Lathrop Homes, St. James Catholic Church Make Preservation Chicago's Endangered List
By Chuck Sudo in News on Mar 13, 2013 2:15PM
Lathrop Homes is on Preservation Chicago's Seven Most Endangered List. (Photo credit: Gabriel X. Michael)
Architectural preservation advocacy group Preservation Chicago released its annual “Chicago 7” list of the most endangered buildings in the city Tuesday. The list is always intended to raise public awareness of architecture the group feels is architecturally significant and can be a single building or, in the case of last year’s list which included a series of movie theaters, a series of buildings bundled together as a theme.
The most notable buildings on this year’s list are Lathrop Homes, the landmark housing complex where preservationists have expressed concern over CHA’s redevelopment plans for the project, and St. James Catholic Church in Bronzeville, a 133-year-old neo-Gothic building designed by Patrick Keely, who built Notre Dame University’s Basilica of the Sacred Heart.
St. James could meet the wrecking ball later this year. The Archdiocese of Chicago holds a demolition permit on the church but, after pleas from preservationists, agreed to delay demolishing the structure until at least April. Preservation Chicago Board President Ward Miller told Chicagoist in January the group was working with the Archdiocese to find “feasible” alternatives to demolition.
The Chicago Housing Authority’s plans for the largely vacant Lathrop Homes, meanwhile, have preservationists circling the proverbial wagons because the three different versions each include demolition in some form. Lathrop Homes, one of the oldest public housing projects in the country, is a WPA project listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Lathrop has the largest vacancy rate of all of CHA’s properties, yet the agency CHA has been collecting federal subsidies on the vacant units for years.
The other buildings on the “Chicago 7” include:
The Guyon Hotel: This Garfield Park hotel at 4000 W. Washington is most noted for where former President Jimmy Carter and wife Rosalynn stayed while working on Habitat for Humanity projects in Chicago. The building was built in 1927.
The Century & Consumers Building These structures in the Loop (200 and 220 S. State Street) are noted for their historic terra cotta design, but are vacant and no reuse plans have been proposed.
Allstate Headquarters Building: Designed by the architectural firm of Carr & Wright, Preservation Chicago calls this building at 3245 W. Arthington Street, built in 1949, “a rare example of immediate postwar modern high-rise construction in the city of Chicago.”
State Bank of Clearing: Preservation Chicago calls this vacant bank at 5235 W. 63rd Street “an important example of Mid-Century Modern bank architecture.” Built by architect Harry Weese, the building is on the market but demolition is a distinct possibility.
Medic Building: An Art Deco building built on 1929 at 3223-25 N. Ashland Avenue, is one of the last remaining structures from the Lincoln/Ashland/Belmont intersection’s Roaring 20s retail heyday and is still largely intact.