As Debates Rage Over Michael Reese Hospital's Future: Here Is How It Looks Today

By JoshMogerman in News on Apr 21, 2013 10:00PM

Thursday night, the City held a community meeting to discuss possible redevelopment plans for the former Michael Reese Hospital campus on the near South Side. Skidmore Owings & Merrill, architects who drew up plans for the ill-fated Olympic Village that had been envisioned for the site when the City purchased it during the Daley Administration, have been again retained to look at options for the plum parcel at the edge of Lake Shore Drive. The meeting and its rehashed conversations about anchoring the site with a casino, tech center or the Obama Presidential Library have been well covered, with our pals at Curbed laying the situation out nicely:

The Michael Reese Hospital campus, sketched out by legendary Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius, is a historical fact and nothing more. And there's no Olympics to rescue the barren site. Will the city's chosen replacement for these 48 acres in Douglas be an iconic cultural and economic presence for the South Side or a scramble of mismatched parts? The local community seems to feel the choices are that stark.

As the discussion of what the site should become heats up, we thought it worth looking at what is there today. The hospital was a point of Chicago pride for much of its existence from its egalitarian beginnings as an institution that would serve all people regardless of creed, nationality or race, to its storied medical research history, playing host to groundbreaking cholesterol and polio studies, helping spur development of the electrocardiograph and gastroscope and pioneering pediatric care.

After financial hard times closed the hospital, the City quickly scooped up the parcel for the Olympics bid, knocking down most of the buildings over the objections of local historic preservationists. When the main building, a unique prairie-style gem, was demolished after promises to the contrary in 2010, the Trib’s achitecture critic Blair Kamin fumed:

Oh, yes — the city is throwing another bone to preservationists, saying that one of the Reese buildings that Gropius co-designed, the low-slung Singer Pavilion, "will remain on the site." But no one should be fooled by that vague language, either.

In the past, city officials have said that the pavilion's fate would ultimately be decided by the developer who was selected to remake the Reese site. In other words, the Singer Pavilion could well join the main building in succumbing to the bulldozer.

The Singer Pavilion is still standing off of 31st Street today. Surrounded by ripped green-wrapped fencing, gravel piles and crumbling walls, the last remaining hospital building looks to be in rough shape. We will see if the discussions about the site’s future fulfill Kamin’s prediction.