Landmarks Illinois has awarded grants to three West Side organizations to help them preserve their historic buildings.
The funds range from $3,500 to $5,000 and require an equal match from the recipients.
In Oak Park, The Day Nursery and the Living Sanctuary of Faith Church of God in Christ both received grants to address building restoration. And in North Lawndale, Theatre Y, an experimental theater company, received a grant to hire an architect to move forward with extensive renovation plans.
Landmarks Illinois is a nonprofit that advocates for the preservation of historic buildings and their reuse in communities. For more than 40 years, the organization has worked across Illinois in its mission of “people saving places for people.”
Suzanne Germann, director of reinvestment, said that this year’s grants were funded by the Preservation Heritage Fund, whose $60,000 comes from its operating budget.
These grants are available to municipalities and nonprofit organizations for the rehabilitation of historical buildings.
The Landmarks Illinois’ reinvestment committee determines which applicants receive grants. The board is made up of volunteers and includes architects, bankers, attorneys and historians. Taking community impact into account is an important part of the decision process
“We really try to work with people on what they find significant in their community that they want to preserve or tell the story about, and we want to support them in preserving their own communities and their own stories,” Germann said.
Germann said the grants are a one-to-one match, so organizations must match the grant amount with cash or donated services and materials. Once they have the match, the grant is paid and then recipients have a year to complete the project.
Theatre Y, which was awarded $5,000, will be using its grant to hire architects to begin the next steps in the entire renovation of a four-story, 100-year-old building in North Lawndale. Theatre Y is a nonprofit theater company that is committed to prison abolition.
The experimental theater is in its 18th year. After putting on productions in Chicago beginning in 2010, the company found a permanent location for its broad plans of connecting the theater with nonprofit social justice and incarceration advocacy efforts.
“This facility that we now occupy in North Lawndale has really been imagined as a sanctuary against the prison industrial complex,” Melissa Lorraine, co-founder and artistic director of Theatre Y, said.
The grant will go towards hiring architects to draft plans for the building. Lorraine said that about $1.5 million is needed to address all their plans for the building, but getting the architecture plans is a priority.
“We’re working with people inside the prison to try to bring them home. Then we’re hiring as many returning citizens in our building as possible – any and all ways that we could imagine a theater company participating in de-carcerating our country and our state,” Lorraine said.
Living Sanctuary of Faith Church of God in Christ, located at 701 Belleforte Ave., was awarded $5,000 to make necessary repairs in the church, built in 1903. The church is in the local landmark district of the Frank Lloyd Wright Prairie School of Architecture Historic District.
The grant will be used to repair the foundation and roof of the church and take care of masonry issues related to water damage in the Gothic-style building, according to Landmarks Illinois.
The Day Nursery, a nonprofit daycare center founded in Oak Park in 1912, was awarded $3,500. The funds will be used to repair water-damaged windows that are impacting other parts of the 112-year-old building, located at 1139 Randolph St..
Catherine Eason, the executive director of the nursery, said that the building needs some overdue attention following the pandemic.
“While we had COVID, a lot of our upkeep was deferred. As we get along and come out of COVID, some of those things that need attention are very expensive. Windows are very expensive to maintain and restore,” Eason said.
Correction, July 18, 10:35 a.m.: This story was updated to correct the name of the grantor. It is Landmarks Illinois. We apologize for the error.