Web Extra!
The Arcade Building, the first commercial building constructed in Riverside and one of the earliest examples of a suburban shopping mall, is one of the 10 Most Endangered Historic Places in Illinois according to Landmarks Illinois, which announced its list of endangered places Tuesday morning at a press conference in Springfield.
The announcement follows on the heels of a resolution passed by the Riverside village board on April 20, opposing the demolition of the Arcade Building and supporting efforts to preserve the structure, which is owned by a Minnesota-based bank.
Aberdeen Marsh-Ozga, a member of the village’s Preservation Commission, was the person who started the ball rolling last fall to get the building named endangered. She personally wrote applications to Landmarks Illinois and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, asking that the Arcade Building be placed on their Most Endangered Historic Places list.
The National Trust also announced its most endangered list Tuesday to kick of National Preservation Month in May. The Arcade Building did not make the national list. The only local structure placed on the National Trust’s most-endangered list was Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple in Oak Park.
The application regarding the Arcade Building won the support of the Preservation Commission, the Historical Commission and Economic Development Commission in Riverside.
Vacant since Jan. 1 and in disrepair for many months before that, the Arcade Building was designed in the early 1870s by Frederick C. Withers, a former business partner of Calvert Vaux.
In the 1860s, Vaux partnered with renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. Their company in 1868 was hired by the Riverside Improvement Company to design a new planned suburb just west of Chicago.
The Riverside Stores – as the Arcade Building is known in the Riverside Improvement Company’s marketing pamphlet for the village from 1871 – is described as have four large stores on the first floor, with offices on the second floor and lodging rooms on the third.
The Riverside Improvement Company, which would go bankrupt in 1873, had offices on the second floor of the building.
The Arcade Building has been home to Riverside businesses continually from its construction at the dawn of Riverside’s history until the end of 2008. Four year earlier, the Arcade Building was purchased by the Wexford Development Group, which planned to rehab the historic building and construct a new addition that would house condominiums.
By January 2007, however, Wexford dropped its intention to build the condo addition and said it was focusing on renovating the interior of the Arcade Building so that it could attract new business tenants.
That summer the Chew Chew Café, one of two remaining tenants, closed up shop while the rest of the first floor was gutted. Grumpy’s, in the corner storefront, was all that remained.
While Wexford was clearly having trouble completing the work on the Arcade Building, no one knew exactly just how much trouble the company was in until August 2008 when two officials from its parent corporation, Wextrust Capital, were arrested and charged with perpetrating an elaborate Ponzi scheme on investors.
The judge presiding over the Wextrust case in February allowed the receiver of Wextrust’s assets to deed the Arcade Building back to its mortgage holder rather than go through foreclosure proceedings.
According to Village Manager Kathleen Rush, the mortgage holder is still in the process of obtaining the deed to the property.