Skip Platt wasn`t surprised when he saw that a wrecking crane had ripped through the roof of the Aurora railroad roundhouse one day in 1977. But he was angry, and he had the power to do something about it.
The roundhouse was the oldest building of its kind in the United States, a limestone doughnut that resonated with the built-for-the-ages solidity of a Roman ruin.
In 1872, the roundhouse was in its heyday, part of a 60-acre complex that employed nearly 2,000 people, perhaps as many as 5 of every 10 workers in Aurora. The roundhouse, in fact, was largely responsible for turning Aurora into a city.
But in February, 1977, one day after announcing that it was abanoning plans to turn the building into an air-conditioned shopping mall, its owner, the Burlington Northern Railroad, was trying to destroy it.
Only the Burlington had forgotten something. It didn`t have a demolition permit.
So Platt, who was then Aurora`s director of inspections, tacked a stop-work order on the doors of the historic structure, and the demolition stopped faster than a derailed train tumbling off the track.
Today, it`s fair to say, the roundhouse has come full circle.
On Feb. 28, Aurora Mayor David Pierce formally dedicated a gleaming new train and bus station in the former machine shops where laborers constructed wheels, axles, cylinders and train parts, just north of the roundhouse.
Two weeks later, Aurora officials announced that a local developer wants to turn the roundhouse itself into a ”high-end factory outlet mall”
containing as many as 30 specialty shops.
In such malls, upscale manufacturers sell merchandise at reduced prices. Suburban housewives soon may be buying designer blouses amid the ghosts of iron men from the steam age who built and repaired the trains to help make Chicago the railroad capital of America.
Together, the roundhouse and the commuter concourse are known as the Aurora Transporation Center. Already, they have given fresh hope to the down- and-out downtown of Kane County`s largest city, but their significance extends beyond Aurora.
If the renovation of the roundhouse succeeds, the buildings will become the brightest stars in a constellation of rehabilitated industrial buildings that dot the Fox River Valley.
Three such renovations have already occurred, all of them on the west bank of the Fox River (the roundhouse is on the river`s east side):
– An 89-year-old limestone structure was converted into the Batavia Muncipal Government Center in 1983. Once a farm machinery factory, the building was later home to an aerospace firm that made parts for the rocket that helped put the first men on the moon.
– A 122-year-old brick and limestone building was joined with two new buildings to form Geneva on the Dam, a restaurant, office, and shopping complex in Geneva that also opened in 1983. The rehabilitated building is a former clothing iron factory that, at its height, shipped out four railroad carloads of irons per week.
– An 87-year-old brick structure became a factory outlet mall called the Piano Factory in 1986. The structure, which is in St. Charles, was, as the name says, a piano factory from 1901 to 1938.
Each of these rough-hewn structures possesses a quirky humanity that makes them stand out amid the sleek, steel-and-glass office buildings that line the emerging high-technology corridor along the East-West Tollway.
But the roundhouse, which was built in stages beginning in 1855, packs a special historic and esthetic punch.
This is partly because of its pre-Civil War origins and partly because of its circular exterior, a shape repeated on the inside by an elegant arcade of brick arches and iron columns.
It`s also because the roundhouse so neatly sums up the entire history of a city: Aurora`s rise as a 19th-Century manufacturing center, its recent reputation as a beatup industrial town and the city`s current effort to become a diversified urban center along the booming tollway.
”We don`t have the railroad. We don`t have the big industry. But we still can make use of that past and spur on growth,” says John Jaros, director of the Aurora Historical Museum. ”It`s going to be a different kind of growth, a different use of that facility. But you`re recognizing your past when you make use of those facilities instead of tearing them down and building something new.”
In its early years, the roundhouse provided shelter to steam-belching locomotives between trips. The building also offered daily maintenance and repairs, and allowed locomotives to turn around on a turntable.
When a second roundhouse (since demolished) was built, the original roundhouse joined the rest of the complex of about 50 buildings to focus on train construction.
That aspect of the building`s past emerges vividly in a photograph that shows the scowling, stubbly faces of the Day Furnace Gang, a cast of characters who worked in the locomotive blacksmith shop in 1903.
It was from shops like these that the roundhouse complex built, rebuilt and repaired trains that made the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad one of the major lines of the Midwest and made Aurora one of the region`s largest railroad construction and repair centers.
In 1879 alone, the Aurora shops constructed 8 passenger cars and 448 freight cars, rebuilt almost 500 other cars and repaired 2,200 other cars, according to a study of the Aurora complex prepared for the National Park Service by John Kolp of Dennett, Muessig, Ryan & Associates, an Iowa City, Iowa, firm that documents historic structures.
The Aurora complex began to slide in the 1920s when the expanding Chicago, Burlington & Quincy line transferred the manufacturing of freight trains and locomotives from Aurora to western locales such as Denver, which were closer to its new tracks.
As a result, the Aurora complex concentrated on building and repairing passenger train equipment and on making parts for use throughout the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy system. But after World War II, planes and cars stripped the railroads of their long-standing hold on the long-distance passenger trade, and the Aurora complex went into its final decline.
The Burlington Northern Railroad, which was created as a result of a merger of railroads including the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, closed the complex in 1974. In 1975 and 1976, all buildings except the roundhouse and the neighboring machine shops were demolished.
After the complex was closed, the Burlington Northern tried to turn the remaining buildings into an 80,000-square-foot mall with 70 specialty shops. But that plan was abandoned, railroad officials said, because tenants didn`t sign up.
Although the retailing concept didn`t work for the Burlington Northern, officials of the KMS Partership, an Aurora firm selected by the city to be the roundhouse developer, are optimistic that the building will succeed as a factory outlet mall. They point to a captive daily market of 6,000 commuters who use the transit concourse adjoining the roundhouse and to an expanding number of affluent residents in the surrounding area.
The officials also say that the presence of the Piano Factory, about 15 miles to the north, will help, rather than hurt, their project because it will draw buyers to both factory outlet malls.
In addition, the officials cite upcoming redevelopment projects in gritty downtown Aurora, which is just to the south of the roundhouse complex.
”What you have is really a revitalization of the downtown . . . which makes it a bit easier to market the property,” said Robert McMillan, a KMS official.
So far, no tenants have signed up, but KMS officials don`t expect to have trouble filling the roundhouse because, at two levels and 68,000 square feet, it will be much smaller than a typical shopping mall.
The $7.9-million project also faces the uncertainty of whether Aurora will receive a $1.7-million federal Urban Development Action Grant, which would allow the city to make a low-interest loan to the KMS Partnership. If the grant is not forthcoming, city officials said, financing will have to be rearranged.
Ironically, the Burlington Northern has given the project a boost by giving Aurora a 30-year, $1-a-year lease. Railroad officials say they are
”encouraging the city to do whatever they can with that property.”
Led by Mayor Pierce and his assistant, John Savage, Aurora officials are doing just that. Though it was formally dedicated in February, the project`s transit concourse was put to use in January, three months ahead of schedule and about $100,000 under budget.
The opening pleased Aurora residents who had worked at the roundhouse and who remembered their fathers and grandfathers working at the complex.
It also pleased Skip Platt, now 61 years old, the man who posted the stop-work order that started the save-the-roundhouse movement that eventually was led by Aurora lawyer Calvin Thelin and Batavia lawyer Theodore Schuster.
”I kind of got a kick out of it when I looked at the paper and everybody was celebrating the renovation,” Platt said the other day. ”I thought how little did a lot of them know how close that building came to being flat on the ground.”
