What To Do About Empty School Buildings?
Changing Gears recently reported on Empty Places throughout our region — buildings, vacant lots, corporate campuses — and what people were doing to deal with these spaces.
Lee Bey, a blogger at our partner station WBEZ, posed a question about what happens to Chicago Public School buildings when they’re slated to be closed, especially when those buildings are architectural gems. (Bey was featured in my empty places story about a former meatpacking plant on the edge of the old Stockyards.)
Bey is speaking in particular about Walter Dyett High School on W. 51st Street. and Crane Technical Prep High School, at Jackson and Oakley on the city’s near West side, which Bey describes as an “exceptional piece of Greek Revival architecture that’s in fine physical condition.”
But he’s even more effusive about Dyett, designed by Mies van der Rohe protege David Haid. You may know Haid for the auto pavilion he designed that was featured in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – the one where Cameron’s dad’s Ferrari was parked.
Bey’s full post is here. And for your viewing pleasure, I present you that infamous scene from the movie: