Sears Power House after rehabilitation, Chicago, IL

Sears Power House After Rehabilitation

Chicago, Illinois

 

 

Students at Grand Opening of Charles H. Shaw Technology & Learning Center, Chicago IL

New Students at Power House Dedication
Chicago, Illinois

(photo courtesy of David Joel)

 


Old Naval Hospital, Washington D.C.

Old Naval Hospital

Washington, D.C.

 

 

New England Telephone Company Building, Boston, MA

New England Telephone Headquarters
Boston, Massachusetts



Shoreland Hotel, Chicago IL

Shoreland Hotel
Chicago, Illinois

FALL 2009 UPDATE: MACROSTIE HISTORIC ADVISORS

 

 

Green Rehabilitation of Power House Wins Project of the Year in Illinois

 

 

The completed rehabilitation of the former Sears, Roebuck and Company Power House in Chicago, Illinois was recently named Project of the Year by Landmarks Illinois at the 2009 Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Preservation Awards.  The project has also garnered recognition from the National Housing & Rehabilitation Association (Timmy Awards finalist - "Best Innovative Adaptive Reuse") and Midwest Construction magazine ("Best of 2009 - K-12 Project of the Year").  MacRostie Historic Advisors' Midwest office served as preservation consultant for the project, which converted a vacant and obsolete industrial building in the City's North Lawndale neighborhood into a modern and LEED Gold public charter high school. 

 

Now known as the Charles H. Shaw Technology and Learning Center, the completed project represents a dramatic $45 million dollar rehabilitation undertaken by the Homan Arthington Foundation in affiliation with the Henry Ford Learning Institute of Dearborn, Michigan.  MacRostie Historic Advisors coordinated review of the project with the Illinois State Historic Preservation Office and the National Park Service and worked closely with architect Farr Associates and with the project team throughout the rehabilitation to secure federal historic rehabilitation tax credits for the project.

 

The awards jury praised the project's commitment to the preservation and sensitive rehabilitation of the National Register-listed building and the Homan Arthington Foundation's dedication to the revitalization of the North Lawndale community.  In August 2009, the former power house once again hummed with energy and activity as the first students headed to their inaugural classes in the rehabilitated space.

 

Completed in 1905 as one of four main buildings of the George C. Nimmons-designed Sears, Roebuck and Company complex (listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978), the Power House powered the massive 55-acre Sears complex until the company's 1973 relocation to the Sears Tower in downtown Chicago.  By the 1990s the Power House was fully-decommissioned, vacant, and deteriorating - a classic "white elephant" building with limited reuse potential and located in a declining neighborhood.  Enter developer Charlie Shaw (1933-2006) and the Homan Arthington Foundation which since the 1980s had worked with the City of Chicago and neighborhood residents to redevelop the Sears complex, creating over 300 housing units and a community center.  The Homan Arthington Foundation spearheaded the creative and sensitive adaptation of the former Power House to classroom and learning facilities for 460 high school students drawn largely from the surrounding neighborhoods.  Portions of the facility are also available to the community for meeting and performance space.

 

Utilizing the federal historic rehabilitation tax credits, the completed project successfully met the inherent challenges of transforming an obsolete power plant into a modern school facility while meeting the Secretary of the Interior's Standards and seeking a high LEED rating.  The monumental north hall - a three-story open volume with  glazed brick surfaces, an operable gantry crane, and a mezzanine with decorative metal railing - has been preserved intact and updated by the careful insertion of an elevator, assembly space, lockers, and a lunchroom.  The utilitarian south hall has been infilled with floor levels for classrooms and meeting spaces.  Original wood windows have been restored and retrofitted for enhanced energy performance; missing and damaged sash have been replicated in-kind.  The 185-foot brick chimney was retained and restored in part with a grant from the Partners in Preservation program, a partnership of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and American Express Foundation.

 

Remnants of the facility's industrial past - turbines, hoppers, coal ash conveyor belt, boilers, steam piping, and sliding fire doors - have been retained as touchstones to the building's history and will be used as teaching tools illustrating original energy production technology.  At the same time, the rehabilitation showcases modern sustainable energy technology such as geothermal heating and cooling, energy recovery ventilators, and a direct digital control system with web interface.

 

Once obsolete and endangered, the historic Sears Power House today hums again with activity - a "green" school offering an outstanding education to neighborhood kids in a unique and innovative space that inspires young minds with its compelling architecture and reminders of the building's powerful past.

 

To read more about the project, click here.


 

What We’re Working On:


From our Washington, DC office, we are servicing:


  • Rehabilitation of the Old Naval Hospital in Washington, D.C., constructed between 1864 and 1866, for new use as an education and community center; and
  • Assessing the feasibility of utilizing State of Louisiana historic tax credits for the rehabilitation Mercy Hospital complex in New Orleans, Louisiana, which was closed after suffering severe damage from Hurricane Katrina.


Our Boston office is providing historic tax credit and National Register consulting services for:


  • Commonwealth Venture's rehabilitation of the 1947 New England Telephone Headquarter Building, Boston's only Art Moderne-style skyscraper. The building, designed by the well-known Boston architecture firm of Cram and Ferguson, anchors Boston's famous Post Office Square. The client plans to convert the ground floor to retail space and rehabilitate the upper floors for continued office use;
  • Adaptive reuse of the Saunders School, a 1931 Colonial Revival schoolhouse in Lawrence, Massachusetts. MHA is collaborating with The Architectural Team to rehabilitate the building into sixteen affordable family apartments; and
  • Nomination of the Hadley Furniture Company Building in Worcester, Massachusetts for listing in the National Register of Historic Places.


In Chicago we are consulting on:


  • Antheus Capital's rehabilitation of the Shoreland Hotel, constructed as a luxury apartment hotel in 1926 in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood and converted to student housing for the University of Chicago in the 1970s, for new use as market-rate apartments;
  • Conversion of the former A. F. Meckelburg Sash and Door Co. Factory in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for new use as affordable housing; and,
  • Researching the Englefield Historic District on Chicago's southwest side for Dubin Residential.  The district encompasses an early-twentieth-century subdivision developed by William E. Harmon & Company, a nationally renowned real estate company that developed hundreds of planned residential communities in major cities across the country.

 

 

Recent and Upcoming Speaking Engagements:

 

  • In June, Allen Johnson led attendees at the 41st NeoCon World's Trade Fair in Chicago on a tour of the Inland Steel Building, the 1958 Modernist icon and a Chicago Landmark;
  • In September, Bill MacRostie spoke at the Novogradac & Co. Expanding Tax Credit Horizons Conference in Cleveland, Ohio;
  • In September, Allen Johnson was a guest speaker on Historic Preservation Planning at the College of Architecture, Illinois Institute of Technology;
  • In September, Albert Rex was a panelist at the New York State Rehabilitation Tax Credit Seminar in Rochester.  The seminar focused on the expansion of New York State's tax credit program for the rehabilitation of commercial historic buildings;
  • On October 12, Bill MacRostie participated in a symposium on historic preservation and environmental sustainability co-sponsored by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the National Center for Preservation Training and Technology in Nashville, Tennessee; and
  • Bill MacRostie will speak at the Crittenden Real Estate Finance Conference, which runs from October 26 to October 28 in Miami Beach, Florida.

  • Albert Rex will be speaking at the National Housing & Rehabilitation Association's 2009 Fall Developers Forum in Boston on November 2 & 3.  He will be profiling a current historic rehabilitation tax credit project that involves 354 units of affordable housing in twenty-four buildings scattered across three urban neighborhoods.  The project involves listing the twenty-four buildings on the National Register utilizing the Multiple Property Documentation Form.