http://www.suntimes.com/business/370...etry04.article
Poem's verses of fortune
REAL ESTATE | With Lilly backing, poetry group closes on prime home
May 4, 2007
BY DAVID ROEDER
droeder@suntimes.com
Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Home to a Place where People who like Poetry can Meet.
Pardon the desecration of Carl Sandburg's lines, but it is inspired by a literary turn in the Chicago real estate market. Poetry has bought property, and will put up a building. The Muse is news.
Chicago's Poetry Foundation, which publishes the 95-year-old Poetry magazine, has closed on the
purchase of the southwest corner of Dearborn and Superior for $6.7 million. The site includes
two small buildings and a parking lot, which the foundation plans to replace with a "national home" for the art it celebrates.
"We certainly hope the building will reflect our vision, which is to give poetry a greater presence in our society," said foundation spokeswoman Anne Halsey.
It could also become a testament to Chicago's role in the national culture. Harriet Monroe founded Poetry magazine in 1912, giving a platform to writers before they became famous, and getting under the skin of Easterners who couldn't imagine anyone on the prairie thinking refined thoughts.
Banish the thought that rhyme and reason are missing in Chicago's construction boom.
Where did Poetry get the money? Alas, think drugs.
Ruth Lilly, in her 90s and an heiress to the Eli Lilly and Co. drug fortune, in 2002 began lavishing money on the foundation's forerunner. She never attached strings and, judging by ensuing litigation, seldom followed the rituals of estate planning.
The gift, paid as an annuity, has a present value of $175 million, Halsey said. It is intended to ensure Poetry can publish in perpetuity, and has helped the foundation launch conferences and readings locally and around the country.
It also caused an intellectual imbroglio among people who thought the windfall would change the foundation, and cause it to champion a populist style of composition that they detest. Others were upset that the foundation took the trustee of Lilly's estate to court, seeking damages when a loss in the value of Eli Lilly stock cut the size of the bequest.
Two courts in Indiana treated the foundation's complaint like it was doggerel, and handed down rejection slips. In March, the Indiana Supreme Court declined to issue its own review.
Halsey said the issue has been put aside, and that the foundation remains grateful for Lilly's support. The
goal is to have the building open by 2010, she said.
U.S. Equities Realty, a firm well versed in the Chicago market, advised Poetry in the transaction. Halsey said the
foundation is interviewing architectural firms, and hopes to pick one this summer.
The job is small but with epic aspirations. The foundation is mandating
an ecologically friendly building that translates some of poetry's enduring spirit into glass and steel. Halsey said the project will include a garden, a reading room, and free access to the foundation's collections that are now in the Newberry Library. She compared it to New York's Poets House.
The property was acquired from owners affiliated with a law firm Serpico, Novelle & Petrosino, that has offices there.
So yes, it was poets negotiating a land deal with lawyers. There's enough material there for a poem of Wordsworthian scale, or maybe a grand opera.