Albert Pick & Company Building, Chicago

A Later Industrial Terminal In The Same District Language

The National Register nomination describes the Albert Pick building as a 1936 industrial terminal designed by Abraham Epstein. Its restrained Classical Revival detailing helps explain something important about the Pershing Road district: the architecture evolved over time without abandoning the larger CMD strategy of red brick massing, emphasized structure, and coordinated frontage.

That makes 2159 more than a companion address. It is one of the clearest later-phase buildings through which to read continuity and change inside the district.

Why Parkview Lofts Put 2159 In Public View

The 2021 City Council approval gave 2159 a specific future-facing identity as Parkview Lofts, with 120 affordable housing units planned inside the historic structure. That mattered because it framed the building not simply as a preservation object, but as a possible social-use anchor facing McKinley Park.

Few CMD buildings have been discussed so directly through the overlap of preservation, affordability, and neighborhood livability. That overlap is what makes 2159 especially important to track separately.

When A Reuse Win Stops Short Of Reality

Preservation Chicago's December 31, 2023 update is critical because it showed that approval, design work, and public enthusiasm were not enough. The nearby asphalt-plant controversy and the failure to secure financing stalled the project before the promised reuse could settle into built fact.

So the building remains historically important in two registers at once: as a 1936 industrial terminal and as an unfinished case in the politics of contemporary reuse.