One-stop (historical) shop

IT’S HERE SOMEWHERE The Fine Arts Building has what musicians are looking for, whether it’s in Performers Music’s bins or somewhere else.

Up on the eighth floor of the Fine Arts Building at 410 South Michigan Avenue, violin repairman John Bowen patiently goes about his work surrounded by plants and volumes of poetry. Decked out in a blue apron with his various tools—knives, mostly—arrayed about him, he says that no two jobs are the same. Every violin seam that needs regluing has to be done slightly differently, and “you always have to find new answers.” They are the same answers musicians have been seeking from the shops in the Fine Arts Building for more than 100 years.

Bowen’s isn’t the only artistic entrepreneur in the Romanesque building. Classical-music businesses and entrepreneurs still have a significant amount of space inside, where Frank Lloyd Wright once had his offices and several bygone magazines used to be published. Virtually everything a musician needs can be found here—from an instrument to the music to play on it and the repairman to fix it.

Commerce and the arts have never been strangers in Chicago. Both the Auditorium Theatre and the Civic Opera House were designed as multiple-use structures in which the auditorium would be part of a larger complex housing offices—and a hotel, in the former’s case. But while those buildings were supposed to have multiple tenants, it took a retrofit to turn the Fine Arts Building from commercial use to art. It began life in 1885 as a showroom for the Studebaker company’s wagon carriages but was converted in 1898 to an artist haven. Instead of housing wagons, it would house the teaching studios and concert spaces.

The building’s ambience lends it a gravity that comes in useful for the teachers who take out studios. Lon Ellenberger, a countertenor who’s performed with Chicago Opera Theater, has had a studio there for 12 years. “I think you feel like an artist when you’re in it,” he says. “There’s strength in an old building.” When he and a few fellow students at Northeastern Illinois had an idea to start a voice school, the Center for Voice was born. “They’ve all moved on,” he says, laughing. But Ellenberger still teaches six to eight students a week.

The sheet music Ellenberger’s students sing from can be found on the ninth floor in the venerable Performers Music store, which is popular with Chicago Symphony musicians and DePaul professors. “The [staff members] know what they’re talking about,” says Katinka Kleijn, a CSO cellist who teaches at DePaul. The narrow aisles don’t leave much walking room, but the fresh-faced college students are eager to help and make sure you don’t have to walk too far. With WFMT on the radio and a few adult and college students trickling in from lessons, the store has the solemn and earnest feel that comes from the high-minded pursuit of art. “There’s a small percentage of the public that can read music,” says laconic owner Lee Newcomer, so it’s not the type of store where people walk in to browse. They come there to learn and find what they’re looking to get.

The unreliable window-unit air-conditioners and ceiling fans can turn the Fine Arts Building into a sweltering place in the spring and summer. The El can be heard rumbling by during the free concerts at PianoForte Chicago on the eighth floor and Curtiss Hall on the tenth. Those concerts round out the most important feature of the building: being able to listen to musicians of all levels share their joy and interest in the art.

For a complete list of Fine Arts Building tenants, go to www.fineartsbuildingchicago.com/index.html.