How do you renovate a local landmark?
Ben Yeshurun, 31, who has redeveloped Chicago residential properties for about six years, faced that question after he agreed in October 2025 to purchase the Lincoln Park home and studio of painter Roger Brown.
Brown gained national fame in the 1960s and ‘70s as one of the Chicago Imagists. A year before his death in 1997, the celebrated artist gave the 1880s residence at 1926 N. Halsted and its contents to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which maintained it as a study center until closing it in 2020.
Then, last year, the school stunned the local art world by putting the home on the market as a possible teardown. Historic preservationists and Brown enthusiasts rallied to have it listed as a local landmark.
They prevailed. Just days after Yeshurun signed the contract for his $1.196 million purchase, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks voted unanimously for the property to receive preliminary landmark status. Final City Council approval came in May.
As that formal process unfolded, Yeshurun faced a quandary. Landmark designation would require extra steps to get building permits and pursue renovations.
Yeshurun did not back out; instead, he grew more resolute.
“This is going to be a really cool project, and I want to be a part of it,” he said.
The developer does not plan to live in the house or return it to the previous use as a study center. Instead, he intends to gut the interior and rearrange it with six bedrooms (four upstairs and two in the basement) and an open floor plan on the first floor. Then he will sell it and play up the connection to Brown and Chicago art history when he puts it on the market.
“I really liked the fact that this was a really big house already, and I didn’t see a reason to tear it down,” he said. “I like those projects where you can keep the history of it.”
The elements a Chicago landmark designation protects are unique to each property, and, in the case of the Brown home, such protection is limited to the exterior. Included is the original iron-frame storefront façade and a “ghost sign” on the north side of the house – a fading painted advertisement for the Daily News, a newspaper that ceased operations in 1978.
“As far as the new owner’s plans for the interior, they’re really free to make whatever changes that they see fit,” said Kendra Parzen, advocacy manager for Landmarks Illinois.
In addition to Brown’s important place in Chicago’s art world, his role in the city’s LGBTQ history also factored into his home’s landmark designation.
“It’s certainly part of the text of the nomination report and was a major part of Roger Brown’s life, obviously,” Parzen said. “He and his partner, George Veronda, who was an architect, were the ones who worked together to renovate the building and make it into Roger’s ideal studio space.”
According to Matt Crawford, a coordinating planner at the Chicago Department of Planning and Development, just three other locally landmarked properties have a connection to visual artists: one at 1810 W. Cortland formerly owned by Richard Nickel and two others that housed artist studios – the Erie Street Row, 161 E. Erie, and Tree Studios, 603-621 N. State. (More are connected to writers or other kinds of cultural figures.)
As for preserving Brown’s connection to the property, Yeshurun wants to hold a kind of celebratory open house during which he will pay tribute to the artist with a display of historical photos of the structure. He’s even considering exploring a collaboration with Gray, the art gallery that handles Brown’s estate.
Yeshurun also hopes during the event to display Brown’s 1967 Mustang, discovered in the garage when the new owner was inspecting the property. He bought the car for $6,500 and is having it brought back to a drivable condition.