot the city's swelling neighborhoods. The Mecca's innovative design was a paean to these progressive concerns.”
“The complex had two atria with skylights that flooded the interior with light. Residents accessed their apartments via open galleries that encircled the atria, with railings that featured foliated ironwork. This form -- the courtyard within an apartment complex -- inspired a hugely popular Chicago vernacular tradition.” (Bluestone, Remembering America's lost buildings, CNN, 7/24/18)
“Residents could enter the building directly through these interior courts, prompting the central space to become an extension of the street life along “the Stroll,” as the entertainment strip on State Street was known, and which by the 1920s had become a destination “jammed with black humanity” and brimming with jazz clubs and cabarets. The open interior also contributed to an atmosphere of irreverent social drama in which residents could observe each other’s comings and goings." (Altshuler, The Architect’s Newspaper, 7/20/18)
“The vibrancy of the building inspired musician Jimmy Blythe to write “Mecca Flats Blues” (1924) and, later on, Gwendolyn Brooks to write “In the Mecca,” (1968) a long narrative poem reflecting on the Black experience in the building’s later years. As the building fell into disrepair, Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) purchased the Mecca and spent 15 years fighting with residents and housing advocates who opposed the university’s plan to demolish the structure as part of the expanding campus.” (Altshuler, The Architect’s Newspaper, 7/20/18)
“Illinois Governor Dwight Green vetoed the legislation that would have preserved the Mecca, and in 1952 -- after years of legal wrangling and community protest -- the courts allowed the demolition of an architectural and cultural icon to proceed.” (Bluestone, Remembering America's lost buildings, CNN, 7/24/18)
The effort to save the Macca Flats was one of the earliest examples of a Chicago community preservation effort to save an important historic building from demolition and perhaps one of the first community efforts to oppose what would later be called “Urban Renewal”. The 15-year preservation effort to save the Mecca Flats lasted from 1937 until 1952. This was significantly earlier that the effort to save Adler & Sullivan's Garrick Theater which was demolished in 1961 and earlier than the effort to save Adler & Sullivan's Chicago Stock Exchange Building which was demolished 1972.
Its true that new construction replacement buildings often fail to match the quality of the demolished original building, however in the case of Mecca Flats, it was replaced by Mies Van der Rohe’s legendary modernist masterpiece, S. R. Crown Hall at IIT.
Recently, as construction workers were digging a trench for maintenance on the mechanical plumbing system situated on the southwest corner of Crown Hall, they discovered of intact tile flooring from the Mecca Flats, among other artifacts. The bright and vibrant colors of the patterned floor tile include blues, oranges and browns which help to add a color palate to a historic building known primarily through black and white photos.
Work was suspended, and a team of local historians and urban archaeologists was assembled to uncover and excavate a significant portion of the remnants. These artifacts will be preserved, and a selection will be installed on site at the Graham Resource Center, an architectural library, located on the lower level of Crown Hall, in a permanent exhibition dedicated to the Mecca Flat. Others will be donated to national and local cultural institutions, to be conserved and shared with generations to come.
Additional Reading
|
|
The Chicago Art Deco Society Presents:
Art Deco Metropolis:
The Whiz-Bang Buildings of Modern New York
Wednesday, August 15, 2018 at 6:00
|
|
The Chicago Art Deco Society Presents:
Art Deco Metropolis: The Whiz-Bang Buildings of Modern New York
A presentation by Anthony W. Robins
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 15, 2018
6:00 PM
Roosevelt University
Wabash Room-1017
425 S Wabash Ave
Chicago, IL 60605
The Chrysler Building, the Waldorf-Astoria, Rockefeller Center – these are among the hundreds of Art Deco monuments that during the 1920s and ‘30s helped create the image of New York City as the world’s Modern Metropolis.
The lecture covers the great skyscrapers of architects Raymond Hood, William Van Alen, Ely Jacques Kahn and Ralph Walker, including the Daily News, Empire State, Irving Trust, General Electric, American Radiator, Barclay-Vesey and RCA Buildings. It then traces the adaptation of this “skyscraper style” through apartment buildings on the Bronx’s Grand Concourse, airport terminals at LaGuardia, the Central Park West residential skyline, automated midtown parking garages, diners, hotels, department stores, banks, and theaters like Radio City Music Hall.
Anthony W. Robins – writer, historian, lecturer and guide – spent 20 years on the staff of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, serving as Deputy Director of Research and then Director of Survey, directing the staff that identified new landmarks and historic districts.
Robins has for decades been a popular leader of walking tours all over New York City, leading hundreds of tours for thousands of participants.
|
|
THREATENED: Historic Route 66 Included on National Trust’s 11 Most Endangered Sites List
|
|
I Support a National Historic Trail Designation for Route 66! Photo Credit: National Trust for Historic Preservation
|
|
Route 66 was dubbed as America’s “Mother Road,” by novelist John Steinbeck in 1939 and is an internationally recognized symbol of our nation’s romance with the open road, yet it was included on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s annual list of most endangered historic places. The legendary 2,400 mile roadway starts in Chicago and passes through Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, and California before terminating in Los Angeles. Despite being an international icon, many Chicagoans aren’t aware that Route 66 actually begins in Chicago at the familiar intersection of South Michigan Avenue and between Adams Street and Jackson Boulevard just south of the steps of the Art Institute at the South Garden near the Fountain of the Great Lakes sculpture by Lorado Taft.
In 1989, the National Park Service designated the Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program, but this designation is set to expire in 2019, and there is no option for extension this time. To meet this challenge, Illinois Representative Darin LaHood, (R-Peoria) is leading the effort for Congress to designate Route 66 a National Historic Trail. Representative LaHood’s bill has already passed the House, but needs the approval of the Senate and the signature of the President before the end of 2018. If this effort is successful, Route 66 would become the first National Trail from the 20th Century and be recognized alongside the Oregon Trail and the Lewis and Clark Trail.
“The threat to Route 66 has really been a slow burn. It has been tough for these smaller businesses all along Route 66, and over the years there have been different authentic elements that already have been lost. People have this vision of taking the iconic road trip along Route 66, and it would be a shame if they did only to find too many places were lost and can’t be revitalized,” according to Amy Webb, senior field director for the National Trust for Historic Preservation (Rosenberg-Douglas, Chicago Tribune, 6/26/18)
To support Route 66 becoming a National Historic Trail, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has set up an online petition at
www.preserveroute66.org and included Route 66 as one of its 2018 11 most endangered.
Within Chicago, Preservation Chicago encourages the City of Chicago and Choose Chicago to increase their efforts to recognize, appreciate and protect the important historic significance of Route 66. Perhaps new signage with a more original appearance, many more signs along the historic route, and greater efforts around promoting tourism would help to raise the profile of a national icon in Chicago.
Additional Reading
|
|
If You Value Preservation In Chicago...
Please Support Preservation Chicago!
|
|
Lincoln Montana Building Doorway, Photo Credit: Ward Miller / Preservation Chicago
|
|
Preservation Chicago is a small organization with a big impact. In a city the size of Chicago, every drop of YOUR support counts.
Please CHOOSE to support historic preservation in Chicago today!
- Spread the Word! Support preservation in Chicago by reading and reposting Facebook and Twitter posts!
- Be Heard! Support preservation in Chicago by attending community meetings and standing up to make your voice heard!
- Be Counted! Support preservation in Chicago by taking a moment to sign online petitions!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|