Landmark status on tap for former Schlitz taverns
5120 N. Broadway, currently home to the South-East Asia Center, is one of the former Schlitz taverns city officials want to make a landmark. Photo: Serhii Chrucky
(Crain's) — City officials want to assign landmark status to eight former Schlitz taverns that opened more than 100 years ago, a group of buildings that includes the popular Lakeview nightspot Schuba's Tavern.
Adorned with distinctive Schlitz globes, the structures are reminders of an era when beer makers like Joseph Schlitz Brewing Co. owned and operated their own saloons, a foreign concept to barhoppers today. Built in the late 19th and early 20th century in Queen Anne or Baroque style, so-called brewery-tied houses “convey important aspects of the ethnic, social and commercial life of the city's neighborhoods,” a spokesman for the Chicago Department of Zoning & Land Use Planning writes in an e-mail.
The city Commission on Chicago Landmarks will consider a preliminary recommendation to designate the properties as landmarks at a Thursday meeting. It's the beginning of a process that could take a year, ending with a City Council vote on the proposal.
While many property owners tend to resist landmarking measures, Thomas Magee, owner of a former Schlitz pub at 1801 W. Division St., says he's not one of them.
“Obviously, there's concern because any time I'd want to make a change, I'd have to get (city) approval,” says Mr. Magee, who has run a bar and restaurant, Mac's American Pub, there for about a dozen years. But “it's a beautiful old building, and I want to keep it that way. I'm not opposed to it.”
Schlitz built the Ukrainian Village tavern in 1900 or 1901, one of 57 the Milwaukee brewery opened in Chicago around the turn of the last century, according to a report prepared for the commission. After the repeal of Prohibition, when states enacted laws banning brewer-owned bars, and Schlitz eventually sold its taverns.
Just 10 of the original Schlitz structures remain, according to the Chicago Bar Project, a Web site operated by Sean Parnell, the author of “Historic Bars of Chicago.”
The proposed landmark buildings are Schuba's, at 3159 N. Southport Ave.; Mr. Magee's property at 1801 W. Division; 11400 S. Front Ave.; 3456 S. Western Ave.; 958 W. 69th St.; 2159 W. Belmont Ave.; 1944 N. Oakley Ave., and 5120 N. Broadway. The commission will also consider a proposal to assign landmark status to a former Schlitz stable at 11314 S. Front Ave., now home of the Argus Brewery.
“Usually taverns are just simple commercial structures, and these have a lot of attention to craftsmanship and architecture,” says James Peters, president of Landmarks Illinois, a preservation group. “This shows that there's some really great architecture in the neighborhoods.”
(Note: The construction date of 1801 W. Division has been corrected.)
