Downtown Chicago may lose another historic building this month.

Story by Willa Reinhard / Oct. 11, 2002

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At a lunchtime rally, Chicagoans protest plans to demolish a 1928 building in the city's downtown Loop. (Bill Fischer)

In early March of this year, the phone rang at the office of Preservation Chicago, a citywide, citizens-based organization established in 1999. It was a tenant of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, a downtown landmark built in 1927. "They said they were being evicted, and the building was going to be torn down," says Jonathan Fine, the group's executive director. "We immediately got on the phone with the [city's] department of buildings, who confirmed that a demolition permit had been issued."

Shocked, Fine contacted the city's Landmarks Commission and department of planning and development, neither of which, he asserts, was aware that the 17-story building, located in Chicago's historic Loop—once a dense collection of 1920s structures that recently has suffered high levels of vacancies—had been slated for demolition.

Designed by architect Alfred S. Alschuler, who designed two Chicago landmarks—the London Guarantee Building and Goldblatt's department store—the classical-style building, affectionately called the Merc, flourished as an active trading platform for mercantile goods until 1972, when the exchange outgrew its space and relocated. Large arched windows and a series of bas-relief carved stone panels depicting hens, eggs, fowl, and people selling goods adorn the limestone exterior. Inside, the former trading room's gilded elevators, gold-leafed moldings, and white marble are still in excellent condition, according to Preservation Chicago.

For Fine, the impending demise of the Mercantile Exchange exemplifies a larger problem among city agencies. "The irony here is that the Building Department is on the eighth floor [of City Hall], and the Department of Planning is on the 10th, but unless we happen to see scaffolding going up on a building and call to find out what's going on, nothing is ever communicated," he says. "No one ever knows until it's too late."

Whether or not it's too late for the former Mercantile Exchange still remains to be seen. The owner of the mixed-use commercial building, CC Industries, headed by William Crown of the city's wealthy Crown family, has erected demolition scaffolding up to the fourth floor. All tenants (the Merc was at 97 percent occupancy when the permit was issued in late February) were told to be out by Sept. 30.

When CC Industries announced plans last year to build a high-rise office complex on a parking lot directly north of the building, the local architectural community welcomed a proposal to develop a key urban corner. But several months later, the owner's intention to also tear down the former center of trade became apparent. Despite being labeled a structure of local significance in a 1996 city-led survey of more than 17,000 historic buildings, the Merc lacks landmark status and any official protection to keep it standing.

Antique cars join an Aug. 22 rally (Bill Fischer)

Advocates for the would-be landmark, led by Preservation Chicago, have urged Mayor Richard M. Daley and other city officials to stop the wrecking ball. Since March, citizens have rallied every month in front of the Mercantile Exchange, City Hall, and the headquarters of CC Industries, says Preservation Chicago's vice president Mike Moran, who organized the lunchtime rallies as well as a campaign to send 2,000 signed postcards to the mayor. "We're exploring every option," says Moran, a native Chicagoan and orthopedic surgeon. "At one rally, we had people surrounding the building holding four-foot boards that spelled out, in giant letters, ‘Save the Mercantile Exchange Building.'" In August and September, 60 people dressed in full 1920s regalia drove antique cars, marched, and danced—think the Charleston—from the Merc to the mayor's office, armed with a petition of 2,300 names, demanding a meeting. So far Mayor Daley has not complied, and Moran is disappointed. "I think 4,300 names and addresses warrants a sit-down meeting," he says.

(Grahm Balkany)

To justify the issuance of a demolition permit, the city points to its Historic Resources Survey. Buildings were ranked by color according to their importance—red represents a structure of national significance, orange a structure of local significance and so on, through the spectrum, to blue. The Merc, along with 9,000 other structures, was rated orange. "Because of the survey, we know what's out there," says Peter Scales, spokesperson for the department of planning and development. "And the Chicago Mercantile Exchange building failed to meet the requirements."

Under the present structure, a plan to tear down or alter one of the city's 200 red-labeled buildings raises a flag in the buildings department computers, and that developer must undergo review by the landmarks commission, which can approve or deny a permit. But no such process exists for the Merc. "The system is completely inefficient," says Jonathan Fine. "In the last year, orange after orange building has come down," he says. "I would estimate at least 20 structures in the last year have either been torn down or are on the verge of being torn down."

Scales maintains that the city is working hard to preserve historically significant buildings, and he notes that nearly half of Chicago's 200 landmark designations have occurred in the last 13 years, under the Daley administration. In fact, the National Trust granted Daley a Preservation Excellence Award in 2000.

"Mayor Daley has done a lot only because nothing had been done before him," says Mike Moran. "The city has a dwindling collection of these limestone buildings erected before the 1930s. It will only take the demolition of a few more to tip the balance of the Loop as we know it," he says. "Instead, it will become a collection of steel boxes that could be located in any city."

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