Over a year after its grand opening June 19, 2025, the Aspire Center for Workforce and Innovation is being recognized for community-led preservation that’s improved development and quality of life in its community.
On Wednesday, Landmarks Illinois Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Preservation Awards announced its annual award to eight sites for historic preservation. This included the Aspire Center at 5500 W. Madison St., a rehabilitated version of the Robert Emmet Elementary School, which was closed in 2013 along with 49 other Chicago Public Schools and left vacant.
Today, the $47 million Aspire Center offers job training, financial and legal aid, career and reentry help inside a 115-year-old building. Of the 69,000 square-foot building, nearly 14,000 square feet are new, and the rest was built in 1911 and restored.
What used to be the former auditorium and gym of Emmet Elementary is now home to Jane Addams Resource Corporation, which offers free training for the trades. Other tenants include Westside Health Authority — which bought the building in 2018 — Austin Coming Together, BMO Bank, the Law Office of the Cook County Public Defender and Legal Aid Chicago.
Inside the Aspire Center, there is still much of Emmet Elementary on display. That includes many of the hardwood floors, the wide staircases with ornamental trim, hallways lined with wooden seats that were once installed in the school’s auditorium and lockers that have been turned into benches. Wooden built-ins still adorn some of the new office spaces and hallways.
“These projects are about much more than saving brick and mortar — they are revitalizing communities, advancing cultural representation and delivering resources people want and need today, like housing and economic growth,” said Frank Butterfield, Interim President & CEO of Landmarks Illinois, in a statement. “Our 2026 award winners have reimagined places of our past to create a more dynamic and inclusive future for us all.”
Other recipients of the 2026 Landmarks Illinois Driehaus Foundation Preservation Award include:
- The Wedge Innovation Center – Alton
- Rendleman Orchards Historic District – Alto Pass
- Champaign County African American Heritage Trail – Champaign County
- Little Village Arch Restoration Project – Chicago
- Muddy Waters MOJO Museum – Chicago
- The New Broadview – East St. Louis
- West End Service Station – Edwardsville