Preservation Chicago has highlighted historical places or objects — including churches, schools, warehouse districts and even wooden double-hung windows — since 2002 that could be lost to demolition if action is not taken to restore them.
There are more than 100 locations considered endangered by the architectural conservation group. Some have been highlighted multiple times during the past two decades.
Here’s a look back at the seven sites initially highlighted by the organization as threatened — and their most recent status.
Chicago Mercantile Exchange
300 N. Franklin St.
Preservation Chicago staged a half-dozen anti-demolition protests at the 1927 Beaux-Arts style, 17-story building in 2002, so it was no surprise when it topped the group’s inaugural list. Dubbed the “Butter and Egg building” when it opened, the structure featured bronze elevator doors decorated with scenes from agricultural life — milking, churning butter, feeding chickens — that reflect its role as the place where farmers’ products were steered to the nation’s consumers.
The Crown family bought the building in the late 1940s, and in 1972, the Merc moved operations to 444 W. Jackson Blvd. It moved again in 1982, to 30 S. Wacker Drive.
A demolition permit was issued in February 2002 for the Merc, which was designed by Chicago architect Alfred S. Alschuler. His London Guarantee Building, 360 N. Michigan Ave. — which has been home to the LondonHouse Chicago hotel since 2016 — was designated a city landmark in 1996.
Current status: The building was torn down in 2003, but Preservation Chicago still considered its efforts to protect the building a win. An ordinance was passed the same year requiring a 90-day warning before a demolition permit could be issued for buildings rated orange or red, the two highest categories on a local historic survey.
“You can characterize the Merc as the martyr child for preservation reform in the city of Chicago. … It died so that others could live,” group President Jonathan Fine told the Tribune in early 2003. “It hammered home … how grossly overdue landmark reform was.”
The site is now an empty lot.
Cook County Hospital
1825 W. Harrison St.
Cook County Hospital was designed in the Classic Revival style by Paul Gerhardt, a German American architect who also planned Lane Tech College Prep. The migrants and the poor were treated inside the two-block-long structure nicknamed Chicago’s Ellis Island, which also was the site of the first blood bank in the United States, founded by immigrant Hungarian doctor Bernard Fantus.
The building’s facade and interior was the inspiration for the TV show “ER” and used in 1993’s movie “The Fugitive” starring Harrison Ford.
Once among the largest hospitals in the country, the building was slated for demolition in 1994 by the Illinois Medical District. The then-88-year-old building was shuttered in December 2002 when the gleaming $623 million, 464-bed John Stroger Hospital replaced it.
“It seemed like Chicago would repeat the civic barbarity it committed in the early 1970s when it allowed the destruction of Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan’s Chicago Stock Exchange Building,” Tribune critic Blair Kamin wrote.
Current status: After sitting vacant for more than a decade, county officials selected the Civic Health Development Group to remake the hospital and surrounding land in the Illinois Medical District.
“Their combined work has the building’s exterior, made of granite, brick, limestone and terra cotta, looking sharper and cleaner than it has in decades,” Kamin wrote. “More than 4,500 pieces of terra cotta have been replaced — roughly 2,800 more than anticipated. (The developers had enough in their contingency fund to pay for the extras.) Naturalistic details, including sculpted versions of grapes, emerge as if we’ve never seen them before.”
The multiphase $1 billion redevelopment — that included two hotels, a food hall, day care center and medical offices — reopened in 2020.
Lower River North Historic District
Area bounded roughly by Carroll Avenue to the south, Grand Avenue to the north, Franklin Street to the west and Wabash Avenue to the east.
Though this grouping of Victorian buildings was not in immediate danger, Preservation Chicago sought to protect them due to the possibility of the commercial area’s structures being torn down for redevelopment. This defined area of structures built between the 1870s and the 1930s was already surrounded by high-rises.
“Many of Chicago’s cherished architects are represented within this district,” according to a release from the group. “Lower River North illustrates the crucial development of Chicago commerce and industry during its significant stages of growth, as reflected by its various building types, styles and sizes.
“In no other part of Chicago can one examine the growth of medium-sized commercial architecture during the critical periods immediately following the (Great Chicago Fire).”
Current status: Though Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42nd, explored creating a landmark district in 2007, no action has been taken.
Metropolitan (Apostolic) Community Church
4100 S. King Drive
Not just a house of worship, this church also played an important role in African American history. Metropolitan Church has served as the organizational home to civil rights demonstrators and Black labor unions, most notably the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters founded by A. Philip Randolph. Its membership rolls are a who’s who of the Black community, including journalist Ida B. Wells, Chicago Defender founder Robert Sengstacke Abbott and Gwendolyn Brooks, Illinois poet laureate and the first Black person to win a Pulitzer Prize.
First lady Eleanor Roosevelt spoke from the church’s pulpit on March 29, 1943, telling those gathered that the right of all people to be considered equal must be preserved in the country’s post-World War II efforts.
Yet in early 2003, a minister from another congregation wanted to buy the building and tear it down. Preservation Chicago and the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois both listed the Romanesque house of worship with distinctive variegated reddish-brown stonework on their endangered lists.
Current status: The church was granted landmark status by the city’s Commission on Chicago Landmarks in December 2006, and officially designated a landmark on July 19, 2007.
New York Life Building
Entrances at 122 W. Monroe St. and 39 S. LaSalle St.
The 14-story Classical Revival-style building made Preservation Chicago’s list in 2003 and 2006, and the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois’ list in 2004. It was designed in the late 1890s and built in stages by prominent architect William LeBaron Jenney, who also gave the city its first skyscraper — the Home Insurance Building. That building was torn down in 1931, but the New York Life Building still represented one of the city’s early high-rises a block away.
Current status: The building faced becoming partially or fulled torn down in June 2006 — despite being granted preliminary landmark status — but ultimately became the fifth adaptive reuse project by Kimpton Hotel & Restaurants in Chicago.
The Gray Hotel opened in 2016 after a $106 million transformation.
“Interior highlights include the palatial LaSalle Street lobby, a showcase of gray marble (another source of inspiration for the building’s name),” Kamin wrote after a tour of the new hotel. “Twin grand stairs, a coffered ceiling and elegant archways reflect the influence of the ‘White City,’ the neoclassical World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, a year before the New Life Building opened.”
St. Boniface Church and related buildings
1358 W. Chestnut St.
The Catholic sanctuary in West Town was among almost 40 churches cited for closure in January 1990 as part of Cardinal Joseph Bernardin’s financial plan to reverse an operating deficit. Tribune reporter Michael Hirsley called the effort “one of the most drastic shakeups ever in the nation’s second-largest archdiocese.” Debt and low attendance were the reasons given for why the churches were targeted.
The congregation was originally organized in 1864 and housed in a wood-frame structure. It survived the Great Chicago Fire and provided refuge for people displaced by the blaze.
The brick Romanesque Revival edifice was designed by architect Henry J. Schlacks, who also built other churches around Chicago. Motorists might recognize its four bell towers, which are visible near the Kennedy Expressway.
Long vacant, St. Boniface was highlighted by Preservation Chicago in 2003, 2004 and 2009.
Current status: Several attempts to demolish the church were halted. Chicago developer ZSD transformed the church and surrounding property into 42 housing units, which opened in June 2025.
The first phase focused on transforming the church into 18 housing units. The second phase added eight units in an adjacent building, and a third phase added 17 additional condos in a new structure next door.
With more than 30 church properties listed for sale by the Archdiocese of Chicago alone, more conversions to housing are likely.
Zepf’s Hall
630 W. Lake St.
Though built in 1882, the architect for this Italianate structure is unknown. Yet it remains the only building still standing from the May 4, 1886, labor demonstration at Haymarket Square.
Current status: Japanese American cocktail bar Kumiko — which won Outstanding Bar at the 2025 James Beard Restaurant and Chef Awards — is at the Near West Side address.
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