The Park District of Oak Park’s Recreation Center Stewardship Committee (RCSC) held its first meeting Monday night to begin studying the issues surrounding preservation of recreation centers at Carroll, Field and Andersen.
RCSC chairman and Park District Commissioner Tom Philion, and Executive Director Gary Balling welcomed the seven committee members?#34;Beth Burden, Chris Goode, Douglas Gilbert, Frank Heitzman, Nancy Holmes, and Roy Phifer. Leslie Gilmore of the Gilmore Franzen architectural firm represented the park district. Goode, Gilbert and Heitzman are also architects.
The committee is seeking to determine whether the buildings are architecturally important, whether they still represent significant local and national history, and whether the park district should expend funds to restore and preserve them.
Oak Park Historical Society Executive Director Frank Lipo gave a 40-minute presentation covering the history of the original three buildings and a fourth structure in Stevenson Park that was torn down in 1966. Around that same time, the exteriors of the other three centers were refaced with a brick veneer. Originally called “shelter houses,” the three centers have undergone extensive interior renovations over the past 40 years.
“I see this as sort of a third step, the third stage in the review of these recreational centers,” Lipo told the committee. The first stage, he said, was when the buildings were constructed in the late 1920s. The second stage was in the mid-1960s.
“This is all part of a decades-long conversation Oak Park has been having with its recreation facilities,” said Lipo.
Central to the deliberations, Lipo said, is the historical and architectural significance of the buildings. Lipo contends the centers were both historically and architecturally significant. A recent review of the three buildings by the Oak Park Historic Preservation Commission found the buildings played a role in a national movement in the 1930s called “supervised play.” The buildings themselves were designed by noted local architect John S. Van Bergen, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright.
Gilbert, chairman of the Oak Park Historical Preservation Commission, said preservationists look at two major aspects of a structure in determining significance.
Historical significance relates to the history that occurred in a structure. The physical integrity of a building relates to whether the building still represents the history that was determined to have occurred there.
Park district officials have cautioned that, due to extensive renovation, the buildings may be beyond architectural restoration. Addressing that, Good said back in the 1960s the four fieldhouses fell victim to what he termed the “40-year syndrome,” which is when buildings are old without yet being historic, and people “feel they have a right to do whatever they want to them.”
When Philion asked, “Does economics matter?” Phifer wondered whether a building loses its historical significance if it becomes “just a shell” of its former self.
Both questions, said Gilbert, are at the heart of the committee’s deliberarions.
Cost always matters, Gilbert said. What is crucial is that the committee come to an understanding of what’s historically and architecturally significant about the buildings in order to properly determine how much the park district would be willing to spend.
“We need to determine the significance and value of the buildings, then balance that against other factors, such as cost,” Philion agreed.
The committee’s next meeting is scheduled for Monday, May 8, tentatively at Carroll Center. Balling said he hopes to have presentations from local preservationist and Van Bergen expert Marty Hackl and from architect Jack Barclay, who designed the Longfellow, Stevenson and Fox Centers.
The committee will tour the Carroll, Field, and Andersen centers on Sunday, April 23, starting at Carroll at 1 p.m.
