Old Chicago Stock Yards Bank building set to be transformed into premier music recording complex
A historic and long-abandoned building on the edge of the former Union Stock Yards site will soon be entering a new chapter.
A proposal by the City of Chicago aims to transform the former Stock Yards Bank building, at 4150 S. Halsted St. at Exchange Avenue, into a state-of-the-art recording complex. It would be the first of its kind in the Midwest.
The Colonial Revival-style building was once a symbol of the thriving meatpacking district that largely defined Chicago's industry for more than a century. Now it is a relic — and some in the adjoining Canaryville neighborhood would call it an eyesore.
The Stock Yards Bank building was completed in 1925. It was constructed to resemble Independence Hall in Philadelphia.
The building features a square clock tower with a belfry and a spire with copper shingles — though the mechanical clock parts and some other building features have been removed over the years, the City of Chicago noted.
The building was designed by Chicago architect and engineer Abraham Epstein, who was also well known for his designs for the rebuilding of the Union Stock Yards after a devastating fire in 1934, the city notes.
The Stock Yards Bank building once housed two banks. But when the cattlemen and meatpackers who regularly did business there left, so did the tenants.
Published reports said the banks later merged, and moved out in 1965. The Union Stock Yards themselves closed at midnight on July 30, 1971, after 106 years, and published reports indicated that the Stock Yards Bank building closed altogether in 1973.
A Chicago Tribune report published in 2000 indicated that the bank has not sat completely vacant all the time since — pointing to a still-extant sign inside referencing The Color Inn Co. that the newspaper described as the building's last tenant "roughly a decade" earlier.
But by 2000, the Tribune wrote that pigeons were flying through the building and leaving their droppings on smashed TVs in the onetime bank boardroom.
The building was designated a Chicago landmark in 2008. And now, new life is coming to the site at last.
A plan for an ambitious transformation
CBS News Chicago was recently granted access to the Stock Yards Bank building. While aged, much of its design is still intact.
But inside, time has taken a toll on features like a rusted-out safety vault that has seen better days, and a hollowed-out wooden elevator that has been out of service for decades.
That is all set to change. Third Coast Music, a nonprofit that promotes the music culture of Chicago through outreach, won a bid with the city to transform the Stock Yards Bank building — as well as an adjacent now-vacant lot — into an $80 million recording complex.
It will be the first of its kind in the region — serving not only the TV, film, and music industries, but the community at large.
"They're going to come here to learn. They're going to come here to be inspired. They're going to come here to have fun. They're going to experience music in a way they never even knew existed," said Rich Daniels, as director of Third Coast Music.
Daniels heads up Third Coast Music with Katherine Hughes and Susan Chatman. All three are musicians with roots in Chicago — Daniels is the founder of City Lights Orchestra; Hughes has been a professional violinist, producer, and contractor in Chicago for decades; and Chatman has worked on hundreds of records and TV and film productions.
They want the old Stock Yards Bank building to be a center for music for the entire Midwest. And they say building at the historic site was a no-brainer.
"I've used the word magical about this space a number of times," said Hughes. "I just really feel that when I come here."
Daniels concurred.
"When we saw it, it was just — this is magnificent. This edifice is just dramatic and gorgeous," said Daniels. "It's Chicago. It speaks to the community. It speaks to its history."
When the $80 million project is complete, it is going to be a music producer's dream — housing everything from a state-of-the-art scoring studio to a museum and event space.
This will all be accomplished while preserving the historic architecture of the building.
"If the walls could talk, we could only imagine what they would say," Miller said, "and when we build across the street – the post-production facility with the scoring stage — we want that building to pay tribute to this building."
The scoring stage building is to be constructed on the vacant city-owned lot at 821 W. Exchange Ave.
What is being described in totality as a music campus will bring roughly 40 full-time jobs to the site, and more than 100 when a production takes place.
The next phase for the nonprofit is raising funds to break ground at the site and start construction.
"Just to see a renaissance of the Chicago South Side would just be incredible," Hughes said.