Adaptive Reuse for Educational Facilities

MacRostie Historic Advisors served as the historic preservation consultant to the Homan Arthington Foundation in the development of the Charles H. Shaw Technology and Learning Center, a $43 million adaptive reuse project that converted a vacant  power plant in Chicago, Illinois into a LEED-rated school facility and community meeting space. 

Constructed in 1904 as one of four main buildings of the George C. Nimmons-designed Sears, Roebuck & Company complex in the North Lawndale neighborhood, the Power House powered the massive 55-acre 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. Developer Charles Shaw (1933-2006) and the non-profit Homan Arthington Foundation, which had been working with the City of Chicago and local residents since the 1980s to redevelop the Sears complex, spearheaded the rehabilitation of the former Power House into classrooms and learning facilities for 460 local high school students. Portions of the facility are also available for community meetings and performances.

MacRostie Historic Advisors worked with the project team to successfully meet the challenge of transforming an obsolete power plant into a modern school facility while maintaining the historic integrity of the building and achieving a LEED Gold rating. The monumental north hall - a three-story open volume with glazed brick walls, an operable gantry crane, and 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 were replaced 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, a 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 twentieth-century energy production technology. At the same time, the rehabilitation showcases modern sustainable energy technology such as geo-thermal heating and cooling, energy recovery ventilators, and a direct digital control system with web interface.

MacRostie Historic Advisors worked closely with the project team to ensure that all aspects of the complex scope of work met the Secretary of Interior's Standard for Rehabilitation and secured the necessary approvals from the State Historic Preservation Agency (Illinois Historic Preservation Agency) and the National Park Service.

Click here to read an article about the project written by Blair Kamin, architecture critic for the Chicago Tribune.

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