In Chicago, it’s possible to buy an old, deteriorating building for one dollar, provided you promise to save it from the wrecking ball and spend your money renovating it. Not only do you avoid the wasted energy and resources associated with demolition and starting from scratch, but you can also make the building more sustainable in the process.
As of this writing, we have installed solar panels on our roof (giving us a source of free renewable electricity), switched out our gas furnace with electric heat pumps, and replaced all gas appliances with electric equivalents in our 100-year-old Oak Park home. We have shut off our gas service and upgraded our car to an electric vehicle (EV), charging it basically for free at home, eliminating our reliance on polluting gasoline with its rising costs.
Three mayors ago, in the City that Works, the original Goldblatt Bros. Department Store sat empty on Chicago Avenue in the City’s bustling West Town neighborhood. A shadow of its former distinguished self, the structure was slated for demolition, to be replaced by a Del Ray Farms supermarket. Enter a group of community activists and preservationists, whose objections to the razing prompted the City to buy the vacant store in 1997 and recast it as a municipal office building. The structure, now a Chicago landmark, underwent an extensive rehab to accommodate a senior center, the Chicago Department of Family Services and other City agencies. More recently, part of it was remodeled again to become the West Town branch of the Chicago Public Library.
Editor’s note: Euclid Avenue United Methodist Church will host an in person double feature for the One Earth Film Fest at 6:30 p.m. Friday, March 10: “The Falconer” + “Mardi & The Whites.” Doors open 45 minutes early to enjoy refreshments, visit with community partners, check in/register, and get best seats. Free registration here.
Located just 20 minutes by bicycle from Frank Lloyd Wright’s celebrated house in Oak Park, Illinois, Euclid Avenue United Methodist Church is the Village’s epicenter of sustainability initiatives. The 22,500-square-foot church was built in 1900 and remained the same, more or less, until the early 2010’s, when its leaders bit the green bullet. By 2014, they had completed two major energy-saving upgrades to the building.
Historecycle has emerged from fall hibernation with renewed energy, like an aging building newly retrofitted with LED lights. For the past several months, we’ve been Sherlock Holmes-ing a few “mystery” structures we’ve discovered, to dig into their murky past. And the rigorous pursuit of historical data has been like a shot in the arm.
Take, for example, the former B. & B. Shoe Company factory, which dates to at least the 1920s. Located in Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood, B. & B.’s workers used sewing machines to turn out footwear by the hundreds, starting most likely in the 1940s. By 1992 the three-story brick building had been sold to the current owners and reopened as the Catherine Cook School.
