We hadn't stopped by the future home of the British School of Chicago in a while and were pleasantly surprised this morning to see how far construction has come. The new building at Halsted and Eastman, on the edge of Lincoln Park, is a great addition to a slice of Halsted that seems unsure of its identity as Cabrini-Green is transformed.

The best profile is from the south, where a wall of glass and an exposed steel frame face drivers headed north on Halsted. The Halsted Street side has a glass ground floor accented in deep blue. Above the first floor (by American definition, not British), the Halsted Street side angles back, a metallic gray facade dominated by a tall glass bay in its center, also trimmed in blue.

Architects Valerio Dewalt Train Associates designed the school to appear as if it's "leaning into the future," and there is a real sense of motion about the structure. The pronounced curve at the roofline is echoed at the top of the first floor and continued in beams that angle sharply to grade on the building's north and south sides.

Completion is scheduled for early '08.

YoChicago's Joe Zekas and neighborhood resident and Chicago Home Estates sales agent Eric Rojas talk about rental and for-sale housing prices in Ravenswood - and how buyers should set their housing priorities. Rojas also discusses local schools and says that he plans to send his son to a public school in the neighborhood.

Earlier segments on Ravenswood: part I, part II, part III, and part IV, part V.

Mayor Richard M. Daley recently introduced an ordinance that would clear the way for his alma mater, De La Salle Institute, 3455 S Wabash Ave, to purchase the Pickford Theater, 3445 S Michigan Ave, according to the Near West Gazette.

The Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois considers the 1912 building one of the 10 most endangered places in the state. The school plans to preserve elements of the building's interior and exterior and incororate them into a new structure.

De La Salle will seek LEED certification for the project, which will reportedly have a green roof and 7,000 square feet of retail space.

De La Salle hopes to open the new building in the fall of 2009.

The retail will be a nice addition to the greater Bronzeville area, where several massive residential developments are underway.

I've heard a number of South Siders express concern about the digital divide — the extent to which their communities may lag other parts of the city in access to the Internet and to technology.

Last Saturday students and adults from Vanderpoel Magnet School, 9510 S. Prospect, were engaged in a very low-tech activity — washing cars — to raise funds to help close the gap at their Beverly school. If you'd like to help, you can contact the principal's office at 773-535-2690.

Sure, it might seem fitting that the British School of Chicago is located on Bryn Mawr Avenue in Edgewater - after all, "Bryn Mawr" means "big hill" in Welsh. But the average Welshman bristles at being labeled British, and with its pricey tuition (nearly $20,000 a year for older students), English style and small, exclusive enrollment (fewer than 300 kids, many the children of dignitaries and executives), The British School of Chicago might be more at home in a new building at Halsted and Eastman, on the edge of tony Lincoln Park and a stone's throw from the Gold Coast, than in a rehabbed Catholic school building in gritty Edgewater.

And what a new building it is, or will be, as far as we can tell from renderings and construction so far (completion is scheduled for early '08). The new structure's best profile will be from the south, where a wall of glass and an exposed steel frame will face drivers headed north on Halsted. The Halsted Street side has a glass ground floor, which, in an unusual twist for a Chicago school, will house retail. Above the first floor (by American definition, not British), the Halsted Street side angles back slightly, a metallic gray facade dominated by a tall glass bay in its center. (more…)

The paradox stated in the video - an area that's largely white and affluent has elementary schools that are predominantly poor and Hispanic.

When planning the conversion of the Harvard School for Boys in the South Side's Kenwood neighborhood, developer Steve Soble pored over old yearbooks to retain period touches. Few finishes from the dilapidated 1917 building were salvageable, so Soble hung onto parts of the original terrazzo floors and the oak doors, which are nearly three inches thick and include wire-glass windows.
The Harvard School's history is notable for more than its architecture; it played a bit part in the 1924 murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks, who was walking home from the school, at 4731 S. Ellis Ave., when Richard Leopold and Nathan Loeb, a pair of brilliant students at the University of Chicago, nabbed and murdered him. They were later convicted of "the crime of the century."

"We're not emphasizing that," Robert Sullivan, of real estate brokerage Urban Search, says with a laugh. Urban Search is marketing the building's residential conversion as the Harvard School Condominiums, slated for a grand opening on April 15.

He noted some of the school's other famous graduates: Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan; Mandy Patinkin, Broadway and television star; and William Shawn, perhaps the best-known editor of the New Yorker magazine.

Soble is used to living with history and will do so quite literally on this project. With the help of his partner on the development, Duncan Harris, principal in Kimwood, LLC, Soble plans to convert the former Harvard School gym into a private residence for himself. His restaurant and real estate company, Spare Time, Inc., has a strong preservationist bent; projects include The North Avenue Bath House and Southport Lanes, which bills itself as one of the only bowling alleys in the country where pins are still replaced by hand.

Aside from the gym, the Harvard School Condominiums will have four units, each with four bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms. Three condos will be housed within the school building, with one unit on each floor. A fourth condo will occupy two stories in an adjacent portion of the building, across a courtyard.

Three units have studies and one has a family room. They range from 3,026 to 4,868 square feet, with 11.5-foot ceiling heights, woodburning fireplaces and oak floors throughout. Kitchen appliances are by Sub-Zero, Thermador and Bosch. Bathrooms have Kohler tubs and toilets. In a nod to a popular style of the early 20^th century, floors in the second and third bathrooms will have hexagonal white-and-black ceramic tile by Daltile.

All of the units are available, and prices, which include two garage spaces per unit, range from the $830s to the $940s.

The controversy over a new military academy at Nicholas Senn High School has faded among the student body, according to the principal, but the challenges and opportunities created by gentification in the surrounding Edgewater neighborhood continue to grow.

Diverse Senn, which sits on a stately expanse of lawn at 5900 N Glenwood Ave, is changing, says Principal Richard Norman - and not just because of the flap surrounding a recent decision by the Chicago School Board to move the Rickover Naval Academy into the west wing of the building. The ensuing battle pitted schools chief Arne Duncan and local officials against a coalition of community members, students and some faculty, who objected to partitioning the school to create a military enclave.

More than two years later, there's still local opposition to Rickover. But Norman maintains that within school walls there's a truce. "We seem to be coexisting quite well," he says, noting that the naval students mostly stay in the school's west wing. When Senn and Rickover students do share common areas, they tend to "self-segregate," he says (i.e., in the cafeteria, Rickover kids sit together, and Senn students keep to themselves, too). Norman chalks this up to the fact that the two groups attend different classes and for the most part come from different neighborhoods. Senn kids are local, and Rickover pulls its students from all over the city, with only a handful from Senn's attendance area, he says.

A bigger issue for Norman these days is gentrification, which he's witnessing firsthand as an Edgewater resident. For the students, he says, it's a "double-edged sword." The growth of new businesses and organizations gives them better access to internships and cultural experiences (for example, a French class has taken field trips to French restaurants). But the influx of affluent homeowners also presents challenges. These new residents are less likely to have big families, and they're more likely to send their children to private or specialized schools. Norman says this has contributed to declining enrollment. There are currently 1,500 students at Senn, compared to 2,000 five years ago.

Less quantifiable changes are afoot, too, in Norman's view. Senn reflects the neighborhood's identity as a melting pot of immigrants, with students from 70 countries who speak 30 languages (the school has sizeable programs catering to non-English speakers). Moreover, the vast majority of students come from low-income families - 94 percent get free or reduced price lunches. Edgewater's newer and wealthier residents are "less comfortable" with students from this socioeconomic bracket, he says, although he declined to mention any specific complaints.

Norman did tout several programs Senn has undertaken to improve its relations with Edgewater residents, including sending students to clean up area parks. And he hopes the outreach will work both ways. "I encourage the community to become involved in the school," he says.

One of the hot topics in Edgewater is whether the Rickover Naval Academy should be hosted at Senn High School, and what impact it's having on other programs at the school.

The 20 high schools in the metro area that scored the worst on the Prairie State Achievement Examination are all in the city of Chicago.

In nineteen of those schools fewer than 10% of the students pass the exams.

Time for the school system to issue another glowing progress report.