A Streeterville building that arose from ashes of the Great Chicago Fire more than 150 years ago is headed toward city landmark status.
The Commission on Chicago Landmarks unanimously voted Monday to recommend a permanent designation for Erie Street Row, 161 E. Erie St., an elegant four-story, limestone-faced commercial structure originally built as townhomes immediately after the 1871 fire.
Erie Street Row was granted preliminary landmark status last October.
The building’s owners, Johnson O’Connor Research Foundation, sought a permit last July to demolish the structure.
But Matt Crawford, architectural historian for the landmarks division of the city’s Department of Planning, told the commission that Erie Street Row’s architecture, history and important ownership make the building worthy of preservation.
The vote sends the recommendation to the City Council for full approval. Johnson O’Connor — which seeks to sell the building — unsuccessfully objected to the designation.
“We don’t want to be in the real estate business,” Johnson O’Connor President CEO Anne Steiner told the commission. “And we don’t want to be in the historic preservation business. We are in the aptitude testing business, and we’re a nonprofit, and we are struggling right now, like many nonprofits.”
Meanwhile, the Streeterville Organization of Active Residents supports the designation.
“It’s one of our last remaining buildings from the late 1800s in the Streeterville neighborhood,” SOAR board member Gail Spreen said Thursday.
“One of the things 161 actually gives the pedestrian [is] this whole sense of … what this neighborhood used to be,” she said.
Owner a ‘bit surprised’ about the designation
An Italianate-style building clad in Joliet limestone, Erie Street Row was originally five row houses. The two westernmost residences were lopped off in the 1960s to make room for a Michigan Avenue high-rise, Crawford said. Erie Street Row retains nearly all of its original exterior elements and early modifications.
The building became the upscale Grey Stone Inn in 1913. In the 1920s, the structure was converted into offices as nearby Michigan Avenue grew in prominence.
Johnson O’Connor — a pioneering testing and research firm created and operated by its namesake psychometrician Johnson O’Connor and his wife, architect Eleanor Manning O’Connor — has had offices there since 1952, Crawford said.
Ironically, the Johnson O’Connor Foundation unwittingly put Erie Street Row on the path toward landmark status when it sought the permit to raze the building.
That’s because Erie Street Row carries a high “orange” rating in the city’s Chicago Historic Resources Survey, a distinction that automatically allowed the Department of Planning to put a 90-day hold on the demolition permit request while the agency investigates whether the building should be landmarked.
The city’s landmarks staff also listed Johnson O’Connor’s history and longtime presence in the building as a reason to grant the landmark designation.
“I admit I was a little bit surprised because we did our own research on the building, trying to guess what landmarks might say,” Steiner said. “It’s only part of the building [that survives], it’s an unknown architect. We were surprised they wanted to landmark it.”
Steiner told the commission her organization never wanted to demolish the building, but only applied for the permit in hopes of re-starting stalled talks with city landmarks staff over the future of the structure and any proposed sale.
“I understand [seeking a demolition permit] was not the right thing to do, now,” Steiner said. “We just want a building that is viable to sell. We don’t want anything bad to happen to the building; we do like it. We can’t afford to fix it.”
A new use for the building?
The permanent landmark designation would cover the building’s Erie Street frontage, protecting it from demolition and unsympathetic alternations, while encouraging its restoration and reuse.
But a brick boiler house and a garage, both behind the building, could be demolished for redevelopment.
The new development — likely a tower — would have to be set back far enough to allow Erie Street Row to be read as an independent structure by pedestrians on the public way, according to the designation.
“Keeping that look — and the setback [of any new building from 161], I think, is the most important part,” Spreen said. “And keeping that façade beautiful is too.”