Chicago Open House 2015, Part 1 - West Side of Chicago
Every year, usually somewhere in the middle of October, Chicago Architecture Foundation organizes an Open House Chicago event. Buildings all across the city open their doors, letting everybody inside and showing areas that are usually off-limits.
I attended my first Open House in 2013. I took loads of pictures, but I never put together a post about it. In 2014, chemo got in the way. This year, the event fell on October 17-18 weekend, and I was determined to take advantage because (a) Chicago Open House is awesome and (b) it was part of my ongoing effort to do everything cancer kept me from doing over the past year. This time around, I even persuaded my mom to come along, and she would have, if circumstances completely beyond her control didn't derail that plan at last minute.
So I went alone. Well, mostly alone. But I'll get to that later.
As I left my apartment early in the morning, I noticed that my camera was low on power. I thought to myself - maybe I should bring a charger. But I couldn't find a charger at a quick glance around my desk and decided not to keep looking for it, because the Open House ran from 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM, and the clock were ticking.
If you are thinking this would come back to bite me in the rear, congratulations - you are much better at recognizing obvious foreshadowing than I am.
Cinespace Studios
My first destination was located on the southwest portion of North Lawndale. These days, the neighborhood is best known for poverty and dearth of businesses of any kind (and, most recently, for being Riot Fest's new location), but as recently as mid-20th century, it was a major industrial hub.
Ryerson hung around longer than most, but by 2006, even it shut down. Which is where Nick Mirkopoulos, owner of Cinespace Toronto movie studio lot, came in. By 2012, Chicago's film-making community was slowly but surely growing, with shows like Chicago Code and movies like Transformers 3 and the first two movies Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy filming in the Windy City. What the city needs, he decided, was a film studio complex, with large stages for sets and plenty of room for equipment. The old Ryerson plant fit the bill.
Since then, the newly christianed Cinespace Chicago has been used to film shows like Chicago Fire, Chicago PD, Boss, Sirens and even Empire (which is set in New York but films in Chicago). It was also used to film some interiors for Divergent, among other movies. The studio is also in the process of creating Stage 18, where Chicago filmmakers would be able to get some help producing their movies.
2015 marked the first time Cinespace Chicago took part in Open House Chicago. Now, the event program guide clearly stated from the get-go that people wouldn't be able to see what they wanted to see the most - the sets - but I figured seeing some of it was still better than seeing nothing at all.
We were only allowed into one section of one building - with security politely making sure we didn't go anywhere else.
And honestly - even without access to the sets, the space still looked impressive.
Many parts looked like they were left over from Ryerson days
At the same time, even with the sets closed off, there were plenty of signs of the building's current purpose. The mock-up of a memorial wall was a big one.
And if the big doors on the north wall didn't give you a hint
The sign on them certainly would
I was also able to see the outside of the wardrobe area
And get a peak inside the wardrobe storage room
Plus, there was the cryptically named "Roger Doherty Memorial Craft Service Lock-Up"
According to Gapers Block, Cinespace Studios trying to hire locals and generally engage with the community. I saw the evidence of that... to the point. There are rental listings for Humboldt Park, a community area further north - which is a bit less poor and has lower violent crime rates.
And an ad for an event in Little Village - a neighborhood immediately south of North Lawndale. Unlike Humboldt Park, it's within walking distance of Cinespace Studio location.
As I looked around, I saw a group of people going up the stairs above the storage/bathroom/office space left of the entrance. One of the unwritten rules of the Chicago Open House is that anything that isn't locked or closed off with police tape is fair game. So I decided to follow them.
And soon, I found myself in... I'm not sure what that was. I mean, it clearly served some purpose back in the Ryerson days, but what, if anything, was it used for now?
This was (and perhaps still is) a janitor's closet
And, according to the sign on the door, this was an employee locker room
Another set of stairs led further up, but this one did have police tape blocking the way, so I didn't use it.
One thing for sure. Whatever this is, it would make one heck of a horror movie set.
After that, I felt the building and headed back out
This seems to be some kind of an office building. Looking at the signs, it seems that Ald. Jason Ervin (28th) has an office there, but it's not the main ward office.
As I headed out, I noticed a white, more modern-looking building on the west edge of Cinespace Chicago. By looks of things, this is the studio's administrative center. The south entrance - according to the sign, a secondary entrance - had a front desk with the Transformers poster on the left and Divergent poster on the right.
And over on the west side of the building, there was a parking lot. And not just any parking lot.
Complete with a golf cart, because of course
I walked around to the north entrance, but it turned out to have a manned front desk. Complete with a security guy who, when he noticed me walking around, came outside and asked if I needed help. I told him the truth - I was just here for the Open House, looking around, and he seemed more amused than anything. But he didn't let get too close to the door.
On the other side of the street, I saw old worker houses. You see this kind of thing a lot near old Chicago factories - people wanted to be close enough to get to work, grab lunch during the break, come back to work and head straight home when they were done.
It was hard not to feel sad. On one hand, yes, at least the old Ryerson plant wasn't rotting away, or get demolished. At least people are working there. On the other hand... it's still a reminder that a way of life that sustained the West Side for generations is gone, and the people who used to work at Ryerson wouldn't find any job in the neighborhood to replace it.
On the other other hand - now, the homes have a bit of a marketing perk. "Live right next to a place where your favorite shows get made!"
After giving Cinespace one last look, I headed to my next destination - the remains of what was one arguably North Lawndale's biggest employer - the old Sears campus.
Walking Through North Lawndale
Walking to Sears campus meant walking through Douglas Park - which meant walking past Mt Sinai hospital. I already wrote what happened there. Aside from that, the trip was largely without incident. A kid asked for money, some teenagers glared at me - but, for a white guy walking though a poor, black neighborhood, that sort of thing is par the course.
In fact, as I walked toward Homan Avenue, I passed by quite a few lovely buildings, many of which were actually in pretty decent condition. I tried to take some pictures... which is when the camera batteries started crapping out on me.
But I still managed to get one nice picture.
Walking further, I spotted something I kept meaning to visit but never got a chance too until it was too late. This was the only movie theater not just in North Lawndale, but a decent chunk of Chicago's West Side. ICE Lawndale 10 was founded by Inner City Entertainment Theaters, a Chicago-based company that, let's not mince words here, set out to open theaters where most movie theater chains feared to tread - African-American neighborhoods.
The strategy, unfortunately, didn't work out too well for them (though financial mismanagement sure as hell didn't help). Today, only one ICE Theater - the Chatham location - remains open. The North Lawndale theater, meanwhile, sits there, waiting for someone, anyone, to do something with it.
I also wound up passing by what I realized was Chicago Police Department's notorious Homan Square facility - where (allegedly), people who got arrested were sent for secret interrogations. With my camera's battery running low and CPD officers looking at me, I decided to just keep walking and save what little remained of my battery power for later.
Sears, Roebuck and Company Complex - aka Homan Square
These days, Sears is known as either a store chain that had better days or a thing Sears Tower used to be named after. But before it was a retail chain, Sears specialized in mail order catalogs. Anyone in United States could use one of them to order everything from furniture to clothes to books. Think of it as Amazon before the Internet.
And the company was based right in the heart of North Lawndale
The company has been one of North Lawndale's biggest employees until the 1970s, when it started moving its functions to its Hoffman Estates campus and the then-recently built Sears Tower. By 1987, they abandoned North Lawndale completely. While this wasn't the only thing that made North Lawndale what it is today, it was still a sizable blow to the neighborhood economy.
While many buildings have been torn down, many remain. And, since the 1990s, developer Charles Shaw has been slowly but surely redeveloping the former campus, building new houses and community facilites in the now vacant land and reusing the buildings that survived. As part of the Chicago Open House, we got to see two of those buildings.
First, there is a former campus power plant. It was turned into home for DWR College Prep, a high school that belongs to very politically connected (and controversial) Noble charter school network.
What made this building interesting was that many of the old power plant features were deliberately retained. A volunteer gave me a tour but, unfortunately, I couldn't capture most of it because, again, my camera was crapping out.
Other than that, you trust me - it was pretty cool. Locker rooms had remains of the rail car tunnels, there were doors that led nowhere, incredibly thick support beams, pieces of pipes. If it's going to be open next year, I'm definitely coming back to get more pictures.
The second building was the Sears Merchandise Building Tower. It was originally part of the campus' catalog distribution center, forming an entrance of a building that spanned two city blocks. Like the more famous Sears Tower in downtown Chicago, it was a bit of a tourist attractions, with owners letting people climb on the top (to the 14th floor) for a fee.
The distribution facility was made of wood, so it was easy to tear down. The tower... was not, so it stayed. If you look at the picture at the start of this section and see the structure on the left, you can tell where the distribution facility used to be.
I wasn't able to get the picture of the tower. But, because I want to at least get you some idea what it looks like, here are some pictures by Flickr's Eric "reallyboring" Rogers.
The tower is currently officially known as Nichols Tower, because John and Alexandra Nichols donated loads of money to renovate the structure (which makes me want to call it Sears Merchandise Tower on general principle). At the moment, the renovations are still under way - during the Open House, the elevators weren't properly installed, and entire floors were very much under construction. The basic idea is to create office space for educational institutions and social service agencies that would serve North Lawndale residents (scroll down a bit to get more info). The top floor will become an event space, which would be rented out for between $2,000 - $2,800 a day.
Because the space is under construction (we had to sign waivers and everything), visitors were only allowed to see ninth and fourteenth floor. And because, as I said, the elevators weren't actually installed, I had to climb all 14 of those floors.
At 9th floor, a volunteer asked me if I was already.
"God damn am I out of shape," was all I could utter, earning a sympathetic chuckle from the volunteer.
As I tried to catch my breath, I used the opportunity to try get some shots of the Sears campus. I only managed to squeeze out these two.
And these two shots of the surrounding neighborhood
After catching my breath, I kept going. The climb turned out to be well worth it worth it. Here's... well, the only shot of the 14th floor I was able to get.
And this is the part where my camera battery crapped out completely. So you just have to trust me when I say that the views from the top of the building were even better than from the 9th floor.
Thankfully, going down was way easier than climbing back up.
After this, I contacted svollga. We were supposed to meet up downtown in about half an hour, and I agreed to show her a few Open House sites. But she was running late, and I decided to wander around the campus a little bit.
I have to say - there were lots of cool building there. One of those days, I will definitely have to come back with a fully charged camera and actually take some pictures. I might not be able to get in, but there are still plenty of things to see on the outside.
I was originally going to write about what happen once svollga and I met up, but this post is already a bit long, and it's getting late. Plus, I don't have any pictures.
For the Russian speakers reading this, you can check out her account of what happened here. I might write up something for the readers who don't speak Russian, and try to see if I can scrape together something by the way of photos to illustrate it. I'm not sure.
It's not quite the same without the visuals.
But one thing for certain - I will write about what happened on Sunday, October 18. Because that time, I went in with the completely charged battery and oh boy did I capture plenty of things.
I attended my first Open House in 2013. I took loads of pictures, but I never put together a post about it. In 2014, chemo got in the way. This year, the event fell on October 17-18 weekend, and I was determined to take advantage because (a) Chicago Open House is awesome and (b) it was part of my ongoing effort to do everything cancer kept me from doing over the past year. This time around, I even persuaded my mom to come along, and she would have, if circumstances completely beyond her control didn't derail that plan at last minute.
So I went alone. Well, mostly alone. But I'll get to that later.
As I left my apartment early in the morning, I noticed that my camera was low on power. I thought to myself - maybe I should bring a charger. But I couldn't find a charger at a quick glance around my desk and decided not to keep looking for it, because the Open House ran from 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM, and the clock were ticking.
If you are thinking this would come back to bite me in the rear, congratulations - you are much better at recognizing obvious foreshadowing than I am.
Cinespace Studios
My first destination was located on the southwest portion of North Lawndale. These days, the neighborhood is best known for poverty and dearth of businesses of any kind (and, most recently, for being Riot Fest's new location), but as recently as mid-20th century, it was a major industrial hub.
Ryerson hung around longer than most, but by 2006, even it shut down. Which is where Nick Mirkopoulos, owner of Cinespace Toronto movie studio lot, came in. By 2012, Chicago's film-making community was slowly but surely growing, with shows like Chicago Code and movies like Transformers 3 and the first two movies Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy filming in the Windy City. What the city needs, he decided, was a film studio complex, with large stages for sets and plenty of room for equipment. The old Ryerson plant fit the bill.
Since then, the newly christianed Cinespace Chicago has been used to film shows like Chicago Fire, Chicago PD, Boss, Sirens and even Empire (which is set in New York but films in Chicago). It was also used to film some interiors for Divergent, among other movies. The studio is also in the process of creating Stage 18, where Chicago filmmakers would be able to get some help producing their movies.
2015 marked the first time Cinespace Chicago took part in Open House Chicago. Now, the event program guide clearly stated from the get-go that people wouldn't be able to see what they wanted to see the most - the sets - but I figured seeing some of it was still better than seeing nothing at all.
We were only allowed into one section of one building - with security politely making sure we didn't go anywhere else.
And honestly - even without access to the sets, the space still looked impressive.
Many parts looked like they were left over from Ryerson days
At the same time, even with the sets closed off, there were plenty of signs of the building's current purpose. The mock-up of a memorial wall was a big one.
And if the big doors on the north wall didn't give you a hint
The sign on them certainly would
I was also able to see the outside of the wardrobe area
And get a peak inside the wardrobe storage room
Plus, there was the cryptically named "Roger Doherty Memorial Craft Service Lock-Up"
According to Gapers Block, Cinespace Studios trying to hire locals and generally engage with the community. I saw the evidence of that... to the point. There are rental listings for Humboldt Park, a community area further north - which is a bit less poor and has lower violent crime rates.
And an ad for an event in Little Village - a neighborhood immediately south of North Lawndale. Unlike Humboldt Park, it's within walking distance of Cinespace Studio location.
As I looked around, I saw a group of people going up the stairs above the storage/bathroom/office space left of the entrance. One of the unwritten rules of the Chicago Open House is that anything that isn't locked or closed off with police tape is fair game. So I decided to follow them.
And soon, I found myself in... I'm not sure what that was. I mean, it clearly served some purpose back in the Ryerson days, but what, if anything, was it used for now?
This was (and perhaps still is) a janitor's closet
And, according to the sign on the door, this was an employee locker room
Another set of stairs led further up, but this one did have police tape blocking the way, so I didn't use it.
One thing for sure. Whatever this is, it would make one heck of a horror movie set.
After that, I felt the building and headed back out
This seems to be some kind of an office building. Looking at the signs, it seems that Ald. Jason Ervin (28th) has an office there, but it's not the main ward office.
As I headed out, I noticed a white, more modern-looking building on the west edge of Cinespace Chicago. By looks of things, this is the studio's administrative center. The south entrance - according to the sign, a secondary entrance - had a front desk with the Transformers poster on the left and Divergent poster on the right.
And over on the west side of the building, there was a parking lot. And not just any parking lot.
Complete with a golf cart, because of course
I walked around to the north entrance, but it turned out to have a manned front desk. Complete with a security guy who, when he noticed me walking around, came outside and asked if I needed help. I told him the truth - I was just here for the Open House, looking around, and he seemed more amused than anything. But he didn't let get too close to the door.
On the other side of the street, I saw old worker houses. You see this kind of thing a lot near old Chicago factories - people wanted to be close enough to get to work, grab lunch during the break, come back to work and head straight home when they were done.
It was hard not to feel sad. On one hand, yes, at least the old Ryerson plant wasn't rotting away, or get demolished. At least people are working there. On the other hand... it's still a reminder that a way of life that sustained the West Side for generations is gone, and the people who used to work at Ryerson wouldn't find any job in the neighborhood to replace it.
On the other other hand - now, the homes have a bit of a marketing perk. "Live right next to a place where your favorite shows get made!"
After giving Cinespace one last look, I headed to my next destination - the remains of what was one arguably North Lawndale's biggest employer - the old Sears campus.
Walking Through North Lawndale
Walking to Sears campus meant walking through Douglas Park - which meant walking past Mt Sinai hospital. I already wrote what happened there. Aside from that, the trip was largely without incident. A kid asked for money, some teenagers glared at me - but, for a white guy walking though a poor, black neighborhood, that sort of thing is par the course.
In fact, as I walked toward Homan Avenue, I passed by quite a few lovely buildings, many of which were actually in pretty decent condition. I tried to take some pictures... which is when the camera batteries started crapping out on me.
But I still managed to get one nice picture.
Walking further, I spotted something I kept meaning to visit but never got a chance too until it was too late. This was the only movie theater not just in North Lawndale, but a decent chunk of Chicago's West Side. ICE Lawndale 10 was founded by Inner City Entertainment Theaters, a Chicago-based company that, let's not mince words here, set out to open theaters where most movie theater chains feared to tread - African-American neighborhoods.
The strategy, unfortunately, didn't work out too well for them (though financial mismanagement sure as hell didn't help). Today, only one ICE Theater - the Chatham location - remains open. The North Lawndale theater, meanwhile, sits there, waiting for someone, anyone, to do something with it.
I also wound up passing by what I realized was Chicago Police Department's notorious Homan Square facility - where (allegedly), people who got arrested were sent for secret interrogations. With my camera's battery running low and CPD officers looking at me, I decided to just keep walking and save what little remained of my battery power for later.
Sears, Roebuck and Company Complex - aka Homan Square
These days, Sears is known as either a store chain that had better days or a thing Sears Tower used to be named after. But before it was a retail chain, Sears specialized in mail order catalogs. Anyone in United States could use one of them to order everything from furniture to clothes to books. Think of it as Amazon before the Internet.
And the company was based right in the heart of North Lawndale
The company has been one of North Lawndale's biggest employees until the 1970s, when it started moving its functions to its Hoffman Estates campus and the then-recently built Sears Tower. By 1987, they abandoned North Lawndale completely. While this wasn't the only thing that made North Lawndale what it is today, it was still a sizable blow to the neighborhood economy.
While many buildings have been torn down, many remain. And, since the 1990s, developer Charles Shaw has been slowly but surely redeveloping the former campus, building new houses and community facilites in the now vacant land and reusing the buildings that survived. As part of the Chicago Open House, we got to see two of those buildings.
First, there is a former campus power plant. It was turned into home for DWR College Prep, a high school that belongs to very politically connected (and controversial) Noble charter school network.
What made this building interesting was that many of the old power plant features were deliberately retained. A volunteer gave me a tour but, unfortunately, I couldn't capture most of it because, again, my camera was crapping out.
Other than that, you trust me - it was pretty cool. Locker rooms had remains of the rail car tunnels, there were doors that led nowhere, incredibly thick support beams, pieces of pipes. If it's going to be open next year, I'm definitely coming back to get more pictures.
The second building was the Sears Merchandise Building Tower. It was originally part of the campus' catalog distribution center, forming an entrance of a building that spanned two city blocks. Like the more famous Sears Tower in downtown Chicago, it was a bit of a tourist attractions, with owners letting people climb on the top (to the 14th floor) for a fee.
The distribution facility was made of wood, so it was easy to tear down. The tower... was not, so it stayed. If you look at the picture at the start of this section and see the structure on the left, you can tell where the distribution facility used to be.
I wasn't able to get the picture of the tower. But, because I want to at least get you some idea what it looks like, here are some pictures by Flickr's Eric "reallyboring" Rogers.
The tower is currently officially known as Nichols Tower, because John and Alexandra Nichols donated loads of money to renovate the structure (which makes me want to call it Sears Merchandise Tower on general principle). At the moment, the renovations are still under way - during the Open House, the elevators weren't properly installed, and entire floors were very much under construction. The basic idea is to create office space for educational institutions and social service agencies that would serve North Lawndale residents (scroll down a bit to get more info). The top floor will become an event space, which would be rented out for between $2,000 - $2,800 a day.
Because the space is under construction (we had to sign waivers and everything), visitors were only allowed to see ninth and fourteenth floor. And because, as I said, the elevators weren't actually installed, I had to climb all 14 of those floors.
At 9th floor, a volunteer asked me if I was already.
"God damn am I out of shape," was all I could utter, earning a sympathetic chuckle from the volunteer.
As I tried to catch my breath, I used the opportunity to try get some shots of the Sears campus. I only managed to squeeze out these two.
And these two shots of the surrounding neighborhood
After catching my breath, I kept going. The climb turned out to be well worth it worth it. Here's... well, the only shot of the 14th floor I was able to get.
And this is the part where my camera battery crapped out completely. So you just have to trust me when I say that the views from the top of the building were even better than from the 9th floor.
Thankfully, going down was way easier than climbing back up.
After this, I contacted svollga. We were supposed to meet up downtown in about half an hour, and I agreed to show her a few Open House sites. But she was running late, and I decided to wander around the campus a little bit.
I have to say - there were lots of cool building there. One of those days, I will definitely have to come back with a fully charged camera and actually take some pictures. I might not be able to get in, but there are still plenty of things to see on the outside.
I was originally going to write about what happen once svollga and I met up, but this post is already a bit long, and it's getting late. Plus, I don't have any pictures.
For the Russian speakers reading this, you can check out her account of what happened here. I might write up something for the readers who don't speak Russian, and try to see if I can scrape together something by the way of photos to illustrate it. I'm not sure.
It's not quite the same without the visuals.
But one thing for certain - I will write about what happened on Sunday, October 18. Because that time, I went in with the completely charged battery and oh boy did I capture plenty of things.