Chicago Landmarks Law Put to the Test

If you've spent any time in Chicago then you know that whole stretches of that city can seem like a beautifully curated architectural collection. Which is why I was dismayed (and a little puzzled) last month when an Illinois appellate court handed down a peculiar ruling that the state's landmarks preservation law was unconstitutionally vague and broad. I say peculiar because the words that the court found objectionable — "value", "important", "significant" and "unique" — are not so different from the ones used by the New York City landmarks preservation law that was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court more than 30 years ago. That 1978 decision — which stopped the Penn Central Railroad from building an office tower on top of Grand Central Station — was a landmark about landmarks. By establishing that landmark designations were not a regulatory "taking" that would require the city to pay compensation to the railroad it assured cities that they could enforce landmark laws without fear of lawsuits from affected property owners. Not that lawsuits didn't happen, but when they did municipalities that had drafted their landmarks laws properly had a strong defense against them. Now more than 2000 communities have landmarks laws. And more than 40 court rulings since that Supreme Court decision have upheld laws in other cities against vagueness challenges.

Luckily Chicago is a city that takes its architecture seriously. As Blair Kamin, the architecture critic of the Chicago Tribune, is reporting, earlier this month the city of Chicago filed an appeal of the appellate ruling to the Illinois State Supreme Court. This is a law that protects everything from Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House to Wrigley Field and if it were held unconstitutional it could have implications for similar laws in other states. For preservationists it's a case too important to lose.