Seth and Kimberly Guterman were alarmed to learn last month that a developer intended to tear down a turn-of-the-century three-flat on their block. They and their neighbors on West Newport came up with a plan to save the building by turning the whole block, which runs unbroken from Halsted to Sheffield, into a landmark.
a demolition permit without contacting the planning department and at least holding a meeting on the matter. To make sure nothing similar happened again, he pushed through a law requiring a 90-day moratorium on any request to demolish a building that had been deemed especially valuable in a late-80s catalog of most of the buildings in Chicago. The catalog had color coded buildings, the most historically valuable being, in descending order, red, orange, and green.
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But as preservationists point out, the law merely sets off an alarm–it doesn’t compel the city to save a building someone wants to tear down. And so far it hasn’t made the Commission on Chicago Landmarks, a nine-person body appointed by Daley that makes recommendations to the City Council on buildings that should be saved, any quicker to preserve old buildings. There was no 90-day moratorium for the orange-rated Cass Studios building, at Chicago and Wabash, and this past summer it was demolished. The city said it made a mistake. Thirteen more orange-rated buildings were demolished after their 90 days were up. The city said they weren’t worth preserving. And another ten orange-rated buildings will probably be destroyed within the next few months. The commission did recommend that landmark status be given to Saint Gelasius Church in Woodlawn, but only after the local alderman, Arenda Troutman, threatened to tie herself to the church to keep it from being torn down.
It’s not just the building alone, he says, but “the way the building fits into the context of the block.” The block is one of the few in Lakeview that hasn’t been changed in recent years by development–all of its 60 or so turn-of-the-century buildings remain. “I think it’s a beautiful street with cultural and historical significance,” says Guterman. “Look up and down the block and you’ll see house after house with the bay windows and the porches–there’s that ambience that says Chicago. The developer wants to put up a four-story unit that’s out of context with the block. It’s like punching out a tooth in a beautiful row of teeth.”
A few days later the residents pressed their case with Tunney. “He listened to us,” says Guterman, “and said if we had support in the community for landmarking the block he’d support us.”
Yet some Newport residents say Goeken told them he didn’t think the building was worth saving. “I talked to Goeken, and it was very hard to pin him down,” says Guterman. “He said, ‘Well, it’s not really historically valuable.’ I said, ‘Have you seen the block?’ And he’s like, ‘Well, no, I haven’t really seen the block.’ So how can he make a judgment?”
