Chicago Savings Bank Building, Chicago Building (1927)
Life Span: 1904-Present
Location: Southwest corner State and Madison streets
Architect: Holabird & Roche
- Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1906
Chicago Savings Bank Bldg.—72 Madison sw cor State
Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1911
Chicago Savings Bank Bldg.—7 W Madison sw cor State
Inter Ocean, June 28, 1903
Permit Issued for Big Chicago Saving Bank Structure.
A building permit issued Friday definitely settles the character of the improvement to occupy the Otis leasehold at the southwest corner of State and Madison streets. There will be no theater, as has been maintained by The Inter Ocean right along. The building will be a sixteen-story store, bank, and and office structure, to be known as the Chicago Savings Bank building. It is designed by Holabird & Roche for the Otis estate, and will cover the entire site, forty-eight feet on State and 120 feet on Madison street. The exterior material will be white tile and enameled terra cotta, and the interior will be finished in mahogany throughout. The Chicago Savings bank now at the corner of State and Washington streets, will occupy the entire banking floor. The cost of the new structure is given at $600,000.
Chicago Tribune, December 13, 1903
BANK BUILDING FOR A BUSTLING CORNER.
The Chicago Savings Bank building, to be erected next year by the Otis estate at the southwest corner of Madison and State streets, is to be sixteen stories high. It will be finished on the exterior in white terra cotta and glazed brick. On the first floor will be five stores, the bank will take the entire second floor, and the next three floors will be rented to three concerns. Above these will be offices.
The building will replace the one built by the Otis family in 1871. It will be razed in May. The new building, it is expected, will be ready for occupancy by Jan. 1, 1905. Holabird & Roche are the architects, and the building will be under the management of Seymour Morris. The cost will be $750,000.
The site is one of the choicest corners in the downtown district. In an hour of one afternoon 4,720 people were seen to pass along the Madison street side of this corner, and in the same time 6,864 persons passed the State street side.
Chicago Tribune, January 10, 1904
WEEK’S REAL ESTATE SALES.
Most Important Deal is That for Chicago Savings Bank Building Site.
The most important deal of the week, which picked up well after the holiday dullness, was the closing of the negotiations for the transfer of the leaseholds to the property on which the Chicago Savings Bank building is to be erected at State and Madison streets. The transfer of the leaseholds and ownership of the buildings now occupying the property was a mere formality, as the Otis family, which held the leases, owns the controlling interest in the Madison Building company, which will erect the new building.
The consideration in each of the transfers was the nominal one of $10. The ground is owned by the school fund and is divided into two buildings. Joseph E. and Ralph C. Otis convey 80×18 feet on the corner, which is under lease expiring May 8, 1985, on a graded scale of rental averaging $28,751 per year, and Mrs. Mary Keep Otis conveys the adjoining 40×48 feet at 74-76 Madison street, under lease for the same period at an average annual ground rental of $9,250. The new fourteen story building is to cost about $600,000.
Inland Architect, July 1905
The Chicago Savings Bank Building, Chicago. Holabird & Roche, architects, Wells Brothers Company, contractors. This building is unique in its simplicity of line. While lacking in decorative features, it has many architectural refinements of interest. VVith its sixteen stories of rich brown terra cotta it is prominent and impressive and is in direct contrast with the light colored surrounding buildings. That its prominent location, high grade construction and equipment are appreciated is shown by its immediate occupancy by high class tenants
- Chicago Savings Bank
Inland Architect
July 1905
Fireproof Magazine, September 1904
Chicago Savings Bank Building
At the corner of State and Madison streets, Chicago, there is now under course of erection an office building to be known as the “Chicago Savings Bank Building.” The design is similar to the Adams Building, drawings and description of which appeared in our July number.
The building when finished will be one of the finest examples of standard fireproof construction in Chicago, and will cost approximately $500,000.
The floor arches are of end construction, partitions three-inch hollow tile for division walls, four-inch for corridors, and six-inch double air space around smokestack. The building will be fourteen stories high, with basement and sub-basement, covering a ground area of 121 feet by 48 feet.
The fireproofing details, shown in the illustrations following, give an idea of the care taken to thoroughly encase every piece of structural steel in the building.
The rapidity with which a building of this character can be constructed is marvelous, when we consider that it does not take any longer to construct a huge skyscraper of this type, than to erect a modest dwelling.
The architects, Holabird and Roche, are to be congratulated on the care they have taken to render the new Chicago Savings Bank Building thoroughly fire proof in every particular.
Chicago Tribune, May 27, 1987
Landmarks pitch riles school board
The chairman of the Chicago City Council’s Landmarks Committee said Tuesday that he will revive long-dormant efforts to protect the crumbling Chicago Building before its owner, the Chicago Board of Education, can tear it down.
“They are trying to wreck the building before the committee gets a chance to declare it a landmark,” Ald. Bernard Stone (50th) said.
Stone said he will seek to have the 83-year-old building at 7 W. Madison St. declared a landmark at a committee meeting June 8.
But school board officials, who last week ordered most of the building’s tenants to leave, denied responsibility for the building’s poor condition and vowed to fight the landmark designation, which would prevent them from remodeling or tearing it down.
“Will Alderman Stone provide funds to repair the building if it is determined to be a landmark?” asked Barbara Peck, chief financial officer for the school board. “Our priority in rehabbing goes to the schools before it goes to a building.”
Peck said the board took ownership of the building just last year from a long-term leaseholder and found it in bad shape.
“When we took title there were Band-Aids all around the building holding it together,” she said. “We have had pieces falling off.”
The battle lines over the Chicago Building began to form last week when the school board’s real estate division gave about 20 business tenants until Sept. 30 to move out of the top 12 floors of the Loop office building. The tenants were ordered out because the board cannot afford to maintain every floor of the aging 15-story property, Peck said.
The building’s prized “Chicago school” terra cotta exterior-one of he purest examples remaining, according to architects—is crumbling and pieces have fallen to the street, Peck said. Its heating and plumbing systems and elevators are also in poor condition and have cost the board more than $10,000 a month in repairs, officials said.
One school board employee familiar with the property said it would take “millions and millions” to renovate the building. But Peck said the board has not decided what to do with it. Options under consideration include renovating it, tearing it down or selling it, she said.
“The building had been neglected for a number of years before it came into our possession,” Peck said. “We had to put significant dollars into it to prevent a dangerous situation from occurring.
The school board only recently became clear owner to the building, Peck said, after winning a year-long court battle with the State & Madison Property Corp., which has offices in the Chicago Building. Officials of that company could not be reached Tuesday.
Under federal laws that set aside land in each township for schools, the entire block on which the building stands was deeded to the school board by the federal government when the land was originally outlined. Communities had the option to build schools on the land, lease it or sell it to profit their school systems.
On May 3, 1901, the Chicago Board of Education signed an 84-year lease with a land trust that built the Chicago Building in 1904. That lease expired May 8, 1985, but a court battle over renewal rights with the current lease holder prevented the school board from taking over the property until last year, Peck said.
The school board still owns the block on which the building stands, and many of the leases for other buildings on the property come due in 1989, Peck said.
The board may want to consider then whether to “put together a development deal” for the entire package, she said.
A landmark designation would foil any plans to redevelop the land on which the Chicago Building stands, Peck said.
Stone and members of the Chicago Landmark Commission charge that the school board has allowed the building to deteriorate so that it could claim “economic hardship” and thereby claim an exemption from landmark status under a city ordinance adopted in March of this year.
Stone contended that the economic hardship clause will not apply in this case because the Chicago Building was submitted for consideration of landmark status in May 1983—before the ordinance was adopted.
“The school board can make an argument for economic hardship to the committee, but as far as I am concerned, this matter came up before that section was applicable, Stone said.
Chicago Tribune, February 23, 1990
REPRIEVE FOR HISTORIC BUILDING.
Citicorp withdraws its offer for purchase, demolition
By John McCarron
Urban affairs writer
Citicorp Savings announced Thursday that it is withdrawing its $15 million offer to buy and demolish the historic Chicago Building at Madison and State Streets as part of its plans for a new headquarters building.
A spokesman said Citicorp executives now agree that the 84 year-old Loop building, which is owned by the Chicago Board of Education, ought not be demolished. He said Citicorp will proceed with its new building on land it already owns to the west on the south side of Madison between State and Dearborn Streets.
The surprise announcement is a mixed blessing for preservationists, who had been trying to persuade Citicorp to restore the old building at 7 W. Madison St. and integrate it into the new complex.
On one hand preservationists won a reprieve for the Chicago Building; on the other they may have lost the only potential buyer who could have rehabbed it as part of a financially doable deal.
“In one sense I’m disappointed,” said Carol Wyant, director of the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois. “They (Citicorp) could have done something really beautiful for themselves and for the city.” Wyant said she hoped another developer would step forward with a plan to rehab the building, regarded as a prototype of the Chicago-style steel frame skyscraper.
Some real estate experts doubt, however, that another developer will step up, at least no one with $15 million for Chicago’s cash-strapped school system.
“I’ve heard nothing from the development community,” said Larry E. Lund, vice president of U.S. Equities, a firm that is counseling the Board of Education on how best to dispose of its downtown real es-tate. The Chicago Building and other property on that block are remnants of the board’s 19th Century “school section” land grant from the federal government.
Whether other developers are interested should be apparent by next Tuesday, when formal bids are due at the board’s real estate office. Citicorp made its $15 million bid informally last fall. That prompted the board to publicly solicit bids, either for the raw land or for redeveloping the building.
School officials indicated they would accept a lower bid from a developer who promised rehab, though they never said how much lower.
“We still hope to get substantial bids that call for retention,” school board Vice President William Singer said Thursday.
But Singer conceded that he had not heard of any other proposals being readied, and he wondered out loud: “What are we to do if we get no other proposals? Who’s going to pay for keeping this building as a landmark?”
In private, some real estate experts contended that Citicorp’s withdrawal was an effort to show that no other credible developer stands ready to save the old building.
“They’re playing hardball,” one insider said.
Indeed, a statement issued Thursday morning by William Atwell, chairman of Citicorp of Illinois, did not preclude the possibility that the bank would return if nobody offered to save the building.
Later Thursday, Citicorp spokesman Joel Werth denied that the bank was trying to demonstrate the futility of saving the building. “We don’t want to see the building torn down,” Werth said.
Chicago Tribune, March 22, 1992
Settling Down On State Street
`93 May See City`s Heart Become Home
By Patrick T. Reardon, Urban affairs writer.
It has been a century and a half since teacher Samuel C. Bennett lived in a small house behind a private school on the southwest corner of State and Madison Streets.
And it has been more than 100 years since workers` shacks lined State Street among saloons, cheap hotels and meat markets.
Nobody has resided on State Street in downtown Chicago since shortly after the Civil War, when Potter Palmer began clearing it out to transform the street into the city`s commercial hub.
But that may soon change.
As early as August 1993, movers may be carrying beds, sofas and refrigerators into a residential development in a 14-story landmark building on the southwest corner of State and Madison, once touted as the world`s busiest intersection.
The 48 apartments planned for the upper 12 stories of the Chicago Building at 7 W. Madison St. would be a unique departure from the rabbit warren of offices and the broad array of stores that have characterized State Street and the Loop throughout Chicago`s growth as a major American city.
They are part of a $13 million development put forward by developer William Harris Smith, president of Creative Construction Ltd., and his partner, Mid-America Real Estate Corp., of Oakbrook Terrace.
On Wednesday, the Chicago Board of Education, which owns the property under a 19th Century federal land grant, is scheduled to vote on a 50-year lease for the developers. Earlier this month, the board`s real estate committee approved the plan, which has the support of city planners.
`We`re encouraged that the Chicago Building is going to be restored,” said Valerie Jarrett, the city`s commissioner of planning and development.
“State Street today is a street that a lot of people would like to live on.”
The fact that residential development is even being considered on State Street is a measure of how overstocked the city`s office market is. It is also a measure of how State Street, once the pre-eminent retail center of the city, has slipped into second place behind North Michigan Avenue.
Nonetheless, Sara Bode, executive director of the Greater State Street Council, called the plans “enormously exciting.“
“The real estate community would say the highest and best use of the land would be commercial, because that is more profitable,” Bode said. “But we have been saying for some years that what State Street really needs is to have residential come in.
“Any physical plant that has a large number of people and commerce is going to have to change and evolve because people and commerce change and evolve.”
Bode said residential development, mixed with the offices and stores on State Street, would be one way of getting more people to shop the area, particularly in the non-rush times, such as the late afternoon.
The corner of State and Madison has an almost mythic place in Chicago`s identity.
The intersection is the center point of the city`s address system. All addresses are based on how far north, south, east or west they are of State and Madison.
If there is any single spot that represents the Loop-or even the city-to Chicagoans, it is probably that place where State and Madison cross.
Under the development plans, each of the upper 12 floors of the Chicago Building at that corner would have four apartments of about 1,000 square feet. Stores would occupy the bottom two floors, Smith said.
The Chicago Building, built on a narrow lot in 1904, was designed by the architectural firm of Holabird and Roche. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Immediately south of the Chicago Building is a 19,000-square foot site occupied by four buildings of four to six stories each.
Under Smith`s plans, these would be torn down and replaced by a two-story structure that would house a single retailer. Smith said he has a commitment from the retailer to occupy the space but declined to name the business.
Smith said that, under the lease, the partnership would pay the school system $300,000 for each of the first two years after occupancy and then an increasing amount based on a predetermined rate. Construction could start as early as September, he said.
Smith predicted that the apartments, which will rent for $800 to $1,000, will be attractive to downtown workers who want to be close to their jobs, the lakefront and the other amenities of the Loop.
In addition, many of the apartments will have unique vistas. Because State Street jogs about 20 feet to the west at Madison, residents with apartments in the northeast corner of the building will have an unobstructed view of State Street north to the Chicago River.
“They`ll have terrific views,“ he said.
And a terrific address.
- Chicago Savings Bank
Sanborn Fire Insurance Map
1906
- Chicago Building
Sanborn Fire Insurance Map
1927
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