GOLD COAST — This little cottage's days in the Gold Coast could be numbered.
A developer has applied to tear down the 140-year-old cottage at 1241 N. State St. — the last worker's cottage still standing in the neighborhood — and replace it with a new three-story home, public records show.
And late last month, the home was released from the city's 90-day demolition delay list — boosting the chances the property will see a wrecking ball.
"It's terrible," neighbor Susan Messinger told DNAinfo in June. "We have to be in contact with our history; we can't keep tearing this stuff down."
RELATED: 140-Year-Old Gold Coast Cottage Set To Be Torn Down
The city has yet to issue a demolition permit, but a teardown would erase a bit of history in the Gold Coast, a onetime graveyard better known now for stately mansions and mid-century high-rises.
Dave Matthews talks about options for saving the house.
The two-bedroom, 1,000-square-foot cottage was built in 1872, a year after the Great Chicago Fire. The cottage was built for laborers tasked with rebuilding the city after the fire, and is now the last one left standing in the affluent neighborhood, listing agent Stefanie Lavelle of Coldwell Banker said.
Local homebuilder Bloomfield Development Co. paid $1.5 million in June for the home, but the city gave the cottage a respite by placing it on its demolition delay list — a courtesy given to properties with enough historic significance.
But now those 90 days are up, and that protection is gone.
"As each one of these buildings come down you just whittle away more of the city’s architectural integrity and that great story of Chicago," Ward Miller of Preservation Chicago said in June.
Jim Schueller of Bloomfield Development did not return a message seeking comment.
The cottage means a lot to Miller, who grew up in the Gold Coast and used to pass it on his way to grade school. The cottage doesn't just harken back to the neighborhood's modest roots, but also Chicago's fledgling rebirth after the fire. The home was built a decade before the Potter Palmer Mansion, which established what's now called the Gold Coast as a destination for the city's elite.
The cottage — which is in disrepair and doesn't have a working kitchen — has few documented historic ties and is hard to preserve on its own, Miller said. But he's hoping its pending demolition is an opportunity to start another conversation: landmarking the whole neighborhood. Astor Street, which is often regarded as the nicest street in the Gold Coast, was designated a landmarked district in 1975.
"This would be one of the great landmark districts in Chicago if this were to come about," Miller said.
Preservation Chicago has reached out to neighborhood groups as well as aldermen Brian Hopkins (2nd) and Michele Smith (43rd), whose wards include the Gold Coast, Miller said. The group eyes a landmark district stretching from roughly Division Street to North Avenue between State and Dearborn parkways, Miller said, but such designation can take more than a year for city council approval.
Or too long to save the cottage.
"It's really kind of sad," Miller said. "It's really unfortunate because it does tell a story of the neighborhood."
RELATED: 140-Year-Old Gold Coast Cottage Sold, Will It Face Wrecking Ball?
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here.
