Quote:
Originally Posted by i_am_hydrogen
428 St. James is Cabrini Hall. Against my wishes, it's already been demolished. (Where was Preservation Chicago?)
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I liked the building too. It was handsome and well built, if a bit nondescript. I can't speak for Preservation Chicago, but my guess is that the odds were stacked so heavily against the building that energy was deemed better spent elsewhere.
1) It was built some time in the early 1940s, I believe. Anything in Chicago later than 1940 becomes exponentially more difficult to save. 2) The community groups and alderman fought back and forth about all those good things like density, parking, height, etc for so long. 3) In the discussions, the idea of reusing the building was never pressed very hard, to my knowledge. 4) There was already a preservation "compromise" that the shrine be kept. This renders making other demands much more difficult, and it further constricted the site. Preserving more buildings probably would have resulted in the developer asking for increased height, which in turn would draw the ire of view-minded NIMBYs. 5) A lot of people disliked the hospital due to traffic and noise, and unfortunately many people equate urban ills with the buildings themselves, as ridiculous as it sounds.
So, I think coming in on this issue would have led to the accusation that the preservationists are "carpetbaggers." I doubt it would have ever been taken seriously, unfortunately. Just my hunch.
Preservation has come a terribly long way in Chicago, but it has a long way to go.