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.

Photo: Bailey Edward Every year, thousands of visitors flock to Springfield, the heart of the Land of Lincoln, to see Lincoln’s stomping grounds. But thousands more visit the city for another reason: to attend the Illinois State Fair each summer. One of the Fair’s key structures, the Coliseum, was designed for prizewinning ponies as much as for people. It recently was treated to a major renovation that focused on safety and sustainability while honoring its illustrious past.

The devil is in the details at Chicago’s Hairpin Lofts . Look carefully at the exterior of this majestic, six-story triangular structure, and you’ll see that it’s bedecked with camel insignias. Constructed in 1930, when ladies had pinned-up hairdos, the building originally housed the offices of the Hump Hair Pin company, helmed by Sol Goldberg, the Chicago millionaire and once mayoral candidate who invented the dromedary-shaped hairpin and who commissioned what locals dubbed

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,

Acrophobes and the faint of heart need not apply. All others will be delighted to discover that the alpha male of skyscrapers, the Empire State Building, has reinvented itself as a supergreen structure. A top-to-bottom, four-year renovation of the historic landmark began in 2009, with the chief goal of maximizing energy savings. Like King Kong, construction workers clambered around the storied 102-story building, barely noticed by the stream of office workers and visitors tha

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

The colorful history of the 42,700-square-foot building at 1071 W. Division Street in Chicago begins in 1905, when the Horween Leather Company tannery moved in and started making razor strops (sharpeners) out of horse hide. In 1927, the Burhop Paper Compan y took over the building, churning out tons of boxes and paper, and endless rolls of twine. In its heyday, it anchored a bustling complex in the heart of the industrial area known as Goose Island. There Burhop workers wou