A 79-year-old Altgeld Gardens commercial building that has spent years in disrepair despite being designed by noted Chicago architects Keck & Keck could soon begin a new life housing after-school programs and social services.
The nonprofit By the Hand Club for Kids has signed an agreement to buy the privately owned former Altgeld Gardens Commercial Center — residents call it the Up Top building — at 13100 S. Ellis Ave. for $450,000, according to Andraya Yousfi, the group’s chief of partnerships and development.
Helping make the acquisition easier: The Chicago Housing Authority on May 27 agreed to sell 1.24 acres of CHA land surrounding the building — mostly a parking lot that landlocks the structure — to the club for $27,600.
By the Hand Club has been operating in an Altgeld Gardens church since 2005 and has served young people from kindergarten through high school in the Cabrini-Green area since 2001.
Building designed to ‘help create the full community’
Built in 1946, the single-story curvilinear brick structure, designed by George Keck and his brother William, was conceived as a mini shopping center for residents of the then-new and remotely located public housing development.
A decade earlier, George Keck created a sensation at Chicago’s 1933 World’s Fair with his glassy, 12-sided House of Tomorrow. The Kecks went on to have a 50-year career designing modernist houses in Chicago and along the North Shore.
At Altgeld Gardens, the Kecks designed a brick building that looked lighter than air, thanks to its gracefully curved profile, an abundance of glass shop windows and a stylish overhanging roof.
The center originally had a grocery store, a doctor’s office, beauty and barber shops, a laundry and a delicatessen.
“This building was then planned — to be privately owned and financed — for the prominent location in the project, to house these essentials and help create the full community,” Progressive Architecture magazine wrote in 1948.
But shops and services left as the years passed, and its owners removed and sealed up most of the center’s visually striking glass facade while letting the building empty out and rot.
Residents, meanwhile, still recognized the building’s worth.
A breezeway within the structure was turned into a memorial wall that Yousfi said will be preserved as part of the renovation. And Altgeld’s Local Advisory Council President Bernadette Williams encouraged By the Hand Club to acquire the building.
“Our children want to see new amenities there,” Williams told CHA board members during last month’s meeting.
‘A good partner’
According to renderings from By the Hand Club, much of Keck & Keck’s glass would return.
“Here’s to hoping this amazing building can be restored and reused,” said Preservation Chicago Executive Director Ward Miller, whose organization placed the structure on its most endangered buildings list in 2011 and 2013.
“Ideally, this building would even qualify for Chicago landmark designation, which would be marvelous and well deserved,” he said.
The renovated and reactivated building, designed by Present Future Architects, would be located right next door to architect Jackie Koo’s very nicely done Altgeld Family Resource Center, a 40,000-square-foot complex built in 2021 that includes a Chicago Public Library and a child care center.
The project is expected to be completed in three to four years, Yousfi said. Plans include building a gym on the building’s eastern edge.
Together, the two buildings would provide a stylish and community-centered entry point to the public housing development.
“For us, it’s really about being a good partner and support what the community wants,” Yousfi said.
