The Commission on Chicago Landmarks voted to grant DePaul’s Cortelyou Commons preliminary landmark status on Feb. 5. This move was part of a deal intended to clear the way for approval of DePaul’s planned basketball training facility.

Landmark status legally preserves historically important buildings. The preliminary landmark status that Cortelyou Commons received temporarily protects the exterior of the building until the Chicago City Council votes on permanent landmark status. That council-wide vote has not yet been scheduled.

The commission’s decision comes just months after the Chicago Plan Commission granted DePaul permission to build a new basketball training facility on land occupied by current historic Chicago row houses that are not landmark buildings. Moving to place Cortelyou Commons and Byrne Hall, another historic campus building, into landmark status was part of a conditional deal with the city that greenlighted DePaul’s new facility.

“DePaul is committed to preservation in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, while at the same time investing in our future,” University Communications said in a statement.

The university is expected to start on-site work for the new basketball facility in July. 

Lincoln Park Ald. Timmy Knudsen (43rd) brokered this deal.

“Any time we see something come down in Lincoln Park, we need to make sure we also see something better being protected forever,” Knudsen said.

According to Knudsen, without aldermanic support, building DePaul’s new basketball facility would become much more challenging.

The process of designating a building with landmark status requires a major investment in legal fees, historical research and architectural evaluation. While a landmark building owner is awarded with various federal and local financial incentives, Knudsen said they are also held to a high standard mandated by the city.

Not only is the owner prohibited from demolishing a landmark building, they are also required to invest in the building should it fall into disrepair. Owners also must go through the Commission on Chicago Landmarks for any changes to the protected part of the building. In Cortelyou Commons’s case, this would be the building’s exterior.

“They’re held in this relationship forever with the city,” Knudsen said.

Students like Cooper Kleinke, a sophomore political science major at DePaul, say Lincoln Park’s historic feel helped draw them to the university.

“It felt very much more homey,” he said. “That was a big part of why I really liked Lincoln Park and the campus.”

Built in 1929, Cortelyou Commons is located at 2324 N. Fremont St. The Gothic Revival architecture has tapered windows embellished with stone-ribbed tracery which all converge at a point. Its doors, framed by swooping arches, lead a viewer’s gaze upwards. The interior is marked by the gentle curves of its flying buttresses lining the ceiling of a grand hall.

“It has a lot of history,” Kleinke said. “It’s important to keep that.” 

The building shares the same architectural characteristics as other Chicago landmark buildings, such as the Chicago Tribune Tower and the Chicago Water Tower.

Cortelyou Commons was originally a dining hall and event space called “The Commons Building” for the McCormick Theological Seminary, an accredited school that teaches in the Presbyterian tradition. In 1975, the seminary moved to Hyde Park and sold many of its buildings to DePaul, including the Commons.

By September 1980, DePaul converted the building into a theatrical performance space. According to a 1988 memo provided by DePaul Special Collections and Archives, the Commons was intended to be “the living room of the campus.”

In 1993, the school renamed the building after the Rev. John R. Cortelyou, DePaul’s eighth president.

Today, DePaul uses the space for banquets, receptions, presentations and large university and community events, University Communications said. 

“Newer-built apartments coming up all don’t have character to it,” Kleinke said.

He would prefer to see communities invest in existing properties rather than tearing them down.

Telling the stories of buildings in a community is important, Knudsen said. “These buildings are worth preserving.”

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