Beloit College turned a decommissioned coal plant into the award-winning Powerhouse - a stunning model of adaptive reuse and sustainable architecture. Designed by Studio Gang, the former Blackhawk Generating Station now blends historic preservation with green innovation, featuring river-powered heating and cooling, natural light, and LEED certification.

Chicago’s legendary rock music hall Double Door is overcoming the typical odds faced by those looking to preserve the best of a historic building while revamping it with both modern and green features. To paraphrase George Harrison, it takes plenty of money, a whole lot of precious time, and much patience, to do it right. Rendering of Double Door facade by Barker Nestor. In 2017, when they realized they had to move out of their old space on the north side of the city, the

Chicago’s storied Bridgeport neighborhood has been the home of mayors, police, and firefighters for years. But hidden in plain sight is another feature of that illustrious neighborhood: the almost century-old Ramova Theatre, newly renovated and reopened for business. Now, it includes a 36,000-square-foot complex including a live music hall, banquet space, brewery, and restaurant. The upstairs banquet space, called the “Ramova Loft,” was once a karate/boxing gym. The Ramova Th

In Chicago, it’s possible to buy an old, deteriorating building for one dollar, provided you promise to save it from the wrecking ball and spend your money renovating it instead. Not only do you avoid the need to demolish and start from scratch---wasting energy and resources in the process---but you can revive a venerable old structure and make it more sustainable as well. Two LEED-certified cases in point: the Optimo Hat Co. plant and corporate headquarters in a former south

Three mayors ago, in the City that Works, the original Goldblatt Bros. Department Store sat empty on Chicago Avenue in the City’s bustling West Town neighborhood. A shadow of its former distinguished self, the structure was slated for demolition, to be replaced by a Del Ray Farms supermarket. Enter a group of community activists and preservationists, whose objections to the razing prompted the City to buy the vacant store in 1997 and recast it as a municipal office building.

Guest blogger: Landon Bone Baker Architects. Landon Bone Baker Architects were the lead architects for both SRO projects. Residential hotels constructed in Chicago between 1880 and 1930 served as an indispensable component of the city’s housing stock, offering an affordable housing option in prime locations. These single-room occupancy (SRO) hotels served a critical role in housing a large segment of the city’s middle- and working-class residents, and many continue to do so

This blog post is dedicated to artist Neil Trais, who died in 2021. Neil, who for several decades designed Chicago Filmmakers’ myriad posters and announcements, loved Godzilla films and was a devoted fan of all things reptilian. If you look hard enough in Chicago, you’ll spot one of the grand old firehouses whose doors are no longer bright red, where “hook and ladders” used to be parked inside, waiting for the next fire. These abandoned firehouses have been revived by a vari

In early spring, Historecycle donned a hardhat and steel-toed shoes and returned to Chicago’s Glessner House to witness the crowning touches of the geothermal well drilling on site. Joggers in the adjacent Chicago Women’s Park, where trees were just turning green, were oblivious to another type of greening happening next door. In Glessner House’s courtyard, on the other side of the brick wall that separates the park from the building, four holes were being bored through bedro

Downed too many St. George’s Green Chile Pepper vodkas at Obed and Isaac’s in Peoria, Illinois? No problem--you can pray for sobriety without leaving the premises, which started out as a Presbyterian church. The 1889 building, a city landmark that’s also on the National Register of Historic Places, was salvaged by the Conn’s Hospitality Group, a family business that specializes in renovating older buildings. The church, also known as the Cornerstone Building, reopened in 20

Construction is underway at the 1928 two-story firehouse at 5720 N. Ridge in Chicago, called “the most ornate of the grand firehouses” by the Chicago Landmarks Commission. The brick-and-terra-cotta building will soon be reborn as the new home of Chicago Filmmakers . The independent film group plans to show offbeat movies on the main floor where fire trucks were once parked, and hold film-making classes upstairs where firefighters used to sleep. Preservation is the name of the