Search & rescue

Workers' cottages

The city’s many building boosters have relentlessly promoted Chicago as the birthplace of modern architecture, and locals have gladly bought in. That’s why you’re not likely to see demolition scaffolding around the Tribune Tower or the Auditorium Building (see “Sullivan’s travels,” page 26) anytime soon—there’s just too much design consciousness here. If there is the slightest threat to a building with a famous architect’s name attached to it, you can be sure one group or another will be all over the situation in a nanosecond. But there are buildings in Chicago that don’t have that kind of star power, but still need someone to save them from the wrecking ball. Usually, this can be done by securing a building landmark designation. But landmark legislation is kind of complicated. The city, the state and the federal governments each have their own framework, and all have different criteria for designation, levels of protection and penalties for violation. A building can be designated a landmark individually or can be protected if it’s within a designated district.These are six endangered buildings that are closest to our hearts (and, we hope, a little closer to getting saved after this issue).

Workers’ cottages
1440­–42 N Washtenaw Ave
Certain building types are so ubiquitous, you don’t even see them: courtyard apartments, bungalows, and brick- and stone-faced two- and three-flats.

Another is the simple worker’s cottage; the pair at 1440–42 N Washtenaw Ave are typical—usually one-story brick or frame buildings with a pitched roof. They, too, are increasingly invisible, but not because they’re so omnipresent—rather, it’s because most of them have been knocked down, victims of teardown economics that have made them easy marks for developers.

In some places, the eradication of workers’ cottages has radically changed the streetscape. The 1800 and 1900 blocks of North Howe, Orchard and Burling Streets have lost dozens of them. Aggressive investors discovered they could buy several adjacent properties and gang them together as sites for grand urban palaces; now, this once modest no-man’s-land wedged between Old Town and DePaul has become kind of a new Billionaire’s Row, with several mammoth houses on multiple (as many as six) lots.

By the time the advocacy group Preservation Chicago got involved, certain blocks in the neighborhood had been almost completely scraped and replaced with stackables and six-flats, notes Jonathan Fine, the group’s president. Late in 2002, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks (CCL) designated a Ukrainian Village District as a City of Chicago Landmark (and extended its boundaries earlier this year), protecting most of the remaining examples in the neighborhood. But workers’ cottages are really vulnerable in other neighborhoods. “Since the Landmark District went in, there has been a cooling of the demolition cycle,” Fine says. “The developers have already milked the East Village cow dry, so now they’re moving over to Humboldt Park.” Pilsen, he predicts, will be their next target.

Why you should care It’s mostly about scale. Just because you can build something twice as high on a lot isn’t any reason to do so. Try to imagine Old Town if all of the workers’ cottages had been replaced in the ’60s with four-plus-ones (four floors of living units plus a half-buried garage level, common in Lakeview).

Threat level Pretty high. The 1400 block of Washtenaw is one of the nicer ones in Humboldt Park, and red-brick Goliaths are already encroaching close by.

Survival outlook Your guess is as good as ours.

What you can do Contact Billy Ocasio (bocasio@cityofchicago.org), the alderman for this corner of Humboldt Park, to suggest a Landmark District similar to the one in Ukranian Village.

See also There are hundreds of them all over Ukrainian Village, Humboldt Park, Logan Square and Avondale. But maybe not for long.

Acme Coke Plant
11376 S Torrence Ave
Some people might not think of industrial areas as something worth saving, but the Midwest’s old steel mills have both historic significance and an austere beauty. What do you do with abandoned steel-mill sites? The experience of the Acme Coke Plant probably isn’t the best example of what works.

The powers that declared that the city’s lakefront be kept “forever open, free and clear” kind of let things slide on the South Side, and for most of the 20th century the lakeshore from 79th Street to the Indiana border was made up of industry—much of it steel. Although giants like U.S. Steel pulled out in the early 1990s, the Acme Coke Plant was in operation as late as 2001. Since then, it’s been the stage for a noble salvation effort that just hasn’t happened. A bankruptcy court sold the buildings—but not the property—to a salvage company, which was interested in the value of the Chicago bricks in the 15 buildings there. Rod Sellers, president of the Southeast Chicago Historical Society, was instrumental in establishing the Chicago Steel Heritage Project in 2004, but as Sellers admits, “we were about ten years too late.”

The project’s idea was to save the buildings and some of the fabricating equipment and establish a steel museum. While it was able to get some grant money and enter into a contract to buy the buildings back from the salvage company, the group didn’t get much support from the city, Sellers says. The area’s land-use plan designates the site for industrial use only, and Sellers says the local alderman, John Pope, wasn’t interested in getting behind an exception.

The project defaulted on its agreement this spring, and Sellers says the group is resigned to losing the buildings. But he says they haven’t given up the idea of protecting the region’s legacy and are refocusing their efforts. Sellers says they’ve opened negotiations with the Historic Pullman Foundation to store the items they’ve been able to salvage from the site—mostly papers and photographs, but also some of the manufacturing equipment—with the eventual idea of incorporating their materials with the railroad-related collections at Pullman.

Why you should care Sure, Chicago is the poster child for the Post-Industrial City That Works, but for more than a century it was about manufacturing. Although the economy has changed, it’s important for everyone to remember the city’s humble beginnings.

Threat level Major. Typical solutions (condo conversions and the like) just won’t work here.

Survival outlook Slim to none.

What you can do The Steel Heritage Project (www.chicagosteel.org) would happily accept your donation to continue its efforts to establish a museum.

See also Peerless Confection Company, at West Diversey and North Lakewood Avenues in Lincoln Park, the last reminder of a once-booming North Side manufacturing strip. You’ve gotta love the funky sculpture mounted on the west side of the building.

Meigs Field Terminal
1400 S Linn White Dr
Most landmark legislation requires a building to be at least 50 years old before it’s eligible for any kind of designation or protection, and the Meigs Field Terminal building turns 50 in 2011. With its spare facade of poured concrete, stainless steel and tinted glass, and its soaring interior filled with flared columns, terrazzo floors and Herman Miller airport seating, it’s a nice blend of the styles of Mies van der Rohe, Philip Johnson and Eero Saarinen, and it’s pretty much in its original condition. Since Meigs Field ceased operating (i.e., since Mayor Daley went a little crazy with the bulldozers), the Park District has been using the building and has leased part of it to a bird hospital, and it looks great surrounded by the prairie plantings.

Meigs Field Terminal

Design trends are cyclical, and the crush on all things midcentury among Boomers, Xers and Yers alike is raising awareness of buildings of the 1950s and 1960s, which, incredible as it seems, are approaching 50. This is more than a little ironic, notes Lisa DiChiera, director of advocacy for Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois (a.k.a Landmarks Illinois). “Once the preservation movement gained momentum, these were the buildings perceived as having replaced all the great buildings that were lost,” she says.Tim Samuelson, the City of Chicago’s cultural historian, believes the oft-overlooked midcentury buildings are in a category he calls “cultural limbo—too old to be new and too new to be old.” DiChiera refers to the same phenomenon as “too new to appreciate and too old to depreciate.”

As Samuelson explains, expiration of the usual 30- or 40-year depreciation cycle usually coincides with the kind of sticky maintenance issues that, when incorrectly addressed or, more likely, ignored, lead to serious decline. He points to a history of today’s landmarks being disfigured during their cultural-limbo period—the Auditorium in 1907; Carson Pirie Scott in 1927 and 1935—only to be restored later. “If you can squeak through cultural limbo without screwing up the building, you’ve got a chance,” he says.

Why you should care The Meigs building isn’t just a great example of midcentury modernism, it captures the spirit of air travel in the pre-terrorist era. You can imagine Leonardo DiCaprio in Catch Me If You Can striding through there.

Threat level Low. The Chicago Park District seems to like the building.

Survival outlook Good. CPD associate director of communications Michele Jones says that the Park District has every intention of integrating the building into whatever shape Northerly Island takes.

What you can do Check out the Illinois Initiative on Recent Past Architecture (www.landmarks.org/surveys.htm) from Landmarks Illinois, where you can tell the group about a modern building you think is important.

See also O’Hare Terminals 2 and 3. The never-ending construction that you find so annoying is wiping away most traces of the original CF Murphy & Associates design—not just the facades, but the interior elements, too. For now, it seems that the rotunda between the terminals is being left alone.

Old Chicago Defender building
2400 S Michigan Ave
When 2400 S Michigan Ave was built in 1936 as headquarters for the swanky Illinois Automobile Club, its Spanish Mission Revival–ish flavor might have been completely out of context in Chicago, but it fit right in with its tarted-up neighbors.

Old Chicago Defender Building

As a location with a heavy concentration of auto dealerships in the first half of the 20th century, South Michigan Avenue was what North Western Avenue near West Peterson Avenue is today—only with a lot more style. It was called Motor Row.

It’s hard to believe that a time existed when driving was a novelty, and cars were exotic devices available primarily to the rich. As cars got fancier, so did the places where you bought them, and by the 1920s, the auto dealerships on South Michigan had hit their flashy, glitzy stride. The buildings were basically shells—huge spaces for displaying huge pieces of merchandise—but the facades along the avenue became elaborately decorated picture frames for the dream machines found inside.

But by the 1950s, most of the auto dealers fled for the suburbs via the new expressway systems, and Motor Row was chopped off by the Chinatown feeder ramp connecting Lake Shore Drive and the Stevenson Expressway. In the wake of the car dealers, other businesses took over some of the real estate. The Chicago Defender operated out of the 2400 South Michigan Avenue building for nearly 50 years. In 2003, the Sengstacke family sold the paper—and the building—to a Detroit publisher, which subsequently spun off the building to an investor group. That investor group has put the building on the market; it’s asking for $3.5 million.

Why you should care Some buildings are distinguished architecturally, some have a place in history. The 2400 building has both, and then some.

Threat level Low. The building is within the city’s Motor Row Landmark District, so any changes would be tough to push through.

Survival outlook Unclear. Philip Gibby, the agent who’s handling the building, says it may be tough to find the right buyer. The building has some great interior spaces, but condo converters all seem to want to hang balconies from the facade of the building.

What you can do Not much, unless you can find a buyer who can make the numbers work without extensive cosmetic changes.

See also The Holabird & Roche–designed Three Arts Club building at 1300 N Dearborn Pkwy. A home for women artists since its construction in 1914, it went up for sale in June of this year and its future is unknown.

Veseman Building
444 N LaSalle St
The Veseman building dates from the 1890s, but what’s important about it is its terra-cotta skin, which it acquired in the 1920s.

Veseman Building (detail at right)

Although it’s an ancient building material, terra cotta (waterproof ceramic clay) had its glory days in the first quarter of the 20th century, as architects sought out materials to clad the steel-framed skyscrapers rising in cities across America. It was reasonably cheap (less expensive than stone), endlessly variable, and three major terra-cotta manufacturers (Northwestern, American and Midland) were in the area. Decimated by the real-estate collapse that accompanied the Great Depression, the terra-cotta industry more or less fell apart after World War II, when the new International-style skyscrapers had curtain walls of glass and steel.

Buildings detailed with terra-cotta ornaments are everywhere, from major Loop landmarks like the Wrigley, Carson Pirie Scott, and Carbide & Carbon (now the Hard Rock Hotel) buildings to the deliriously decorated Uptown, Riviera and Chicago theaters, plus storefronts and apartment blocks all over the city. It’s another of those urban character traits that fade into the streetscape, and even with the crappy weather here, lots of terra-cotta ornaments have survived pretty well. While New York, Los Angeles and Miami Beach may have more examples that are decoratively more outrageous, for sheer coverage, Chicago remains the terra-cotta capital of the country.

Even among the many terra-cotta beauties in town, the Veseman’s pastel color palette makes it unique, as does its small size. It’s dwarfed by the high-rises that have popped up all around it. It sits on a block of LaSalle Street between two parking lots, and it’s for sale, with an asking price of $1.85 million. According to Aaron Anovitz, its agent, the owners are Japanese investors who have dropped plans to open a restaurant there. At press time, the property was under contract, but had not changed hands yet.

The Chicago Commission on Architectural and Historical Landmarks (the city’s official landmarks body, whose members are appointed by the mayor) has initiated proceedings to have the Veseman Building designated a city landmark. In July, the city entered into an agreement with the owner to delay the designation process until November. Constance Buscemi, director of communications for the city’s Department of Planning, says staff members are researching the property and will make a recommendation to CCL before the end of the year.

Why you should care It’s a visible example of the city’s underappreciated terra-cotta legacy, and one of the last vestiges of a more modest scale for LaSalle Street.

Threat level Moderate. On the surface, a three-story building wedged between two corner parking lots looks like a sure goner. If it were vacant, the lot would probably allow a higher floor-area ratio (a zoning ratio that determines how much floor space you can build on a given site).

Survival outlook Decent. Although the owners want to sell before the designation, the city seems to support it.

What you can do Send a letter in support of the designation to CCL (landmarks@cityofchicago.org) or contact 42nd Ward Alderman Burton Natarus (go to www.natarus.com and click on “Send Burt a message”).

See also 712 N Dearborn St, a forlorn, apparently vacant building that must have been loved at one point: Look above the third story for a decorative escutcheon with the name “Moana”; 2400 W Chicago Ave, a great little corner diner with green Art Deco ornamentation.

Cook County Hospital
1901 W Harrison St
You may not have heard of some of our other favorite buildings listed here, but the mess surrounding Cook County Hospital is notorious. Ever since the county began planning its new facility, named for John Stroger, the recently resigned president of the County Board, people started asking what would happen to the old building—it was on Landmarks Illinois’ Most Endangered Buildings list in 2001, 2003 and 2004. But the situation really heated up once the building was vacated in 2003.

Cook County Hospital

Cook County Hospital, which was built in stages from 1907 until 1926, isn’t particularly distinguished architecturally, especially in the context of other great landmark buildings (although its supporters emphasize the quality of the Beaux Arts–style terra-cotta decoration on its facade).

The County Board has gone through the motions to consider some sort of reuse for the building, but mostly seems interested in razing it to make room for a park, to comply with open-space requirements in the Medical Campus’ master plan. Preservation advocates say demolishing the building would give the board justification to build on an existing park directly across the street.

In 2003, Landmarks Illinois underwrote a persuasive plan calling for converting the structure into a multipurpose entity providing residential units for hospital staff, a state-of-the-art wellness center, and badly needed commercial and retail space at street level. But two years later, the County Board commissioned its own study that ultimately recommended demolishing the building.While several of the County Board commissioners favor saving the building, the matter has languished since the ongoing power shakeout resulting from the stroke Stroger suffered this year. Acting President Bobbie Steele did not respond to requests for a statement of the board’s official position about the fate of the building.

Why you should care Saving this building is important for posterity—and it’s the fiscally responsible thing to do. Repurposing the building as a mixed-use complex represents a genuine innovation in reusing a historic property; it also would provide important amenities to people who work at and use the Medical Campus facilities. It would also spare taxpayers a $10–$15 million demolition cost.

Threat level High Survival outlook Not great. But who knows what will happen after the County Board elections in November?

What you can do Landmarks Illinois (www.landmarks.org/how_feature.htm) or Preservation Chicago (www.preservationchicago.org/risk/cch1.html) will tell you how to help.

See also 1340 South Michigan Avenue, a warehouse most recently a Cook County Court building. It’s vacant now, and its future seems up in the air.

TOC’s preservation scavenger hunt
Photograph yourself in front of as many of the structures featured in this story as you can. The reader who sends the most photos by Nov 12 will win a copy of Lost Chicago by David Garrard Lowe.
Send photos to preservation@timeoutchicago.com.