CHICAGO – Landmarks Illinois, statewide nonprofit providing resources and expertise to help people save places in their communities have awarded $16,000 to seven preservation projects in Illinois through its latest round of grant funding. Projects to restore historic sites in DeKalb, Elgin, Glencoe, Pleasant Plains, Rock Island, and Salem received matching grants of $2,500 each from the Landmarks Illinois Preservation Heritage Fund and one project in Chicago received a $1,000 matching grant from Landmarks Illinois’ Barbara C. and Thomas E. Donnelley II Preservation Fund.
The matching grants require the recipient to raise funds equal or greater to the Landmarks Illinois grant amount. Preservation Heritage Fund grants are awarded four times a year, and Donnelley Preservation Fund grants are given twice a year. The Landmarks Illinois Board of Directors approved this latest round of grant funding in December 2019.
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Recent recipients of a Preservation Heritage Fund grant are below. You can read more about each grant recipient at our website.
- Glidden Homestead, DeKalb: $2,500 to restore the front stairs of the 159-year-old Glidden Homestead and Historical Center, the former home of Joseph F. Glidden, the inventor of barbed wire and a co-founder of Northern Illinois State Normal School, now known as Northern Illinois University.
- Elgin Math and Science Academy Charter School, Elgin: $2,500 to install a temporary tarp over the school’s Administration Building to protect the historic space from further water damage as the school prepares for future renovation. The charter school is housed in the former Fox River Country Day School, a 2012 Landmarks Illinois Most Endangered Historic Places in Illinois site designed by noted Prairie School architect John S. Van Bergen.
- Glencoe Historical Society, Glencoe: $2,500 to help fund the relocation of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Booth Cottage. A proposed lease agreement between the Glencoe Historical Society and the Glencoe Park District would save the unique
cottage from demolition by moving it off the private land it currently sits to public park space. Landmarks Illinois included the Booth Cottage on its 2019 Most Endangered Historic Places in Illinois.
- Pleasant Plains Historical Society, Pleasant Plains: $2,500 to restore new flooring in the Cunningham Barn at the Clayville Historic Site – a group of historic buildings dating back to 1842 in Central Illinois that together recreate an early frontier pioneer village. The Cunningham Barn was constructed in the 1850s and is today used for educational programs.
- Grace United Methodist Church, Salem: $2,500 toward the restoration of the historic church’s stained glass windows. Built-in 1907, the church is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and the congregation recently installed a new roof.
- Friends of Hauberg Civic Center, Rock Island: $2,500 to re-glaze historic windows on the carriage house on the Hauberg Estate. Friends of Hauberg is a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the estate and has so far completed significant restoration of the estate’s 1911 Spencer and Powers Prairie-Style mansion and Jens Jensen-designed gardens – a project that earned the group a Landmarks Illinois Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Preservation Award in 2019.
Details on the recent Donnelley II Preservation Fund are below. You can also read more about this project at our website.
- Victory Gardens Theater, Chicago: $1,000 for a building assessment report on the Biograph Theater, one of only two remaining early movie houses in Chicago. Victory Gardens Theater purchased the Biograph in 2004 and reopened its doors two years later following an extensive renovation. A new building assessment report will help the theater company create a long-term sustainable maintenance plan for its 105-year-old home.
More about LI grant programs
The Landmarks Illinois Preservation Heritage Fund Grant Program was created in 2004 and provides funding for historic preservation projects focusing on engineering, architectural and feasibility studies, stabilization, legal services, survey and National Register nominations as well as preservation ordinance support. Applications for Preservation Heritage Fund grants are accepted four times a year in February, May, August and November. The next Preservation Heritage grant application deadline is February 15.
The Barbara C. and Thomas E. Donnelley II Preservation Fund for Illinois was created in 2013 to provide monetary assistance to planning activities and education efforts focused on preservation. Applications for Barbara C. and Thomas E. Donnelley II Preservation Fund grants are accepted twice a year in May and November. The next Donnelley fund grant application deadline is May 15.
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