What’s That Building? Chicago buildings housing migrants
Several of the city’s migrant shelters have distinguished histories, either because of their architecture or ties to noteworthy figures.
By Dennis Rodkin
What’s That Building? Chicago buildings housing migrants
Several of the city’s migrant shelters have distinguished histories, either because of their architecture or ties to noteworthy figures.
By Dennis RodkinIn the past 16 months, at least 29,000 migrants have arrived in Chicago from Texas on buses, airplanes and Metra trains.
Providing shelter has been a challenge that sparked numerous controversies, such as neighbors resisting the use of buildings for migrant housing and the collapse of a plan to build a tent camp in the Brighton Park neighborhood because of contaminated soil on the site.
But there are buildings all over the city, and some in the suburbs, that have been turned into migrant housing, if only temporarily.
City officials have been tight-lipped about how buildings get selected, and there’s no public list of what buildings are being used. Nevertheless, WBEZ’s Reset found several that have distinguished histories, either because of their architecture or because they’re linked to noteworthy figures or events in Chicago’s past.
Here’s a look at five of these buildings.
4900 S. DuSable Lake Shore Drive, formerly Lake Shore Hotel
The city began moving 300 migrants into this old lakefront motel on Sept. 5, 2023, the Hyde Park Herald reported.
The site is now sort of a hodge-podge of different buildings rehabbed in different styles, but the history is two-fold. The migrants are living in a relic of the mid-20th century flourishing of motels, and the place where one of the century’s greatest American athletes appeared at a historic moment in his life.
Opened in the late 1950s, the low-slung motel called 50th on the Lake had a pair of big neon signs trumpeting both its name and its restaurant, the Surf & Surrey. Today, we may think of mid-century motels as retro landmarks, but when it was new this one was described by the Tribune as having a “startlingly dazzling exterior.”
Twenty-two years later, boxer Muhammad Ali addressed the press in this motel’s lobby on June 28, 1971, the day the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his 1967 conviction for draft evasion. The court found he was sincere in the religious beliefs that he said prohibited him from joining the military. Because of his conviction, Ali had been stripped of his boxing titles.
320 S. Plymouth Court, former Standard Club
The Chicago Sun-Times’s Fran Spielman reported in May the former Standard Club would be used to house at least 760 migrants.
The grand 13-story palazzo-style building was completed in 1926, with its initials inscribed in stone over the doorway and rows of arched windows above. The structure is the work of Albert Kahn, a great, prolific architect best known for his many buildings in Detroit. Kahn designed the building for the Standard Club, founded in 1869 by eminent Chicago Jews who were not allowed in other social clubs.
The club closed its building in March 2020, citing declining membership and the likely $15 million needed to update and rehab it. Two years later, a hotel developer bought the building for $9 million.
There’s a uniquely Chicago historical resonance to the old Standard Club building being put to use in this crisis. Two days after the Great Chicago Fire in October 1871, the Standard Club handed over its clubhouse at Michigan Avenue and 13th Street to be the headquarters of the Central Relief Committee, the primary group rebuilding and rehousing Chicago.
640 W. Irving Park Road, former Immaculata High School
Built in 1922 as a Catholic high school for girls and in 1983 turned into the American Islamic College, this building began housing migrants in July 2023. The shelter has a capacity of 1,300, according to 46th Ward Ald. Angela Clay’s website.
The handsome building is the work of architect Barry Byrne. He put a modern spin on typical elements of Catholic architecture, particularly by making the Gothic arched windows very slender. This was the first religious building Byrne designed on his own after working for Frank Lloyd Wright and other architects. With this and his next work, the far more ornate St Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church in Hyde Park, Byrne began a prolific career of designing modernist Catholic buildings. His portfolio would include schools in Wilmette and Milwaukee, and stunning churches in Kansas City, Tulsa and Cork, Ireland.
American Islamic College owned the building for nearly four decades until August 2023, when it signed over the deed to a developer, according to the Cook County Clerk. No price is recorded in the public records. Developer Keith Giles had in 2022 received city approval to add a 22-story tower to the site, turning the combination of old and new buildings into 437 apartments, 192 of them for seniors. According to the alderperson’s website, that plan is still on and will get started after the temporary use as migrant housing is over.
2241 S. Halsted St.
This shelter attracted media attention in mid-December when a 5-year-old migrant, Jean Carlos Martinez Rivero, died after becoming sick there.
The building’s history is wrapped up in Chicago’s business history. In the 1910s, the building was a warehouse for Sears Roebuck & Co, a retail company that was on its way to becoming one of the world’s largest. When Sears moved out, in 1920 the NachmanCompany moved in. They were makers of couches and automobile seats, both of which they described as “spring-filled,” as opposed to the old method of filling a cushion with fluff.
Sometime in the 1950s or 1960s, the present owners, Rubin Brothers, moved in. The company made work uniforms including some of the first fire-retardant clothes, and according to its website made fire-retardant clothes for “upwards of 80,000 workers in steel mills,” including those in Chicago and Northwest Indiana.
6650 S. Ellis Ave., former Wadsworth and Dumas Elementary
Before it was a migrant shelter, this CPS building housed a University of Chicago charter school, and before that it was called James Wadsworth Elementary.
But even before that, it was called Alexandre Dumas Elementary. One Dumas student from the early 1960s, Mae Jemison, went on to be the first Black woman in space, when she was assigned to NASA’s Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1992. Two decades ago, Jemison, an engineer and physician, told the Tribune that Dumas is where she did her first science experiment.
Dennis Rodkin is the residential real estate reporter for Crain’s Chicago Business and Reset’s “What’s That Building?” contributor. Follow him @Dennis_Rodkin.
K’Von Jackson is the freelance photojournalist for Reset’s “What’s That Building?” Follow him @true_chicago.