Pergola restoration finally starts at North Lawndale’s Sears Sunken Garden

On April 17, 2026, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that work had begun on the pergola at the Sears Sunken Garden in North Lawndale. That changes the meaning of the site. After years of community organizing, design workshops, grant support, and ceremonial announcements, crews are now stripping paint, sampling colors, patching concrete, and preparing to replace roof tiles and wood trusses on the garden’s most recognizable structure.

The pergola is not a minor ornament. It is the formal center of the 1907 landscape built for employees on the old Sears campus, and its repair is the first clear physical proof that North Lawndale’s effort to reclaim the garden is moving from aspiration into construction. The immediate question is no longer whether the project has momentum. It is whether this first $1 million phase can carry the whole landscape toward a broader public restoration.

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Once the pergola work starts, the Sears Sunken Garden stops reading like a promise and starts reading like a real restoration.

What Happened This Week

Lee Bey reported in the Chicago Sun-Times on April 17 that work had started on the 100-foot pergola at 3330 West Arthington Street. The article says the $1 million restoration is funded by the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation and describes the job as beginning with paint sampling and concrete patching before moving into heavier repair work on roof tiles, wood trusses, and concrete columns.

The same report says the pergola phase should be completed this summer if weather holds. That timeline turns the garden from a long-discussed neighborhood vision into a project with a visible near-term construction horizon.

Why This Changes How The Site Should Be Read

The Sears Sunken Garden is no longer only a compelling preservation idea backed by good design and strong local advocacy. It is now an active restoration site on the former Sears campus, and built work changes what the public can see, judge, and rally around.

The new phase also sharpens the site’s place in the larger Sears landscape. Nichols Tower preserves the skyline marker, the administration building holds the unresolved headquarters story, and the garden now carries the most visible landscape recovery on the grounds. The pergola work keeps the campus from being read only through buildings and vacancy.

What To Watch Next

The next questions are whether the current pergola phase stays on schedule through the summer, whether fundraising closes the roughly $4.5 million gap Friends of Sears Sunken Garden still faces for the larger landscape work, and whether the broader Oudolf-Chris Gent plan for paths, lighting, water features, plantings, and ADA access moves into additional funded phases.

Foundation for Homan Square’s 2025 annual report framed the garden effort as an 18-month project after the October 15, 2025 ceremonial groundbreaking. The most useful signal from here will be whether the pergola repair becomes the first completed piece of that larger timeline rather than a single repaired element waiting for the rest of the garden to catch up.