A slender Streeterville low-rise has been a rooming house, an artist’s studio and the Chicago headquarters of a presidential candidate, before a late 1960s renovation turned it into a glassy boutique-and-art-gallery building.
But that could all come to an end Thursday, for the property at 67 E. Oak St.
That’s when the Chicago Plan Commission votes on a proposal by a limited liability company, called 67 E. Oak Street Partners, to wreck the five-story building and replace it with a 34-foot tall, two-story glass-fronted retail structure.
A representative from Myefski Architects, designers of the planned new space, said the owners considered renovating the building then decided to build an entirely new one.
“The ownership looked at it [and said, ‘What if] we raze the building and put up a new building that’s more consistent with exactly what’s on Oak Street right now,” the representative said. “That’s … where we landed: A single tenant luxury retail space, two story.”
The almost certain loss of 67 E. Oak St., isn’t a full-scale preservation emergency. But its likely demise is still worth noting as the architectural face of Oak Street continues to grow more polished, profitable and upscale — and maybe just a bit characterless — with each passing year.
Besides, the building’s history and that glassy “Hollywood Squares”-like facade shouldn’t be sent to that Great Brick Pile in the Sky without something being said about it first.
An artist, birds — and Hubert Humphrey
The history of 67 E. Oak St., was a stone-cold mystery to me.
I’d assumed it was a midcentury building, based on that great facade. So did Yuke Li, the new research manager of the group Preservation Chicago, until she tracked down the rest of the building’s tale.
“Because it looks very modern from the exterior, and it’s on Oak Street with a lot of other luxury brands together, I thought it was built, like, very recently,” Li said.
She found out it was originally a four-story Victorian era Richardson Romanesque-styled residence with first floor retail space.
It later became a rooming house. The legendary Arthur Rubloff — he redeveloped North Michigan Avenue and nicknamed it “the Magnificent Mile” — switched the building to commercial use by 1949.
But Oak Street hadn’t yet gone posh, and for years, the building held a variety of uses. In 1953, tenants included Hobby Breeders, which sold parakeets, lovebirds, cockatiels, canaries and pet supplies.
The noted Chicago surrealist artist Judith Thecla either lives or worked there in the 1960s, Li found. Thecla was booted from the spot when the modernist renovation plans were drafted.
Thecla lost much of her possessions, art supplies and a poetry collection, in the move. She was put in a nursing home in 1971 and died two years later.
Presidential candidate Hubert H. Humphrey’s Chicago campaign headquarters leased space in the building in 1968. The vice president and Democratic Party nominee lost to Republican Richard Nixon in November of that year.
A $500,000 renovation of 67 E. Oak St., began in December 1968, giving the building its current look and creating air conditioned gallery and shop spaces.
Stores such as Gold Coast Travel, Ladies Fashion Exchange, That Paper Place, the Free Galleries, Distelheim Galleries and Robert Paul Gallery then moved in, Li found.
A changing street
The Chicago Plan Commission will hear the proposal for 67 E. Oak St., as part of its duties to make sure developments within the shadow of Lake Michigan properly squares up with the city’s 50-year-old Lakefront Protection Ordinance.
The new building is small, particularly by Gold Coast/Streeterville standards — a two-story, steel-and-glass facade with an interior stair visible from the sidewalk. The laminated glass is bird friendly, according to the proposal.
“It’s a little bit of a blank canvas for the tenant that’s eventually going to move in,” the representative from Myefski Architects said.
And for those of us of a certain vintage (I turn 60 this month), it’s yet another piece gone of the old Oak Street — where you were once able to take in the latest blockbuster at the sleek Esquire Theater, at 58 E. Oak St., or pick up a big ole Pioneer stereo receiver from MusiCraft a few doors down.
“We have two things going on here,” architecture expert and social observer Lynn Becker, who called attention on his Facebook last week to 67 E. Oak St.’s likely fate, told me.
“Income equality is creating so much luxury that it defies the overall decline in retail and seems to keep expanding down Oak and Rush — even as North Michigan around the Water Tower is in collapse, resulting in a substantial rebuilding of those thoroughfares,” he said.
“Then there’s the actual [architectural] style of luxury. You look at the new Chanel flagship [at 65 E. Oak St.] and there’s a different style there. Is it our modern equivalent of Art Deco?”