“Carl Schurz High School is an architectural marvel: An absolute Prairie School beauty at Milwaukee Avenue and Addison Street that rightfully earned city landmark status and a listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

“Built in 1910, the building is among architect Dwight Perkins’ finest work. Meanwhile, its architectural doppelgänger, James H. Bowen High School in South Chicago, also designed by Perkins and opened the same year as its North Side counterpart, has received no such love — until now.

“The Illinois National Register Advisory Council last week voted to recommend the National Park Service add Bowen, 2710 E. 89th St., to the National Register. The Park Service’s decision could come by September.

“‘I’ve devoted a lot of thought to this, and I am totally in support of [the] theory that the South and the West sides get ignored,’ said Marc Edelstein, a 1968 Bowen graduate who has spent a decade trying to win National Register status for the school. ‘But … in order for something to be recognized and given landmark status of any sort, someone has to put up the fight.'” (Bey, Chicago Sun-Times, 7/2/26)

“Bowen is a wide four-story building clad in red and orange brick and terra cotta trim. The building has grace and visual power with its prominent overhanging gabled roofs, strong vertical lines and abundance of windows that let in natural light and provide views of Bessemer Park across 89th Street.

“‘This Bowen/Schurz prototype was the first complete expression of the modern high school in Chicago,’ the National Register nomination report said.

“Much of Bowen’s original interiors are intact, including its near-cavernous domed auditorium and the dramatically arched ceilings of the space’s balcony and stage.

“‘The [school’s] main entrance is lined with marble and has this vaulted ceiling that’s wonderful,’ Edelstein said. ‘On the top floor, there is this place that’s currently used as an exercise room. It had been a study hall. … It’s got huge skylights and a phenomenal view of the city looking north.’

“‘The recognition further highlights the remarkable collection of fabulous architecture in that overlooked area of Chicago,’ Perkins devotee Shaun Fleischhacker said.” (Bey, Chicago Sun-Times, 7/2/26)

The National Register recommendation is an important and hard-won milestone — the product of a decade of advocacy by alumni who understood that their school’s architecture, and the community it represented, deserved the same recognition easily given to its North Side counterpart.

Preservation Chicago has been working alongside Marc Edelstein and the Bowen High School Alumni Association in this effort for a number of years. In 2022, we worked to help protect and landmark Bowen High School, and we contributed to the report that has now resulted in this National Register recommendation.

The case for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places is strong. Dwight Perkins designed Bowen and Schurz in the same year, from the same vocabulary of Prairie School massing, polychromatic brick, strong vertical piers, and generous natural light. Schurz has been a Chicago landmark since 1979 and has been on the National Register since 2011. Bowen — equally significant, equally fine — was omitted from the very 1979 designation report that made the case for Schurz, despite Perkins having designed it as chief architect of the Chicago Public Schools.

The National Register recommendation is a meaningful step, but it is not the end of the work. A National Register listing will require that any federally funded or licensed renovations follow the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation, and it opens the door to federal Historic Tax Credit eligibility — both of which matter enormously for a building that has received minimal investment since the 1990s and currently enrolls only about 300 students.

But the most important remaining step is a Chicago Landmark designation, which Bowen does not yet have. Preservation Chicago has repeatedly volunteered our services pro bono to the City of Chicago to prepare a Chicago Landmark Designation report for Bowen High School.

The architecture is unambiguously landmark-caliber. The historical significance — as the first complete expression of the modern Chicago high school, and as the architectural heart of a steel community that shaped the South Side’s identity — is equally clear. The only thing missing is the designation itself.

Marc Edelstein said of Bowen: “This would be phenomenal architecture to preserve. It’s just like a rock around which things can be built.”

Historic buildings at the center of communities are not obstacles to investment. They are the anchors that make investment mean something. Preservation Chicago urges the City of Chicago to move forward with a Chicago Landmark designation for Bowen High School.

Read the full story at the Chicago Sun-Times

• Bowen High — Schurz High School’s overlooked architectural doppelgänger — gets recognized at last; Lee Bey, Chicago Sun-Times, 7/2/26
• Give an A+ for effort to grant landmark status for Bowen High School; It’s time to landmark Bowen and bring more architecturally-significant school buildings into the fold; Chicago Sun-Times Editorial Board, 8/30/22
• Sign the Petition to Landmark Bowen High School