Chicago’s West Town has been experiencing a boom. Not only are humans moving in, but bees are as well. This spring, for example, saw the installation of five active beehives on the roof of the building that the company The Roof Crop calls home. The solid 1928 two-story, industrial structure, originally meant to house taxicabs, is one of the first in the city to be topped by an urban farm. The Roof Crop crew moved in in 2015, after tearing out the original roof and installing

Colorful. Comfortable. Inviting. Not adjectives that describe your typical vocational school building. What was originally a nondescript brick hardware equipment factory built in 1908 on Chicago’s southwest side was gutted, cleaned up, and transformed into a modern training center. The goal of Chicago Center for Arts and Technology (CHICAT ) , which opened in 2017, is to connect technology, art, and the community. To get to class, CHICAT students – low-income adults and teena

Time is of the essence for firefighters. In old firehouses like the one at 1700 W. 95th St. on Chicago’s South Side, firemen would sleep upstairs and, at the alarm bell, zip down the fire pole, rev up the fire truck on the ground floor, and zoom out to extinguish the flames. Now that Optimo Hats , a manufacturer of luxury men’s hats, has moved their headquarters into the 1915 firehouse, things have slowed down a bit. The handful of hat craftsmen who work there can peek throu

At the City Winery in Chicago, what’s behind the scenes is almost as exciting as what’s on stage. The West Loop building was once a nondescript cold storage facility for a food distributor at the edge of the famed meatpacking district. Now the 1920 warehouse has been transformed into a winery, restaurant, and above all, a hall for all styles of music, from rock ‘n’ roll to rockabilly. Between foot-stomping sets, take a few minutes to check out the furniture, fixtures, walls,

Chicago’s Goose Island--the island, that is, not the beer--has been undergoing a metamorphosis in the last few years. Once a manufacturing mecca, its sweaty, grimy old brick factories are, one by one, being turned from blue collar to white collar. Just across the Chicago River and less than a mile east of hipster haven Wicker Park, for example, sits the newest version of the former Burhop building at 1071 W. Division Street. During its first century of life, the LEED Gold-cer

Chicago, aka hog butcher for the world, is home to The Plant , a meat-packing factory-turned-food production center and farmer’s market. The three-story building, vintage 1925, sits squarely on the border of a gritty south side industrial and a residential neighborhood. It is a hotbed of activity where recycling is paramount. A tour of The Plant gives you a chance to see its “food loop” in action, surrounded by re-engineered building space and salvaged materials. On the firs

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

Old firehouses in Chicago and surrounding suburbs are doubling as art centers, museums, restaurants, and wedding venues. In Chicago’s Avondale neighborhood, for example, the Puerto Rican Arts Alliance transformed a 1901 fire station, abandoned since 1982, into a community gathering place with a host of green features. During the renovation of the two-story cultural center (completed in 2012), the building was insulated and a highly efficient HVAC system was installed. On th

One hundred years ago, on a snowy, bone-chilling Chicago day like today, the Glessner family would have been huddled by the fireplace in their parlor, since the house’s original heating set-up did not allow winter temperatures to get much higher than 60°F. Now, in 2016, the parlor is located in the first zone of the Glessner House to be heated geothermally, along with the dining room, kitchen, and other first floor rooms west of the parlor. Around the turn of the new year th

On December 9, Phase I of the geothermal drilling began in the Glessner House courtyard. The 4,700-square-foot grass courtyard is enclosed by three sides of the building plus an ivy-covered brick wall to the south. This is the same courtyard where weddings are held during the summer, the same courtyard that the Glessners once looked out on from their parlor 100 years ago, the courtyard that was paved over in the 1940’s for use as parking when the house became a printing resea