A nearly 100-year-old building in Chicago’s Chinatown neighborhood could soon have national recognition if preservationists and several community members get their way.
The Pui Tak Center, located at the corner of Wentworth and Cermak, is just behind the iconic Chinatown arch and is visible from the CTA Cermak Redline platform. Over the years its unique design and daily operations have made it a symbol of the neighborhood.
On Friday, the program committee of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks is expected to vote on whether the building belongs on the National Register of Historic Places. It already has city-level protection.
A “yes” vote on Friday would put the building one step closer toward being designated by the National Park Service as a landmark and would garner the building additional benefits and federal protections. Currently there are around 90,000 properties listed on the National Register. If approved, the Pui Tak Center building would be the first in Chinatown to make the list.
The Pui Tak Center used to be known as the On Leong Merchant Association Building. It was finished in 1928, not long after Chicago’s Chinatown relocated in 1912 from the Loop to its current location. For years the building was viewed as Chinatown’s “city hall” and was even home to a de-facto court on the third floor, run by community elders.
“Instead of reporting things to the police, they just asked elders in the community to listen to what happened and try to figure out what was just,” Pui Tak Center Executive Director David Wu told NBC Chicago.
The building was and continues to be a hub for Chinese education, culture and commerce.
We met Anita Luk, former executive director of the Chinese American Museum of Chicago, outside the Center Thursday.
“So there are a lot of elements that are Western and Eastern,” she said, pointing to the brightly colored terracotta that makes the building so unique. “This is nothing Chinese, but Greek and Roman,” she explained, noting the architecture’s Norwegian roots.
Luk noted the jade-colored peacocks and the protective Fu Dogs that line the entrance of the front walkway and are mirrored on either side. She’s not an architect or a building expert but recently has become one of sorts, studying the motifs that are proudly displayed on the building’s exterior.
Wu’s favorite terracotta design is often missed; it’s a dragon sitting atop the building and only visible from the roof or to those passersby who think to look up and to the side.
Adding the building to the National Register of Historic Places will preserve the building’s history and protect against future gentrification.
“Chinatowns in the United States are shrinking, and this is the only Chinatown that is growing. It has its own significance,” Luk said.
Today the Pui Tak Center offers resources for new immigrants, language classes and worship space. The building is owned by the Chinese Christian Union Church, which bought it in the early 1990s.
In 1988 the FBI raided the building for illegal gambling. For Chinatown’s seniors, the space is most remembered for offering Chinese calligraphy to students ages first through sixth grade.
Community member Soo Lon Moy, who also sits on the board of directors for the Chinese American Museum, interviewed more than a dozen people, some of them in their 90s, who remember attending classes there.
“They spent three hours there learning Chinese calligraphy, Chinese art, Chinese culture,” she said. “It’s really important because it’s such a big part of our Chinatown history,” she told NBC Chicago.
Wu would like to see the building on the national registry in time for Chinatown’s Centennial. If Friday’s vote is in the affirmative, the National Park Service could list the building on its register by this fall.
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