Fire next door displaces South Loop SRO tenants

By Hayley Carlton

The recent fire at the historic Wirt Dexter building at 630 S. Wabash Ave. displaced 169 tenants living in an SRO (single resident occupancy facility) next door. Tenants fled their homes with only the clothing on their backs when the adjacent Wirt Dexter caught fire.

The SRO, which opened just last year, is housed in the Chicago Christian Industrial League’s (CCIL) new building at 618 S. Wabash Ave. The structure suffered smoke and water damage from the five-alarm fire next door.

At the Wirt Dexter, the fire caused so much damage the building was left a burnt hulk and had become unstable. Also, its location alongside the Chicago Transit Authority elevated tracks for the Orange and Green Lines caused particular concern; after the fire, trains were rerouted for four days. Those factors forced the city to demolish the building.

“Sixty percent of the building’s north wall fell on our offices,” said Jenny Brandhorst, CCIL communications director. The CCIL building’s offices suffered “substantial damage,” Brandhorst added, but the apartments themselves remain intact.

Initially, the City evacuated the entire block for several days, but business now has resumed at the other establishments on the block, including Columbia College across the street. The SRO remained closed as of this writing because the SRO’s south wall had directly touched the Wirt Dexter’s north wall.

Displaced residents were not "allowed to get their belongings…their Link cards, credit cards…some couldn’t go to work until they got new IDs,” said Judy McIntyre, CCIL executive director. Tenants are being housed by a variety of YMCAs until they can return home. Also, some tenants who work nights came home to find they could not access the building and did not know where to go; the City Department of Human Services helped them find shelter.

The fire occurred Oct. 24, and tenants finally were allowed in the building briefly on Nov. 4 to obtain personal belongings. As of this writing, it was unknown when they would be allowed to go home.

“I think we have to wait until the building debris is cleared away,” said Brandhorst. How much the damage to the CCIL building will cost also remains unknown.

According to a City Department of Human Services spokesperson, the Department of Buildings will decide when the tenants can return. “They have to determine if the building is safe and if everything is up to code," the spokesperson said.

Besides displacing CCIL residential tenants, the fire forced the five businesses (four of them restaurants) on the building’s ground floor to close. When electricity was shut off in the building, the restaurants lost their perishable food; the SRO also lost all its perishables.

McIntyre said insurance will pay for most of the damage. "I'm grateful to our broker for recommending that we get full replacement coverage for everything," she said.

Not every business on the block suffered monetary damage. “It caused us inconvenience,” said Mark Lloyd, assistant vice president of marketing and communications for Columbia College. The college was forced to cancel classes for three days at two of its buildings.

The Chicago Fire Department announced Nov. 6 that the fire was an accident, caused by workers using a torch to remove a boiler from the basement. The Wirt Dexter was built in 1887 by Louis Sullivan and designated a Chicago Landmark in 1996.

Originally a furniture manufacturing plant and showroom, the loft building later housed the George Diamond Steak House, which was a celebrity hangout in the 1950s and 1960s. The restaurant's founder died in 1982, and it finally closed in 2001.

Before the fire, the City had shut down the Wirt Dexter for code violations. Lorraine Phillips, the building’s owner, who also ran the George Diamond after its founder died, had planned to rehab the building and had turned down several offers to sell it. At the time of the fire, she did not have insurance on the building. Mayor Richard M. Daley stated in a press conference that he planned to go after Phillips for the City’s expenses in tearing down the building.

In addition to the tenant evacuation at 618 S. Wabash, CCIL recently endured another fire-related problem. At its other SRO at 18th Street and Wabash Avenue, which in 1997 became the first new SRO to open in Chicago in almost 25 years, a small fire broke out in one of the rooms, breaking a window, damaging a stove, and requiring the room to be repainted. “It’s been like the trials of the book of Job,” said McIntire, who said the fire resulted when a tenant forgot about food cooking on a stove.