12/01/2022
Charles E. Gregersen passed away peacefully on November 20, 2022.
Gregersen, a revered and award-winning architect and member emeritus of the American Institute of Architects (A.I.A.), dedicated his life to the cause of historic preservation. Fortunately for us, he expended much of his time and talent here in Pullman, where he lived for five decades.
Fascinated by architecture from an early age, at 13 years old, he persuaded his aunt to take him to the 1956 exhibition of the works of Louis Sullivan at the Art Institute of Chicago. Two years later, as a teenager, he met and befriended photographer and architectural preservationist Richard Nickel, who shared a passion for the works of Adler and Sullivan. By 17, Gregersen had become the youngest member of The Chicago Heritage Committee, the forerunner of what would become the Commission on Chicago Landmarks. Gregersen worked alongside Nickel—and later with John Vinci, David Norris, Tim Samuelson, et al.—in noble, but unsuccessful efforts, to prevent the demolition of the Garrick Theater (1891) and the Chicago Stock Exchange (1893). But thanks to their efforts, these architectural masterworks were documented extensively and much of their architectural ornament salvaged.
In 1972, Gregersen with James Simek and Paul Petraitis authored the Chicago Landmarks Commission’s report that led to the designation of the South Pullman Historic District as a City Landmark. Again, in the early 1990s, Gregersen was called upon by the Commission to testify on behalf of adding North Pullman to the Landmark District.
Gregersen applied his talents as an architect to document and restore Pullman’s architecture. He created detailed architectural elevations of the surviving half of Tenement “Block E” before its demolition in 1972. He executed painstakingly accurate drawings of Pullman’s Water Tower, a structure about which he knew more about than any other person. Presciently, Gregersen completed detailed elevations of the Pullman “Clock Tower” Factory Administration Building for the Historical Architectural Buildings Survey (HABS) in 1973. After the devastating fire in 1998, Gregersen’s drawings were integral to the reconstruction of the Factory Administration Building, which now houses the visitors center for the Pullman National Monument.
Beyond Pullman, Gregersen restored the Ga***rd Building (1838) in Lockport, Illinois. For this project, Ga***rd Donnelly received the President’s Historic Preservation Award from Ronald Reagan in 1988. Today the building anchors the historic area of the I&M Canal and is owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
In addition to his talents in architecture, Gregersen had an encyclopedic and analytical mind that made him a natural scholar and storyteller. In Dankmar Adler: His Theatres and Auditoriums (1990), he illuminates the role of Dankmar Adler, whose contributions tend to be overshadowed by his partner Louis Sullivan. In Louis Sullivan and His Mentor: John Herman Edelmann, Architect (2013), Gregersen looks at Sullivan’s formative years as an apprentice in Edelmann’s architectural office, exploring the influence of this experience on Sullivan’s later work. Most recently, he had written an article providing compelling evidence that Pullman’s Water Tower (1880), not William Le Baron Jenney’s Home Insurance Building (1884), was actually the first skyscraper. A claim that, if proven true, would rewrite American architectural history and provide another accolade for Pullman.
Ultimately, Gregersen loved Pullman—deeply. He did everything in his power to protect and preserve it because he had seen from an early age how quickly and recklessly works of great historical and architectural significance could be plundered in the name of progress. With the passing of Charles E. Gregersen, Pullman’s protection now falls to us.
