The Yukon building, 1898, Holabird & Roche, 400 S. Clark St. Image credit: WBEZ Chicago
“A downtown Chicago building — meant to be temporary when completed 127 years ago — remains standing, but recent indications suggest it might not stand much longer.
“The Yukon building is a two-story structure built in 1898 by the Boston-based real estate investor who also put up the Rookery, the Monadnock and the Marquette in Chicago. The family that’s owned the Yukon for more than half a century put it up for sale. Now, the property taxes are delinquent and at least three tenants have vacated their spaces in recent months.
“John Bakovich said his family is trying to get the empty spaces rented so they can pay their tax bill. However, the primary goal ‘is to sell it.’
“The low-rise building has no landmark status that would prevent demolition, and Bakovich said a new owner most likely ‘is going to have to develop it,’ meaning build something taller on the site.
“Bakovich said the primary tenant moved out overnight without notice sometime in the past several months. He said his family is trying to get new tenants for the Clark Street restaurant space once home to Cocina, a Mexican restaurant, and the Van Buren space of his family’s former restaurant, Boni Vino, from 1967 to last year.
“But even if they get all the space rented again, Bakovich said, ‘it’s not enough to cover the taxes.’
“According to the Cook County Treasurer, the property taxes on the building for 2023 (billed in 2024) were a smidge over $210,000. The 2024 taxes, billed this year, will be at least 8% more. The 2023 taxes haven’t been paid, according to the treasurer, and neither were the 2022 taxes, which were sold in the county’s delinquent tax sale. Under the delinquent tax sale system, the buyer of those taxes could, over the course of a few years, take ownership of the property — that is, if somebody doesn’t buy the building outright first.
“There’s a huge historical irony to the Yukon’s current tax situation, since it was originally built as what was known as a ‘taxpayer building.’ Tim Samuelson, who retired as Chicago’s cultural historian in 2020, said these were “built inexpensively to generate just enough income to cover real estate taxes and expenses, until the time when the real estate value of an area improved to merit its replacement with a permanent, substantial building.’
“In 1885, the Brooks brothers announced plans for a 12-story tower on the Clark and Van Buren site; it would have had a skylit atrium, like their Rookery, which they were building at the time. Thirteen years later, the brothers announced a shorter, six-story plan for Clark and Van Buren. A few months after that, they said they’d build just two stories. The site had become a ‘taxpayer,’ something to keep revenue coming while they waited to put a tall building there.
“At the Yukon, because they didn’t need a bulky frame to support a tall building, Holabird & Roche ‘reduced framing to a bare minimum, opening the entire building for maximum glass,’ Samuelson said. ‘It pushed their experiments in glass to the extreme, making it one of their most striking buildings on the path to glass-filled, structurally expressive modernism.’
“Preservation Chicago is going to introduce an effort to get the Yukon building’s facade considered for landmark designation, according to Ward Miller, the group’s executive director.” (Rodkin, WBEZ Chicago, 3/24/25)
Read or listen to the full story at WBEZ Chicago
- What’s That Building? The Yukon; The Yukon is easy to overlook because it’s overshadowed by the Metropolitan Correctional Center, the triangle-shaped high-rise jail built in 1975, Dennis Rodkin and Sasha-Ann Simons, WBEZ Chicago, 3/24/25
- Yukon Building / Old Chinatown, a Preservation Chicago Most Endangered 2016