Vanishing Chicago: The Gym

If you've ever ridden the El north on the Brown, Red or Purple Lines, you've seen it--a long, narrow, slab gray building squatting just east of the train tracks, with which it has coexisted peacefully for more than 70 years. It's sturdy-looking, this building. Imposing. Impressive. Gothic.

And oh so doomed.

The building in question is the Hayes-Healy Gymnasium, owned and maintained by DePaul University since it opened in 1929. Recently, though, the University agreed to tear the gymnasium down as part of the Chicago Transit Authority's plan to expand the Fullerton El station. The expansion itself isn't a bad idea--as one of the busiest hubs in the CTA system, the Fullerton station could certainly use renovation and amenities like escalators, elevators and improved lighting, all of which are on tap for the new station.

Unfortunately, in order to build, CTA must first tear down.

Demon Dogs, tucked under the north end of the Fullerton platform, is being razed as well, despite protests from the owner and from longtime patrons, who maintain that the little hot dog stand under the tracks is a neighborhood institution. Of course, Demon Dogs has the option of moving to another location somewhere along Fullerton, Lincoln or Halsted. Unlikely, given the steep rents in the neighborhood, but an option.

Meanwhile, to the immediate south on the other side of Fullerton, the Hayes-Healy Gymnasium has no such option.

A walk across the street and up a tree-lined driveway for a closer look at the gym reveals that it's not merely a big gray stone box covered by a slate roof, but an intricately decorated facade as well. Numerous figures line the eastern face, from male and female discus throwers (both very naked) to more primitive and fanciful details displaying different sporting events, like baseball games, hurdlers and boxers.

There are other, odder carvings--like pineapples and rams' horns--but all seem themed to the building beneath them, where college students drove to the hoop and swung on balance beams, or on the field before the building, where women softball players still spend afternoons throwing 12" softballs harder underhand than I ever could overhand.

I'm sure some of those details will be preserved in some way. Maybe they'll be put on display at the University. Maybe they'll be displayed somewhere in the new station. Maybe they'll even mount the baseball players, boxers and skaters on the facade of that new station. Wouldn't be unheard of. When Nordstrom wanted to open a store with a Michigan Avenue address, the Rand-McNally building was torn down, but its facade, with its intricate Zodiac figures, was carefully preserved and remounted onto the face of the new building (though, by my count, four astrological signs--Scorpio, Cancer, Pisces and Aquarius--didn't make it back onto the building; wonder where those went?).

That's not the same as having the original structure to marvel at, though. Buildings like this are works of art. Knocking them down is city-sanctioned vandalism. It's a shame that more creative though couldn't have been incorporated into this project. Couldn't the building have been worked into the plans, maybe as part of the platform itself? How cool and unique would that have been? Or maybe it could have converted into an adjacent shopping area--other buildings thus threatened (like Medinah Temple) have been thus preserved.

Unfortunately, the plans for the new Fullerton Station appear to be set in stone--unlike the Hayes-Healy Gym, which soon will be unset in a most permanent way.