Along West Chicago Avenue are some handsome old buildings, and a former White Elephant second-hand store now can be counted among them. There are still empty lots, a pawn shop and a liquor store on the avenue that bring to mind seedier days. But its fortunes are turning.
The neoclassical building at 54 W. Chicago Ave. that had housed the thrift shop has just been renovated by the Alliance Francaise of Chicago, an enclave of French culture that expanded into the space from its old quarters around the corner on 810 N. Dearborn St., connecting the two structures with a handsome, glass-enclosed link.
It is quite a transformation. With its glossy white paint removed, the building on Chicago is now the buff color of French limestone. The used clothes, dated appliances, worn furniture and odd decorative objects that crowded the White Elephant’s windows have been replaced with decorous, ivory-colored drapes; the grilled gate formerly used to deter drunks looking for a stoop to sleep on has been replaced with a dramatic glass entrance.
The renovation is one in a series of improvements along West Chicago that is making the street increasingly attractive. Most recent among those improvements are landscaping by the city, the renovation of the Lawson YMCA, and the expansion and renovation of Cosmopolitan Bank and Trust. With four large residential buildings under construction within blocks, it is likely that West Chicago Avenue will only continue to improve.
Through the Alliance’s tasteful new glass doorway on Chicago, students of French language, cuisine and film will gain entry to the Alliance’s new classrooms and an auditorium. A formal parlor will accommodate lectures, exhibitions, recitals and fashion shows. The Dearborn building will continue to be used, primarily as administrative offices.
To join the two structures, which expanded the organization’s facility by more than 100 percent, architects DeStefano + Partners had to perform an architectural sleight of hand. The L-shaped link between them contains stairs and a bridge, joining the backs of the two buildings where they intersect at right angles and enfolding a small, cobblestone-paved courtyard.
A major challenge for DeStefano + Partners’ project architect, Avram Lothan, was to find an appropriate architectural style with which to build a link connecting two very different buildings. The original Alliance building is Victorian, a narrow, four-story stone townhouse of 7,000 square feet in a Gold Coast neighborhood. The addition is relatively squat in comparison and stands on a heavily trafficked street. With 10,000 square feet, it is only two stories tall, its stout proportions and stately style suggesting the bank it was originally, before it became the White Elephant resale store.
Lothan chose neither Victorian nor neoclassical for the link. Instead, the connector he designed is sleek and modern. A stark black frame supports glass walls patterned with etched circles to deflect light and, in so doing, reduce heat absorption. Structural supports for the stair protrude unabashedly from the wall, as do vents for air ducts. In this respect, the addition is very much in the tradition of the Modernist architecture movement that began in the 1930s, was largely discredited by the 1980s and is now enjoying a revival, as this project attests. The first Modernist architects sought to make use of new materials and technologies, rejected ornament on their buildings, and displayed elements — like structural supports and air systems — that would have been hidden as unsightly in earlier buildings.
While the glass-enclosed link is singular and lovely, grabbing attention like some exotic bird, there is much more to this project that is equally successful, yet more subtle, or even invisible.
To begin with, DeStefano + Partners helped the Alliance decide to keep the old building on Chicago Avenue rather than construct something new. As Lothan points out, the impulse for architects to build rather than renovate is strong. “Everyone wants to make big statements, to tear things down and start over,” Lothan says. It takes restraint and contained ego to consider the possibilities of an existing building.
Lothan also thought a new building would cost more than renovating the old one, though architects often make the opposite argument. In this case, the architects knew the building was in such poor condition that it would have to be gutted, so they reasoned there could be no surprises in a building stripped to its bones. (They were surprised, however, when the roof had to be replaced, adding an unanticipated $50,000 to the $3.2 million project.)
Despite its age and poor condition, the old White Elephant did offer attractive possibilities. Though faded, its handsome facade and essential dignity were plainly retrievable and entirely appropriate to the Alliance Francaise image. But the architects made no attempt at a historic restoration. The contemporarylooking black framing for the large glass windows on the facade is the first clue of the transformation inside.
Indeed, the building inside and out seems to shift between the contemporary and the antique. Walking about the building, the shifts are subtle and pleasurable, not militant. From the wood floors and old furniture in the parlor one steps into the up-to-date auditorium, slipping between the past and the present in a way that heightens the awareness of both periods’ charms. “I’m interested in the complexity of contradictions,” Lothan says. That he is able to allow us to enjoy the contradictions as well is testament to his skill.
The large, 5,000-square-foot floors of the Chicago Avenue building proved hospitable to the Alliance’s need for new classrooms and an auditorium that would seat 150 people. On the first floor are the parlor, the auditorium, a small bookstore and support facilities like a catering kitchen; four classrooms and two seating areas occupy the second floor. The color palette of soft green and blue was, Lothan says, borrowed from the color of the etched glass that is used throughout the addition. A small ventilation tower on the roof was removed and the opening made into a vaulted skylight, admitting soft natural light into the second floor.
Standing in that area, Alliance director-general Sonia Aladjem recalls the moment when she stood there for the first time while classes were under way. “What was incredible was you could not hear one sound,” she says. This, she continues, “after being in the old building where you heard every sound.”
She recalls all too well the conditions she had endured for years in the North Dearborn building, where her offices, her staff, classrooms, a library and more were crammed together.
Now, for the first time, Aladjem says, she has an office where she can concentrate, as part of DeStefano + Partners’ task was to remodel the old facility for administrative offices. The library was moved to the second floor, where it is accessible to classrooms in the addition via the bridge.
Back on Chicago, Lothan had hoped to restore the fired clay, or terra cotta, facade of the building. But once the White Elephant’s glossy paint was removed, the architects found the surface had been too badly damaged by an earlier cleaning to leave it exposed to the air. Instead, the architects painted the exterior, matching the buff color of the terra cotta, and applied a protective sealant that would keep the material from deteriorating further.
The end result of all this is that the Alliance addition, reclaimed as it has been from blight, stands up well alongside the other positive steps being taken along Chicago.
At its lowest point, the Lawson YMCA building on the northeast corner of Dearborn and Chicago attracted troubled people and criminals. Drug dealers controlled entire floors of the building, according to the Lawson’s new director, John Heumann. But a $17 million renovation, completed in January with support from the city and from Gold Coast and Streeterville neighborhood groups, has transformed this 22-story Art Deco gem inside and out. No longer a hotel, it is about to receive a single-room-occupancy license from the city. Tenants sign leases and are interviewed before moving in. With a more stable population, the building is no longer a barrier to development.
At Clark and Chicago, the Cosmopolitan Bank and Trust has invested millions in a restoration and addition to its facility designed by architects Tilton & Lewis Associates. Interestingly, the work did not add an appreciable square footage to the bank; the new structure simply replaces an earlier addition that was deemed offensive. The current addition is carefully designed to blend with the original 1920 structure; in other words, the bank spent millions to improve the aesthetics of their facility. That is testament indeed to faith in the neighborhood.
