On May 5 city officials will address planners from all over the country at the first Preserve and Play Conference, set up by the National Park Service, the American Society of Landscape Architects, and other organizations to promote “successful ways of preserving our recreation and entertainment heritage.” There will be sessions on the need to preserve recreational spaces and speeches about Chicago’s grand tradition of building lovely parks. One thing that probably won’t be mentioned is the playground next to the old settlement house dedicated in 1905 by Jane Addams and known as Association House, in the 2100 block of North Avenue.
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In 1997 the social service organization that occupied Association House moved its main headquarters to 1116 N. Kedzie. Last summer it announced that it intended to sell the old settlement house and lot, playground included. Association House’s executive director, Harriet Sadauskas, says her group needs to sell the property for as much as it can get to finance the renovation of the Kedzie building and to expand its programs. “This is an asset for our legacy for the future,” she says. “We had to make a tough decision to allow us to continue. Funding has been hard enough for nonprofits in the last few years. It is a financial hardship not to sell the whole property.”
Earlier this year Association House had a contract to sell the property to Stillpoint Development, which planned to turn the house into 12 condos and build a four-story, lot-line-to-lot-line, 21-unit condo complex on the playground. After residents objected at a January 12 neighborhood hearing, Stillpoint pulled out of the deal.
But the residents were livid. They thought they had an open-and-shut case: the playground is clearly in the landmark district–which, according to the city ordinance that created it, protects “streetscapes and landscapes” as well as buildings–and it’s an integral part of Zimmerman’s design. “The playground’s in harmony with Association House–it is part of a campus,” says Elaine Coorens, a Wicker Park resident who wrote a neighborhood history and tour guide. “If you put a building on that playground, you might as well just put buildings on any undeveloped lawns in the district.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Robert Murphy, Saverio Truglia.
