Transitions: Places Restored, Threatened, Saved, and Lost

Pullman Artspace Lofts

RESTORED PULLMAN ARTSPACE LOFTS

In May the renovated Pullman Artspace Lofts marked the first new multifamily residential development in Chicago’s Pullman neighborhood in more than 60 years. Nonprofit groups Artspace, Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives, and PullmanArts worked to rehabilitate two long-vacant 1880s buildings that once housed workers at George Pullman’s eponymous railroad car business, the Pullman Palace Car Works. A new, 33,000-square-foot building was erected in the space between the two historic structures, where an earlier tenement building had stood until the 1930s. This created a total of 38 affordable live/work apartments for artists and their families, as well as community space for events and exhibits. The Pullman railroad car manufacturing empire once employed tens of thousands on Chicago’s South Side, where George Pullman created one of the nation’s first planned industrial communities. The twin, three-story buildings served as tenement housing for many immigrant laborers at the company but had been abandoned for decades. The $18.9 million rehabilitation, partially funded by federal and state historic tax credits, preserved the buildings’ redbrick exteriors, mansard roofs, and other architectural elements. In 2015, President Obama designated the entire Pullman Historic District a national monument, and the neighborhood is also a National Treasure of the National Trust. —JS

Preservation Magazine – Fall 2021
by Joe Sugarman and Lauren Walser

In each Transitions section of Preservation magazine, we highlight places of local and national importance that have recently been restored, are currently threatened, have been saved from demolition or neglect, or have been lost. Here are five from Fall 2021.

Original article on National Trust for Historic Preservation site

PDF: Preservation Magazine – Fall 2021 – Transitions