Two buildings purchased for $1 in Chicago: at left, Hairpin Lofts (photo by Balloggphoto.com), and at right, Optimo Hats (photo by Tom Rossiter). Photos below are by Lois Kimmelman.

By Lois Kimmelman, LEED AP

In Chicago, it’s possible to buy an old, deteriorating building for one dollar, provided you promise to save it from the wrecking ball and spend your money renovating it. Not only do you avoid the wasted energy and resources associated with demolition and starting from scratch, but you can also make the building more sustainable in the process.

Two LEED-certified cases in point: the Optimo Hats plant and corporate headquarters in a former south side firehouse, and Hairpin Lofts, a north-side apartment house in the old offices of a ladies’ hairpin factory. Both were purchased from the City for the bargain basement price of $1.

Optimo Hats

The firehouse, constructed in 1915 and vacant since 2008, was rehabbed for Optimo by a team headed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) to accommodate the manufacture of classy, custom-made men’s hats. Far from being a dingy sweatshop, the handsome structure, which reopened in 2018, has plenty of light on the workroom floor, thanks to a combination of oversized windows and LED task lamps.

Optimo designers reused materials from the existing firehouse; for example, marble reclaimed from the firehouse’s showers finished the kitchen next to the studio on the second floor. Also, they outfitted the bathrooms with low-flow fixtures, and installed a radiant heat system in the floor. Radiant heating, an efficient substitute for other types of heating, warms a floor and then allows heat to rise into the room above it directly and evenly, without having to rely on radiators, vents, or ductwork. The bottom line: a reduction in utility costs.

Hairpin Lofts

The Hairpin Lofts building, on the other hand, made the transition from the corporate offices of the Hump Hair Pin company, to the Morris B. Sachs Department Store, to its current use as multi-unit residences plus an art gallery and a curio shop. Built in 1930, it had fallen into disuse by the 1990s. It languished for nearly two decades until it was sold to Brinshore Development and reopened in 2011 after a wholesale renovation.

Now Hairpin’s rooms are graced with daylight streaming through restored, energy-efficient windows. Further contributing to energy savings are a geothermal heating and cooling system, a green roof, and rooftop solar thermal panels. As in the Optimo firehouse, original materials, like the marble and terrazzo floors, were retained in the new, improved iteration of the historic landmark. Key players in the rehab were Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture and Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc. (WJE).

Stay tuned for more energizing tales of ailing Chicago buildings bought on the cheap and resuscitated, viz. the Ramova Theatre, a long-abandoned gem that just held its grand reopening on New Year’s Eve. And word has it that yet another vacant city fire station is slated for redevelopment, this one as a community arts center.

Read more about historic buildings getting a green makeover on Lois Kimmelman’s website/blog, Historecycle. She promotes restoration and renovation, not demolition.