By Ted Cox
Giving Tuesday gained another charitable outlet as the Evanston grassroots group Friends of Harley Clarke launched a fundraising campaign to preserve what’s known locally as “the people’s mansion.”
Overlooking the Lake Michigan shore, Harley Clarke House is named after a utilities magnate who had it constructed by architect Richard Powers in 1927, with grounds designed by Jens Jensen, the landscape architect who also built Chicago’s Garfield Park Conservatory. It later served as the national headquarters for the Sigma Chi National Fraternity until it was sold to Evanston in 1965. It was the Evanston Arts Center for 50 years until maintenance costs forced the center to move and the building was shuttered.
Thinking it something of an albatross, the Evanston City Council moved to raze the building last year, but a town referendum last November found that 80 percent of residents wanted it preserved. The council grudgingly endorsed that with a unanimous vote to stave off demolition a year ago.
Evanston has put out a request for proposals for how to put the mansion to use, with a deadline for submissions set for the end of February. But in the meantime, on Tuesday, Friends of Harley Clarke launched a Priority Preservation Campaign intended to bring the building back into top form.
An engineering assessment by Wiss Janey Elstner, commissioned by Landmarks Illinois, which first put it on its annual list of most endangered properties in 2016, found the Tudor mansion “to be in surprisingly good condition, despite years of deferred maintenance,” according to Friends of Harley Clarke. The group identified repairs to be made in three priority levels, at reasonable costs. The top priority was estimated to cost between $40,000 and $60,000, the second priority between $200,000 and $250,000, and the third priority between $100,000 and $150,000.
Jennifer Shadur, a lifetime Evanston resident and president of Friends of Harley Clarke, said the group “is very grateful for continued support and interest in keeping this gem for future generations of Evanston residents,” adding, “We envision a use that will be inviting for everyone in our community, and our effort is to support the house — regardless of which proposal is selected — so long as a strong public use is evident, per the language of the referendum, our charter, and the request for proposal from the city.”
When Harley Clarke was facing demolition before the city council, many residents said they had fond memories of the building when it was the Evanston Arts Center. Evanstonian Jeff Smith called it “the only lakefront mansion south of Lake Cook Road not owned by the 1 percent.” In addition to Landmarks Illinois defending it, it also appeared on the Cultural Landscape Foundation’s Landslide List of most endangered sites.
Friends of Harley Clarke is a registered nonprofit, and donations to the preservation campaign are tax-deductible. Giving Tuesday, of course, is intended to promote charitable donations and is designated as the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving.