Several old firehouses surrounding the Loop currently contain everything from an upscale restaurant, a quirky boutique and a Potbelly sandwich shop to chic residences, various business offices, a church and — coming soon — an art gallery.

Fewer and fewer of the charming century-old firehouses near downtown actually house firemen or contain fire-fighting equipment anymore.

In the South Loop, the trend began with the Firehouse Restaurant about a decade ago at 14th and Michigan, a beautifully renovated building from 1905 where you can get a steak and a famous lettuce wedge while sitting near a real fireman’s pole.

Ten years later, here comes the shuttered Engine Company 18 at 1123 W. Roosevelt Ave., which is going to begin a new life as an arts center. Paid for with private money and overseen by city planners, the 7,400 square foot disused firehouse will turn into a community art studio containing everything needed to run a full service art gallery, from a kiln to a commercial kitchen. Artists will be able to rent space for shows, and there will be many art classes day and night, according to reports.

Everyone seems happy that the conversion will create 24 construction jobs, and the finished product will employ 17 people starting next year. And of course, there’s the infusion of art into a neighborhood that had been best known for burning down a liquor store the night the Bulls won one of their championships.

“A new social and cultural amenity,” is how an email from 2nd Ward Ald. Fioretti characterized the new $680,000 project. The exterior of the firehouse, the staircase and a pressed metal ceiling will be saved. The poles will be used to hang artwork. The old firehouse doors will be replaced with glass ones for better viewing and better light. It will also have a green roof and solar panels.

A wonderful example, to be sure, of what we all experience in the South Loop as the old adaptive reuse switcheroo.

Still, I wonder why these beautiful old firehouses can’t just stay firehouses. Certainly, if the Firehouse — as a restaurant — can serve hundreds of meals a night while having a reception in the upstairs party room, a cocktail party on the outside terrace and plenty of space to cook and run a bar, there should have been enough room for firemen to stay there forever — with maybe a little renovation now and then.

Same with the firehouse on West Roosevelt. If they can install kilns, glass ovens and a full commercial kitchen while maintaining the façade of the building, the staircase and the metal ceiling, why wouldn’t it be big and strong enough to keep housing the guys who fight the fires and all their equipment? Why do they have to keep building new firehouses and changing the identity of the old ones? Nothing appears to be wrong with the old ones.

I have nothing against art, or restaurants. But enough with the adaptive reuse already. Can’t we just keep our factories factories, our warehouses warehouses, and our firehouses nothing more than being a place from which to fight fires?

Yes, it’s fun to eat dinner or mold some ceramics in an old firehouse, sleep in an old printing press and take tap dancing lessons in an old train station. But I vote for letting things be the same thing all their lives. The original blueprints and strength of the early Chicago firehouses should give them as long a life as the pyramids — with proper maintenance, of course.

I’ve never heard of anyone wanting to give the pyramids a new life. They haven’t seemed to have had a mid-life crisis after a few thousand years, thereby changing into a health club. Nor will the Taj Mahal become a good bed and breakfast, or the Eiffel Tower a bustling foreign language academy. Why do our buildings have to keep becoming something they’re not?

In the South Loop, everything seems to become something else, as though the buildings have psychotic breaks and splinter into serial personalities: “For one generation I’ll be a firehouse; and for the next, I’ll be an upscale beauty parlor/tanning spa/hot rocks massage center,” they seem to shout out.

I think in the South Loop we should start a new trend. We should put our feet down and say firehouses will stay firehouses. No exceptions.

Let the restaurateurs build new restaurants that are cozy and charming. Let the artists build new studios with lots of skylights and deep sinks for washing up.

And let our firehouses continue to let guys slide down poles while putting on their pants and boots, scurrying onto trucks and clanging the bell.

---

By lidia from West Loop
Posted: 02/06/2011 10:04 AM

I agree, if it keeps the building from being torn down, why not repurpose it for another use -- especially one that will bring arts to the community. While living on the north side in the mid 90s-2000s, I saw many charming 3-flats and single-family homes (including one I had lived in) being torn down and replaced with cookie-cutter homes -- making the neighborhood feel "generic." I'm glad the South Loop is making the effort to to preserve rather than replace.

---

By Dennis Delaney from south loop
Posted: 02/04/2011 10:43 PM

As someone who's been in most Chicago Firehouse I miss the old ones when they go. Did you know Truck 2 had to be moved from Roosevelt st ten years ago because the floor started to collaspe? The old houses have huge timbers in the basmt. to hold up the floor, screwing up the sewers. To sleep in that house one had to use netting or enough deet to kill a horse Did you know the front 6 feet of that house was removed to widen Roosevelt. If it keeps them from being torn down I guess i don't mind Den