CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — It's one of the most picturesque sites in the city and even hosted the wedding of George Lucas and Mellody Hobson: Promontory Point.
The Chicago Landmarks Commission is expected to vote to make the Point, located in Hyde Park along the shore of Lake Michigan, a landmark on Thursday.
It's a cause Preservation Chicago has been pushing for since the nonprofit's inception in 2001.
Executive Director Ward Miller explained the group named the spot one of the city's most endangered sites last year because of what he called the Army Corps of Engineer's 'heavy handed' use of concrete to replace the lakefront retaining wall battered by erosion.
“The relationship of the rocks to the landscape and the water is really important,” Miller said. “They all sort of work together to create a really unique environment that Caldwell himself oversaw.”
The Point, built 85 years ago, was designed by Alfred Caldwell, who worked for Jens Jensen and became friends with other Chicago architectural titans Frank Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
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This is the first of multiple votes needed to secure the designation for the point which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2018.
Miller said while the landmark designation would limit how the Point is used, it won't make the area off-limits to the public.
“Really this landmark designation is not meant to create a museum-type of static environment,” Miller said. “It’s to create a living landmark, something that everybody enjoys, everybody can celebrate.”
Thursday’s vote would be the first of multiple needed to secure landmark status.
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