How would you like to come home to this guy every night (see right)? He’s the inspiration for a new loft condo/art gallery project in the West Loop.
The White Tower Building at 847 W Jackson Boulevard, once owned by The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, is being converted into a loft condo development called The Tailor at Jackson, and its exhibition space, Gallery 2 (G2), will remain downstairs.
The building, which dates back to 1922, takes its name from the figures of the two wizened little bespectacled tailors who sit cross-legged tending to their craft on the white terracotta facade of the building at its entrance on South Peoria Avenue. No-one seems to know just how they came to adorn the building, which the art institute acquired in 1994.
“They sort of look like Benjamin Franklin; it’s pretty neat,” says Malissa Welke of Rubloff Residential, which is marketing the property for The Tenley Group, a newly formed company who come from a background in loft conversions in New York City and Washington D.C.
The steel-reinforced concrete building is currently home to the art institute’s G2, and the school has signed a 10-year tenancy to continue using several floors of the 10-story building as an exhibition space, Welke tells YoChicago. The sales office opens in early March.