On March 27, 1988—Palm Sunday—members of the Bethel Lutheran Church choir marched along Washington Boulevard, past one of the many rows of historic greystones in West Garfield Park. Singing songs, clutching palm fronds and balloons, the group, accompanied by lay leaders, government officials, and Chicago’s then-mayor Eugene Sawyer, was celebrating the opening of 4000 Guyon Towers. The $5.8 million rehabilitation of the Guyon Hotel, built in 1928 during the heyday of Chicago’s residential hotel boom, would deliver 114 one- and two-bedroom affordable apartments. The restoration was made possible through the tapping of local and national funding, based on the building’s location, function, and historic status, by the property’s owner, Bethel New Life Inc., the nonprofit development arm of Bethel Lutheran Church. “It’s time for West Garfield Park to rejoice,” Sawyer was quoted as saying in the Chicago Tribune. Addressing the hotel’s new owners, the mayor continued, “you breathed new life into a dying building and brought new hope to the West Side.”
It’s hard to imagin…
