The former West Pullman Elementary School in Chicago, built in 1894, has been transformed into senior housing.
Photo: Lee Bey
After School Closings, a Renovation Challenge
Ten years ago, Chicago enacted the largest mass closure of schools in US history. Here’s how architects gave some buildings a second life.
Dwight Perkins isn’t among the most familiar names associated with Chicago architecture. But unlike Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe, his work left a particularly vivid impression on the childhoods of generations of Chicagoans from all corners of the city, because he designed their schools.
A proto-Prairie School architect who traded letters with fellow social refomer Jane Addams and saw schools as multi-functional community hubs, Perkins had a hand in 40 school buildings and additions for the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) from 1905 to 1910.