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Wrigley Building, Fortnightly Club to Be Honored by Landmarks Illinois

By Ted Cox | October 29, 2014 5:27am
 The Wrigley Building will be honored for its stunning rehabilitation.
Wrigley Building
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STREETERVILLE — Two Magnificent Mile landmarks are about to be honored by the state's leading organization for architecture preservation.

The Wrigley Building and the Fortnightly Club will both receive preservation awards from Landmarks Illinois. The honors were announced earlier this month and will be presented Saturday in a ceremony at the Intercontinental Hotel, 505 N. Michigan Ave.

The Wrigley Building, 400 N. Michigan Ave., is being celebrated for its rehabilitation project, completed last year, and the Fortnightly Club on the Gold Coast for its stewardship, as the former Bryan Lathrop House has been carefully preserved since being bought by the Fortnightly Club of Chicago in 1922.

 The Fortnightly Club will be honored for its stewardship of the former Bryan Lathrop House.
The Fortnightly Club will be honored for its stewardship of the former Bryan Lathrop House.
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Tom Rossiter

In both cases, owners recognized early on the precious pieces of Chicago they'd been entrusted with.

"It's one of those projects, when you're in the middle of it, it's a labor of love," said Ari Glass, principal at Zeller Realty Group, which joined in buying the building in 2011 and began a 12-month rehabilitation project the following year. "At the same time, it's the Wrigley Building," one of the most iconic structures on the city skyline.

Glass, who also serves in effect as asset manager of the Wrigley Building, oversaw the rehab project, which set out to restore the white terra-cotta facade and some of the original marble lobbies inside from the '20s, while adding the modern amenities businesses require in an office building throughout.

It also reopened the courtyard between the north and south towers, which had been blocked by what was called a "wind screen" for decades.

The result was an entirely more welcoming structure, with a courtyard that shows off the terra cotta and, with its two bridges connecting the towers (one 14 floors up), creates a frame for the Trump Tower beyond off Michigan Avenue.

The building had never been designated a landmark under the Wrigley ownership. Zeller Realty embraced it, however, getting the building designated a Chicago landmark in 2012, and took it to the bank with tax incentives that helped pay for the rehabilitation.

The result is a spruced-up building that has seen its occupancy rate rise from 18 percent at the time of the 2011 purchase, to the current 56 percent, on the way to what Glass forecasts as a 70 percent occupancy rate, even as Wrigley was abandoning it for good two years ago.

According to Landmarks Illinois, the Fortnightly Club, formerly the Bryan Lathrop House at 120 E. Bellevue Place, was built in 1892 by the New York City architecture firm of McKim, Mead and White, which also did Pennsylvania Station, the Brooklyn Museum and the Boston Public Library, as well as renovating the West and East wings of the White House.

The club is a women's society based on intellectual pursuits, and it bought the building in 1922 and has kept it in top shape ever since. In 1998, it created the Historic Preservation Foundation of the Fortnightly, which allowed tax-deductible contributions to be made to preserve the property.

It was the first private club in Chicago to take that step, leading the way for its Richard H. Driehaus Preservation Award from Landmarks Illinois, which includes a $500 award and a trophy modeled on Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler's original Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room.

The awards will also honor West Rogers Park's Indian Boundary Park fieldhouse for its restoration after an electrical fire that damaged the building two years ago, as well as Carolyn and Walker Johnson, who will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award for their efforts at architecture preservation in Chicago and elsewhere.

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