Mike Schramm

Preservation Chicago is trying to drum up attention for the new version of its annual Chicago's Seven Most Threatened Buildings list, and the result is standard press-conference fare. On the second floor of City Hall, a small crowd has gathered, consisting of a few news cameras, interested parties from the community, the odd political figure, and half a dozen on-assignment reporters casually jotting notes in notebooks.

President Jonathan Fine is very proud to present this year's list, and reads from the literature put together on the doomed buildings. The University of Illinois is threatening to erase Pilsen as we know it, 59th and Halsted is a "vanishing urban corner" and the upcoming Brown line makeover threatens DePaul University's Hayes-Healey Center: "They just don't build things like this anymore, folks," says Fine. His suggestion for the Center is to put the whole building on skids and slide it forward into the street. Apparently a similar scheme worked in Detroit, and if it's good enough for Detroit...

Their plans for the rooftops behind Wrigley Field are less vague. Because of work on the stadium (itself already granted local landmark status), owners of the bleachers on the rooftops behind the stadium are making plans to raise them up to sixty-five feet higher. Fine makes it very clear they aren't opposed to the raising of the rooftops, only that they would like the City to make the entire area a "Wrigley Rooftop Landmark District." After all, we have to protect "the most commonly televised image of Chicago--at least as seen by people in other cities." The Interior Furniture Company Building is simply stuck being a low rise in a high-rise world: it was just vacated by the Domestic Violence Court, and is a classic brick structure in the middle of a South Loop neighborhood "undergoing rapid conversion."

News that the New York Life Insurance building at LaSalle and Madison is due for a fifty-story skyscraper built on top of it draws boos and chuckles of indignation from the gathered, but the real star of the day is Promontory Point. Fine gives up the podium to Jack Spicer of the Community Task Force to Save the Point, who calls the nominations, including the beloved limestone seawall that's currently destined to be turned into concrete, "seven innocent buildings that have been sentenced to death." Passersby turn their heads to look as he finishes, "Let's put a stop to capital punishment!"

(2005-11-15)

Also by Mike Schramm

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Dog Day Afternoon
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Star Scribe
Matthew Stover has read the script of the new "Star Wars" movie, and he has bad news for you. "Anakin Skywalker falls to the dark side," the author says over the phone. "The Republic falls, the Empire rises." And, apparently, though it might not be widely known, Darth Vader is Luke's father
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The Illustrated Life
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Amazing Story
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Don't they know there's a war on?
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Belting the Maintenance Blues
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Game over?
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Spam and Cheese
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Serving Kurtwood Smith
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Not too many cooks
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