by ArchitectureWeek
The iconic Michigan Avenue Streetwall in Chicago, Illinois, features the work of many of the city's best architects, and boasts an array of styles and building technologies dating from 1880 to 1930. Buildings by Louis Sullivan and Daniel Burnham are among the structures that compose this 12-block stretch of historic buildings that face Lake Michigan across parkland.
Proposals for large-scale, destructive tower additions now threaten to severely impact the historic character of the "streetwall," despite its 2002 designation as a Chicago Landmark.
To highlight its vulnerability, this site was named by the National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP) to its 2008 list of "America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places."
Other architectural, cultural, and natural heritage sites at risk of destruction or irreparable damage include a theater in Philadelphia; an airplane hangar in California; an elementary school in Topeka, Kansas; a rural area in Montana; and the entire Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City.
Demolition, in some cases to enable redevelopment, threatens many of this year's listed sites. Others, like the streetwall, face unsympathetic additions or nearby construction of out-of-scale developments. Deterioration, neglect, poor public policy, and natural forces also work, often in concert, to put buildings in jeopardy.
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