GARFIELD PARK — A former woman’s shelter in Garfield Park has been designated a Chicago landmark following a City Council vote Wednesday.
The Wolfson Building, 2678 W. Washington Blvd, was given final landmark approval Wednesday following a months-long preservation effort.
After operating for decades as a shelter for women and single mothers, the Wolfson building was sold last year by members of its namesake family to Landmark Living LLC, a property investment firm, property records show.
The firm applied for a permit to demolish the structure in May. But since the building was already considered “potentially significant” under the city’s historical survey, the demolition application triggered a historical review of the property.
The Commission on Chicago Landmarks granted preliminary landmark approval in August, kicking off the lengthy process culminating in final approval from City Council this week.
The landmark designation applies to the main house and dormitory building, while the “coach house” did not qualify for protections after more modern alterations were found on the building, according to the Commission on Chicago Landmarks.
“All of us working in the community helped to get this done,” Ward Miller, executive director of Preservation Chicago, said in August. “I’m so elated that the history of the building is being honored and decorated.”
The former maternal health center on the West Side has a history of providing critical services to single mothers and sex workers in the early 20th century, when help was scarcely given to them. The site also includes a former dormitory for single mothers and a coach house facing west.
It was built in 1892 as a single-family home for Fred W. Morgan, a manufacturer of bicycle tires, according to Preservation Chicago. In 1949, the Washington Boulevard house became the headquarters of the Florence Crittenton Anchorage, a shelter for women and young girls that first opened in 1886.
The anchorage remained there until closing permanently in 1973, according to a Tribune article from that year. When it closed, the facility was the only state-licensed maternity home in the city that served girls 18 and under.
The building was then turned into the Living Center for Girls, which ran from 1977 until 1998, according to a presentation to the city’s landmark commission.
It is not clear what Landmark Living has planned for the property.
The Wolfson Building’s history as a sanctuary for at-risk women and children made the building an ideal candidate for landmark status, supporters said.
Max Chavez, director of research and special projects at Preservation Chicago, previously said too much of the West Side’s history has already been erased and the building’s significance for women of color should be honored.
“This is an opportunity to reverse that course, keeping standing a building that tells a story of how, in their moment of need, women in Chicago, particularly women of color, were able to find a place of support and aid, of life-saving healthcare, and of safety,” Chavez said in a statement to the landmark commission. “Women’s history, especially that of health care or reproductive care, is very much an underrepresented narrative.”
The building met the city’s criteria to be landmarked due to its age and the presence of sculpture dubbed “Passage” outside of the coach house, officials previously said. The sculpture, installed in 2011, encapsulated the history of the home and its work for single unwed mothers of color.
Jenny Spinner, whose mother stayed at the building while waiting to give birth to her and her twin sister, testified before the landmark commission about the property’s history. She said it should be honored with the same historic distinction of the Hull House on the Near West Side, which was a hub for the poor, sex workers and Eastern European immigrant families.
The Wolfson Building “is not only part of my personal history but also all of the women who sheltered there for decades during a time in our country’s history when out-of-wedlock births were considered so shameful that women were often hidden away,” Spinner said in her testimony.
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