Hardwood floors, granite counters and stainless-steel appliances are among the selling points of many new condominiums. But such amenities aren’t enough for some Chicago home buyers.
These buyers want something new construction couldn’t even begin to offer: A legacy, a history, a decades-long lineage spotlighting the city’s storied past.
The trend isn’t confined to the urban center, either. In Chicago’s suburbs, historic properties are being converted for cottages and high-end housing. In some locations, the centerpiece of such a development is a huge mansion clothed in tradition.
Sharon Barrett and her husband, Stephen Coates, found plenty of historic charm in a building that for most of the 20th Century served as Chicago’s hub for fresh fruits and vegetables.
The building that houses their townhouse is the former South Water Street wholesale produce market. It has been reborn as the 900-unit University Commons.
“I’ve seen pictures of what it looked like in its heydey,” Barrett said of the group of structures that now serve as her home. “I certainly remember what it was. And part of the charm of showing the place off to people is telling them what it used to be, what its history was.”
Living in the historic building also has elevated Barrett’s reverence for other structures from Chicago’s architectural glory years.
“I am looking at the old buildings downtown much more closely now,” she said. “I’m really appreciating them, and the art and craftsmanship that went into them, for the first time.”
Thankfully for Barrett and other buyers who prize the holdovers of the early 20th Century, Chicago’s vibrant industrial past ensures a wealth of grand old structures well suited to reincarnation as residences.
Among the more prominent is The Shoemaker Lofts, in the six-story former Florsheim Shoe manufacturing facility at Belmont Avenue and Pulaski Road on Chicago’s northwest side.
Within this imposing structure, developer Dubin Residential has created 175 one-bedroom, one-bedroom-with-den, two-bedroom, and three-bedroom loft condominiums.
Built in the 20th Century’s second decade, with an addition in the 1940s, the building serves up myriad features that helped to make it an ideal choice for adaptive reuse, said Mike Kelahan, Dubin Residential’s director of sales and marketing.
Because it was designed to house heavy shoemaking machinery, the plant was built of concrete. It has concrete floors, concrete structural posts and 3 -foot diameter concrete columns fluted at the top. All help contribute to the quiet of the residential lofts, according to Kelahan.
“Earlier industrial buildings had timber elements,” he said. “What you lose in a timber building is the privacy factor. It’s much noisier.”
Ceilings are about 11 to 12 feet high, and the windows measure 9 feet tall by 14 feet wide.
They are “wildly huge by today’s standards,” Kelahan said.
Electricity was costly when the structure was designed, and the expansive windows not only afforded plant workers as much natural light as possible, but also helped trim Florsheim’s electric bills.
To keep the building’s historic flavor, the words “The Florsheim Company,” engraved in terra cotta over the building’s main entrances, have been retained.
On the North Shore, luxury homes are being created at Amberley Woods, set on the site of the famous Everitt mansion called Blithefield in Lake Forest. The development by RHA is using the mansion as a sales center on Illinois Highway 60. The house has been in the Everitt family for four generations.
In Antioch, Susanne Tauke of New American Homes is building The Cottages of Newport Cove on Bluff Lake. The site once was a boat storage facility and two restaurants. One of the night spots, called Nolan’s, purportedly was a mob hideaway. There is even a tunnel from the restaurant leader down a hill to the water, which bootleggers reportedly used during Prohibition.
In Evanston, the former site of Northwestern University’s Research Park is being redeveloped by Optima Inc., as Optima Views. The research park once housed the well-known Levy Center.
At Shoemaker Lofts, the original interior brick is a nod to the solid construction of the past. And in the lobby, Dubin plans to mount enlarged sepia photographic prints of the plant’s shoemaking operations, Kelahan said.
Another such option for connoisseurs of Chicago’s good old days is University Station at 1550 S. Blue Island Ave., The building offers 232 studio, one- and two-bedroom and two-bedroom-with-den units on 11 floors, with occupancy starting Dec. 1.
In its past life, University Station served as the Produce Terminal, a massive, 330,000-square-foot cold storage warehouse.
As gargantuan as the building is, it was intended to be part of an even larger complex when built in 1928, said Ted Mazola, president of Chicago’s New West Realty, which is marketing University Station.
“The eastern facade, along with the cornice work around the entire building, was done in an art deco style that was in vogue at that time,” Mazola said. “Despite the building being industrial in nature, you had a high level of decorative detailing … and four different colors of terra cotta.”
The lobby is being restored to showcase art deco detailing in the plasterwork, indirect lighting and original floor tile. And though it no longer works, the building’s original elevator cab is being restored to its former appearance, and will be anchored at ground level.
Recognizing the city wants to honor its industrial past by keeping as many of the old roof-mounted water towers as possible, the developers came up with an ingenious plan. Though only the support structure of the building’s original water tower remains, a fiberglass tank was created with the same look and size of the genuine article.
Because it underwent an historic renovation, University Station benefits from a tax freeze that will keep residents’ property tax bills at a fraction of what they otherwise would be, saving each $400 to $500 a month, Mazola said.
The buildings comprising South Water Street wholesale produce market were low-rise warehouses, two so large they were equivalent in size to 18-story buildings laid to earth. Each of the six buildings featured loading docks for produce trucks. Those docks have been reborn as raised, wrought-iron-gated front porches for the homes situated at street level.
Above the loading docks were overhangs that protected workers and produce from rain. While the overhangs are gone, they have been replaced with overhang-lookalike balconies serving the second-floor residents.
“In each building … lobbies are decorated in a fruit motif,” said Brad Nugent, of Coldwell Banker, which represents developer Enterprise Cos. “We have the Lemon Lobby, the Kiwi Lobby, the Blueberry Lobby, the Raspberry Lobby and the Orange Lobby, with seven more yet to be created.”
But it’s University Commons’ exteriors that command perhaps the most attention, home buyer Barrett noted.
“People get almost giddy when they turn the corner on 15th Street from Morgan, and see these two white shiny facades with these black wrought iron balconies and the gorgeous landscaping,” she said. “It’s like the White City.”
Meanwhile, the apartments that helped launch a revival of Chicago’s Printers Row neighborhood almost a quarter century ago are now being sold to condo buyers.
Printers Square, 740 S. Federal St., is a complex of six interconnected buildings built in the 1920s to house a wide array of printing companies. The buildings eventually fell vacant, but were renovated in the early 1980s, with four becoming apartment buildings and the others remaining commercial structures.
In its conversion to condominiums, Printers Row was given a thorough makeover by developer JDL Development, reported sales consultant Peter Boland, with Chicago’s @properties.
“There are four entrances, one for each residential building, and each has a grand winding staircase that rises from the lobby to the second floor, despite the fact elevators are situated right there,” Boland said.
In the lobbies, glass mosaic tile has been added on the floors and walls, and art deco lighting and chandeliers have been incorporated as well.
All hallways, elevators and common areas were completely renovated. Glass accent tiling was added to walls, custom-made paneling to elevators and elevator vestibules, and spot Halogen sconces to hallways.
