Featured Project: The Booker Building

An Open Letter to Alderman Toni Preckwinkle

We are writing to you in an appeal to save the Booker Building, the historic anchor of the southwest corner of 47th and Cottage Grove. This corner has long been the focus of redevelopment efforts in our neighborhood, both for its problems, but more importantly for its potential. Even now it is a busy corner and a natural place to begin to restore shopping and other services to Cottage Grove and 47th streets. We strongly support these efforts, as does everyone in our neighborhood.

We are writing because these efforts will be more successful if the Booker Building is saved, restored, and incorporated into the larger development planned for this block, rather than torn down. The current plan has recognized the value of saving the existing 3-flats on Evans and has attempted to take its cue from them as to its overall style and scale. The same considerations are even more compelling in the case of the Booker.

The entire plan for the Cottage Grove corridor has as its aim to try to recreate for a new century the busy, friendly feeling and scale of the old neighborhood shopping areas of the city. Our older residents remember when 43rd and 47th were the same sort of lively shopping streets that one finds now only on the North Side. This is what everyone wants to see here again. It only makes sense that we would want to preserve and use the best of what remains of the old shopping districts as an anchor for new development.

The biggest success stories in Chicago for the resurgence of healthy neighborhood shopping areas, neighborhoods like Lincoln Park and Andersonville, work the way they do and feel the way they do because their old commercial buildings have been saved and used. Pilsen is a good example of a poorer neighborhood that works and feels the same way as its wealthier counterparts and for the same reason. A successful neighborhood is not merely a matter of money.

The Booker Building, built in 1914, is one of the last of Cottage Grove's old commercial buildings. And it is now, and always was, one of its finest. It was designed by Horatio Wilson, who lived here in Kenwood, and whose firm designed several of its mansions, as well as houses along Drexel Boulevard and King Drive. It is a handsome example of the American Arts and Crafts / Prairie School commercial style, is in excellent repair, and was designed for exactly the uses the neighborhood has in mind for this corner. It could easily be adapted for modern stores and apartments as part of the larger development. Vintage corner buildings are especially important to our urban streetscape, and the Booker Building will have a strong and dignified presence at the intersection. The bank building at the northeast corner, where your office has relocated, offers the same stabilizing presence.

Horatio Wilson also designed the Harper Theater Building at 53rd and Harper, now owned by the University of Chicago and scheduled for redevelopment. The University felt that the continued presence of a solid vintage building at that corner location could strengthen the entire street and might well contribute to the quality of the development itself. To this end they issued a Request for Proposal to developers that suggested preservation. From the many proposals offered they selected one that preserves most of the original building and promises to be an exciting contribution to commercial street life..

Everyone living in our neighborhood, whether in a new home or old, lives here at least in part because they like the historic texture and feeling of the neighborhood. We feel sure that if given a choice our neighborhood would overwhelmingly support saving the Booker. This choice has not been considered by anyone so far in this process simply because of an understandable oversight. The building has housed a liquor store for as long as anyone can remember, and has been so closely connected to the crowd hanging out in front of it, that the building itself was mistaken for the problem. And because of the liquor store crowd, no one who walked or drove by ever lingered long enough to notice the beautiful facade above them, the decorative terra cotta ornament, the Prairie style roof.

Everyone who lives here knows that we are part of this neighborhood's rebirth and that we are building for the future. We should be able to look past the transitory problems and see the fine and lasting things that are ours here, that have stood solid in good times and hard times, and should remain.

We request that you meet with us and other members of the community who believe that historic preservation is absolutely essential to the success of our neighborhood. The current plan is still in its beginning stages. Make the Booker Building the historic jewel of this new development!

For more information, and to sign a petition to save the building, please see our web site: http://oaklandpreservation.org

Sincerely,
Oakland Preservation

Save the Booker Building: SIGN THE PETITION NOW!

Featured Project
Demolition Threat: The Booker Building

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