Edgewater's historic Bryn Mawr Avenue heads toward possible landmark status

A three-block stretch of Edgewater's Bryn Mawr Avenue, home to some of the most stylish Victorian era and Jazz Age residential buildings in the city, will take a likely step toward landmark status Thursday.

The city's Department of Planning and Development will ask the Commission on Chicago Landmarks to approve a preliminary designation to create the Bryn Mawr Avenue Landmark District.

The proposed three-block, 15-building district between Sheridan Road and Broadway would include some already individually-landmarked structures, such as the eight-story cream and green Belle Shore Apartments, the Tudor-styled Manor House and the elegant princess painted in “sunset pink,” the Edgewater Beach Apartments, at 5555 N. Sheridan Road.

"Constructed between 1897 and 1929, the proposed district's 15 contributing buildings form a distinctive and remarkably intact group designed in a range of architectural styles," city staffers wrote in their report to the commission.

While Bryn Mawr Avenue has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1995, a city designation would help protect the corridor's buildings from demolition and unsympathetic alterations. Well, except for 5614 N. Winthrop Ave. and 1106 W. Bryn Mawr Ave. More on that later.

A 15-minute city

A century after its creation, the thoroughfare is still a nice little strip with retail space at the bases of many of the street's residential buildings, with the Bryn Mawr stop on the CTA's Red Line right there.

There's a lot of talk lately about the 15-minute city, a recent urban planning idea that would put everything a resident would need — work, medical care, shopping and the like — within a quarter-hour walk, or transit journey, from home.

Bryn Mawr Avenue — dense, walkable — had the beginnings of that back when people were barely out of horse-and-buggies. So did spots like South Chicago's Commercial Avenue on the Southeast Side, Six Corners in Portage Park and the Madison and Pulaski retail node in West Garfield Park. The more the city, business and philanthropic community can do to lift these places up, the better.

"From its earliest period of development, Bryn Mawr Avenue has served as a neighborhood commercial corridor, a street where residents of the surrounding community could access shopping and professional services in a walkable setting close to home," the city's report said.

Bryn Mawr fell on hard times with vacancies and crumbing buildings in the 1970s and 1980s, "but the street had a bit of a renaissance 30 years ago," Edgewater Historical Society President John Holden said.

"It went from pretty bad to pretty good, but then the last seven to 10 years have been kind of rough between COVID and the reconstruction of the Red Line," he said. "So there's really been a lot of focus, especially amongst the people who live right along the street, to try to get the street back to its former glory."

To help this along, the city in 2025 created the Broadway Land Use Framework, which seeks to improve the intersection of Bryn Mawr and Broadway and "celebrate the unique history and culture of the corridor," according to the plan.

And a permanent landmark designation for Bryn Mawr, if approved by the City Council, would make buildings within the district eligible for property tax incentives that could help write-down renovation and restoration costs.

But not for 5614 N. Winthrop and 1106 W. Bryn Mawr. The city staffers' report said the two buildings have been altered so much that it recommends the commission approve demo permits for the structures.

Extra, extra!

The landmarks commission will also vote on whether to recommend the City Council approve a permanent landmark designation for Holabird & Root's former Chicago Daily News Building, 400 W. Madison St.

This mighty fine 26-story riverside slab of Art Deco — with its beautifully chiseled and sculpted exteriors and fine 1920s bottom floor spaces — represents the best of Chicago architecture and should have been landmarked decades ago.

But the structure's long-time and clout-heavy former owner, Sam Zell, forbade it.

Zell died in 2023 and the building’s new owner, 2 N. Riverside Venture, is embracing the landmark designation. The group plans a $70 million renovation that would preserve the structure's historic exteriors, riverfront plaza, first- and second-floor lobby spaces and that 200-foot-long concourse that leads to the Ogilvie Transportation Center pedestrian bridge.

And what about the kinetic-looking, 180-foot John Warner Norton mural that once adorned the concourse's concave ceiling?

The work, titled "Gathering the News, Printing the News, Transporting the News," went into hiding after Zell snatched it down decades ago — but the new owners have deed to the masterpiece.

A permanent landmark designation would make the developers eligible for a $29 million real estate tax break, spread out across 12 years.

With that kind of taxpayer cash at play, the Daily News Building's owners should do the public a solid in return: Restore the mural and put it back in the concourse — where it belongs.