A fire destroyed its top five floors decades ago, leaving the Isabella Building, designed in the 1890s by the “father of the skyscraper,” standing at six stories.
The building, 21 E. Van Buren St., which once housed Old St. Mary’s Church, had long fallen into disrepair.
But a historical architecture preservation group is lamenting a decision by city planning officials and the Landmarks Commission to allow DePaul University, the current owner, to raze it to make way for new academic and administrative buildings.
Demolition of architect William Le Baron Jenney’s building and a two-story structure next door is already under way, but activists from Preservation Chicago say the Isabella could have been saved and restored to a copy of its original 11 stories.
“There should have been more of an effort to save the building,” said Jonathan Fine, the group’s president. “The importance of William Le Baron Jenney cannot be stressed. This man invented the skyscraper.”
A spokesman for the city Department of Planning and Development said the building lost its architectural luster decades ago. He said it could not be salvaged and re-created to look as it did at the turn of the 20th Century, when Jenney’s buildings were among the first made with steel frames that enabled skyward construction.
“Preservation Chicago is trying to save half a building,” said city spokesman Peter Scales. “The best parts of the building are gone.”
The Isabella had not satisfied the architectural criteria of a recent citywide survey of buildings with potential to be landmarks, and the Landmarks Commission ruled that the building had little or no historic or architectural worth, Scales said.
The Isabella’s destruction won’t erase Jenney’s imprint on Chicago architecture because some of his buildings still exist in the city and have been designated landmarks, Scales said.
DePaul plans to turn the site into a parking lot before beginning work on the new complex, said university spokeswoman Robin Florzak. Before 2001, when the university bought the property from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, the Isabella housed Old St. Mary’s, now located at 1500 S. Michigan Ave.
