St. James Commons: A Significant Modernist Building Quietly Anchoring River North

Walking through River North, the neighborhood immediately north of Chicago’s Loop, one can sense the changes of a city and its architecture. From an industrial area called Smokey Hollow at the beginning of the twentieth century, to a neighborhood defined by urban decay and crime in the mid-twentieth century, its reinvention into a prominent gallery district in the 1980s, and its current focus as a nightlife and entertainment destination, River North is home to many buildings that capture each of its distinct periods. Historic landmarks, banal residential buildings, and significant contributions by SOM, Bertrand Goldberg & Associates, Tigerman McCurry Architects, Minoru Yamasaki, Kenzo Tange, Ross Barney Architects, Perkins&Will, and John Ronan Architects coexist with a certain degree of easiness.

In the block limited by Wabash Avenue, Erie Street, Rush Street, and Huron Street, we find St. James Commons—originally known as the Episcopal Church Center—a beautiful modernist building designed by Hammond and Roesch from 1968. Connected to St. James Cathedral, its neighbors are the 1883 Nickerson Mansion and the 1926 Murphy Auditorium—now home to the Driehaus Museum—and the 1875 McCormick Double House. In an area constantly evolving, it is a welcome surprise that this building has survived almost six decades of change. An elegant, refined, and quiet building, it is an understated but significant present in the area worth celebrating and preserving.

Priest Isaac William Hallam, choosing the name of his Connecticut church, St. James, organized the parish in a North Water Street auction house on November 2, 1834. Services at St. James’s Church began at the present location in 1857. After years of growth, Edward Burling designed a new church building that was dedicated in September 1871, a month before its destruction during the second day of the Great Fire. Its bell tower and the nearby Water Tower would be the only surviving structures in this area of the city. The rebuilt church incorporated the surviving bell tower.

During the early twentieth century, several architects developed designs for a grand new cathedral to be located where the John Hancock Center now stands. There were also proposals for a large rebuilding within the existing site that included a large block of offices immediately adjacent to the Cathedral, but the plans were never carried out. Ultimately, in 1929 the Diocese of Chicago purchased a nineteenth-century residence located on 65 East Huron as a “temporary” location for its administrative headquarters. In 1955, St. James Church officially became the Cathedral for the Diocese of Chicago, but the Diocese was still operating out of its temporary home.

By the 1960s, the nineteenth-century building serving as the administrative headquarters had become overcrowded and inadequate to accommodate the needs for over 150 parishes and missions. During that time, there was an opportunity to purchase the Nickerson Mansion from the American College of Surgeons but, after two years of negotiation, the Board of Regents of the College of Surgeons decided that the building would not be sold. Ultimately, the response to the limitations of the existing building and to meet the present and future needs, was the Episcopal Diocesan and Cathedral House, a new administrative building and plaza that would replace the existing building.

A committee consisting of the Archdeacon and the Dean of the Cathedral was appointed to determine the space requirements. In parallel, the Bishop appointed a committee to select an architect for the proposed project. The committee considered six architecture practices: Mittelbusher & Tourtelot, Minoru Yamasaki Associates, Bertram A. Weber, Perkins & Will, Holabird & Root, and Hammond and Roesch, with Bertram A. Weber and Hammond and Roesch becoming the two finalists. The committee ultimately selected Hammond and Roesch because of their “architectural experience, enthusiasm, and artistic abilities which could produce a practical office building which would be in keeping with the architecture of the Cathedral, and at the same time add architectural distinction to the Diocesan Headquarters complex.”¹

Led by James Hammond and Peter Roesch, the firm had formed in November of 1961 when the duo left Skidmore, Owings & Merrill after having worked closely together on projects and becoming good friends.² They established themselves in the McCormick Building at 332 South Michigan Avenue.

James Hammond was born on April 12, 1918, in Montclair, New Jersey. He began his architecture studies at the University of Michigan in 1936 before transferring to the Illinois Institute of Technology to study under Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Between 1939 and 1940, he worked at Perkins, Wheeler & Will on the Crow Island School in Winnetka, designed in association with Eliel and Eero Saarinen. He completed his studies in 1942 and, after four years in the United States Army, he joined the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, where he would become a partner in 1955. Projects during his time at SOM include the University of Maryland Glenn L. Martin College of Engineering and Aeronautical Sciences College Park, MD (1947), Knox College, Galesburg, IL (1949–1955), Rosehill (1955–1956), Reddington Apartments, Chicago, IL (1956), Atomic Energy Commission, Los Alamos (1957), Warren Petroleum Tulsa (1956–1957), Gompers Junior High School Joliet IL, (1958), Northwest Community Hospital Center Arlington Heights, IL (1956–1958), Rush-Presbyterian St. Luke’s Hospital (1959, 1960–1966, 1964), the University of Illinois at Chicago Medical Research Laboratory, (1957–1959), and the Skokie Public Library (1958–1960). He left SOM to join Roesch on October 31, 1961. After working with Roesch for a decade, Hammond partnered with Tom H. Beeby to form Hammond Beeby and Associates in 1971. With the addition of Bernard F. Babka in 1977, the firm’s name changed to Hammond Beeby and Babka [now HBRA Architects]. Hammond, who was elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects in 1974, died in Chicago on March 21, 1986, at the age of 67.

Peter Roesch was born on August 30, 1929, in Leipzig, Germany. After World War II, he studied in Hamburg and came to the US as a Fulbright scholar in 1956. He studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology and was a student of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. After graduating from IIT, he initially returned to Germany, but came back to Chicago and worked at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill from 1956 to 1961. There he worked on several buildings, including the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado; master planning and design of the Jelke Memorial Building for Rush-Presbyterian St. Luke’s Hospital; and facilities for B. Kuppenheimer and Company in Chicago. In 1957, he independently entered the International Enrico Fermi Memorial Building Competition, being awarded second prize. After his partnership with Hammond ended, he continued to practice independently. Parallel to his professional career, he taught at UIC—where he befriended Felix Candela—and at the College of Architecture at IIT for thirty-five years. He died on September 24, 2018, at the age of 89.

Hammond and Roesch studied under Mies van der Rohe and, as James Hammond mentioned in his oral history for the Art Institute of Chicago, “Peter Roesch and I were completely Miesian. We were very hidebound Miesians.”³ This was evident in a project the firm had already completed on the southwest corner of St. Charles Road and Villa Avenue in Villa Park, a western suburb of Chicago. The 1964 Villa Park Trust and Savings Bank building—now a BMO Harris Bank—designed by Peter Roesch was inspired by an unrealized drive-in restaurant in Indianapolis that Mies van der Rohe had designed for Joseph Cantor in 1946. As part of his 1956 master’s thesis at IIT titled “A Non-denominational Church,” with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Daniel Brenner as his advisors, Roesch studied Mies’s restaurant and proposed two longitudinal external Pratt truss girders with columns and a suspended roof system spanning 144 feet.

Charles E. Stege, President of Villa Park Trust and Savings Bank, hired Hammond and Roesch to apply Roesch’s design for the new bank building in Villa Park. The goal was to create a prominent civic landmark as well as provide efficient space for the bank services. To achieve a flexible floor plan and a sense of openness, the bank’s structural system consisted of two 140-foot span steel trusses, supporting a free-hanging roof slab of 100 feet x 140 feet. While the officers’ desks and public facilities were in open areas, the safe deposit vault, accounting and other internal banking operations, and cafeteria were in the basement.

On July 27, 1965, Hammond and Roesch were authorized to start working on schematic designs for the Episcopal Diocesan and Cathedral House. While initial space requirements aimed for 25,000 square feet, that size increased to 34,000 square feet after a preliminary study. The budget also increased from $800,000 to $1 million, an amount that would require fundraising campaigns. During the 129^th Convention of the Diocese of Chicago that took place on October 19, 1966, Thomas C. Jones, a member of Christ Church in Winnetka and chairman of the fundraising committee, confirmed that $1 million had already been raised for the building. However, the construction cost by then was estimated at $1.6 million (it would ultimately cost $1.9 million, or $18 million in 2026).⁴

A 1967 fundraising booklet laid out the details of the new Episcopal Diocesan and Cathedral House. The brochure included a color rendering of a four-story modern building sitting on a generous plaza elevated six steps from the sidewalk and a roadway access to an underground parking. The paving of the plaza extended under the Commons Building.

The location of the building on the west side of the site achieved two things. On the one hand, it created a generous public plaza on the corner of Rush and Huron, providing much-needed breathing room. On the other hand, it opened the back of the St. James Cathedral toward Michigan Avenue, making visible, for the first time, the apse of the Cathedral. In his oral history, architect James Hammond mentioned that showing the Cathedral with its apse prominently displayed with the small plaza in front of it helped them get the approval from the Bishop.

The building façade was defined by bronze-sheathed steel with bronze-tone heat-reflecting glass and limestone. The program for the new building included offices, meeting rooms, classrooms, a bookstore, and the Bishop’s office. The fourth floor was to be rough-in only and available for future needs. Thinking about other long-term capabilities, the structure of the building was designed with the structural capacity to add two more floors of office and conference space (when completed in 1968, it was already a 5-story building). The peripheral columns, with a 45-foot span, allowed a column-free interior with a split core solution housing the elevators, stairs, and other service spaces.

The new building was connected to the Cathedral below grade, with a staircase from the rear of the Cathedral leading to the outdoor plaza and the Great Hall inside.

Not everyone was supportive of the new building from the beginning. The treasurer of the Diocese was against the project, and only once the building was under construction did he change his mind.⁵ For others, the cost seemed an inappropriate use of resources at a time of urban crisis and caused them to question the mission of the church.⁶

Ultimately, the building moved ahead, and after sixteen months of construction was dedicated by Bishop Gerald Francis Burrill on October 15, 1968. Its construction would be captured on several covers of Advance, the official magazine of the Diocese of Chicago. According to Hammond, it was one of the most successful projects during his partnership with Roesch.⁷ As envisioned in the renderings, the administrative building would unite the old and new structures by not only revealing the apse but also reflecting St. James Cathedral in the modern glass façade.

During the Open House and Reception that took place on June 15, 1969, more than 1,500 clergy and laymen from parishes and missions throughout the Diocese visited the new Episcopal Church Center.⁸

The cover of the November 1969 issue of Advance showed a photograph of the plaza with a brushed aluminum sculpture by Chicago artist John Henry that was on loan from the Richard Gray galleries. The plaza was conceived as a rotating gallery for exhibiting paintings and smaller sculpture. On a different occasion, the plaza featured four Cor-Ten steel sculptures by Jerald Jackard.

The building received the 1970 Distinguished Building Award from the Chicago Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and the Chicago Association of Commerce and Industry.

The June 1970 issue of Inland Architect included an article by Anne Patterson on the Episcopal Church Center. In it she mentioned that “the influence of the Bauhaus is apparent in the building design. The symmetrical plan of both plaza and building is similar to the work of Mies van der Rohe. The slick, carefully detailed curtain wall is reminiscent of Walter Gropius’s Fagus Shoe Last Factory in Germany.” At the end of the article, she adds that “the building makes a significant architectural statement. Moreover, its low scale and good proportions are particularly gratifying during the current trend toward giantism in Chicago.”⁹

Despite the praise upon its completion, less than two decades later, there were already conversations to redevelop the site. In 1986, Barancik, Conte and Associates designed an uninspiring apartment and office building for the Fifield Development Corporation. With a 125’ long x 92’ wide footprint and 340’ tall, the building included a five-story garage podium, four stories dedicated to office space, twenty floors for studios, one- and two-story apartments, a pool deck, and a penthouse.

In May 1990, the Bishop and Trustees of the Diocese of Chicago solicited proposals to evaluate the sale of their property at 65 East Huron Street.¹⁰ Among other things, they were looking for an appraisal of the property and market analysis, ways to structure a possible sale, and the possibility of relocating the diocesan offices inside a new structure to be located on the current site.

It would take until 2006 when Destefano + Partners would present the schematic design for the 71 East Huron Mixed Use Development, a project developed by LR Development Company LLC. The 677-foot-tall glass building, with an oval plan and 53 floors, included residential units, a hotel, office floors, and multiple floors for parking. Plans were shelved once again, and the 2008 economic crisis put an end to the idea of demolishing the Commons Building and redeveloping the site.

With a focus on the existing building, in 2011, architecture office Loebl, Schlossman & Hackl worked with the Diocese to design a lobby addition and the renovation of the St. James Commons, as well as the reconfiguration of the plaza. With Pepper Construction as the general contractor, the renovation created a new welcome center, enhanced meeting spaces, and a Great Hall on the lower level; improved the elevators and other accessibility elements; upgraded HVAC systems; and provided new landscaping and other features in the outdoor plaza.¹¹

In 2016 (revised in September 2018), a feasibility study was submitted by Ptolemy Dean Architects Ltd., a London-based practice “specialized in conservation work to historic buildings, additions to historic buildings, and the design of new buildings in sensitive locations.” In the study, they mention that, despite the 2011 improvements, there were several issues facing the site, from the complex as a whole feeling disjointed and unintegrated, and the connection between buildings being ungenerous and functional, to the vast amount of circulation and wasted space throughout the building. Their recommendations focused on the Cathedral, including proposing a new east entrance accessible from the plaza in front of St. James Commons.

The future of the Commons building was once again uncertain as the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago announced the sale of 65 E. Huron in a September 15, 2020, open letter from the then Bishop of the Diocese, the Rt. Rev. Jeffrey D. Lee. Leadership changes and other factors kept the process in limbo. Understanding the uncertainty that the sale of building would cast on the future of the Cathedral itself, the congregation and its leaders stepped up. In May 2024, the Very Rev. Lisa Hackney-James, Dean of the St. James Cathedral, announced that the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago had accepted their Letter of Intent (LOI) to purchase the St. James Commons building. As shared by the Dean, the St. James Cathedral was developing a capital campaign to purchase the building. The purchase would secure the building’s future, the physical presence of the St. James Cathedral, and its activities in the River North neighborhood. The proceeds from the sale would support the entire diocese, creating an endowment-like fund.¹²

On January 23, 2026, Bishop Paula E. Clark and Dean Lisa Hackney-James shared in an open letter that the Bishop and Trustees of the diocese voted in support of a new financing proposal and timeline from St. James Cathedral. This development would allow the Cathedral to purchase the building while maintaining much of the previously articulated mission, including expanding the Cathedral’s capacity for outreach, increasing flexibility for programmatic space, and strengthening its role as a spiritual and civic presence in the heart of the city. As the next stage of negotiations takes place, we hope that both sides find a common and mutually beneficial outcome.¹³

The twists and turns that the St. James Commons has faced during the last forty years are a testament of the uncertain future of this building and the continuous challenges that a building of this age and scale faces in an evolving neighborhood such as River North. Upon the death of Peter Roesch, architect Cynthia Weese, dean emerita of the School of Architecture at Washington University in St. Louis, and a founding partner of the firm of Weese Langley Weese, said of the building: “It’s a lovely little building, just the right scale and just the right size.”¹⁴ The St. James Commons Building continues to be a great example of the ten-year partnership of Peter Roesch and James Hammond and a significant contribution to Chicago’s architecture. In a time of constant superlatives, perhaps the right scale and just the right size is the appropriate solution to not only address the needs of the twentieth century when St. James Commons was built but those of the twenty-first century.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Lance Patrick Sy; Newland Smith, Historiographer of the Richard R. Seidel Archives of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago; and Karen Widi, Manager of Library, Records and Information Services at SOM, for their invaluable assistance.