Lots of preservation issues in Berwyn – the local preservation movement there has been active for some time – our students did a survey of the village in 1999 and there has been some fascinating back-and-forth-and-into-the-bathroom-bribery-with-the-feds over the lovely Berwyn Bank Building, which is finally being saved.

There is the issue of the Spindle – centerpiece of a state marketing campaign, one of two Illinois sites in a recent tourism article in American Airlines magazine, the cover of a 1991 issue of Metropolitan Review, etc. This thing is an icon and it is so much more than 1980s irony in the middle of a shopping mall parking lot – but it is made of cars and it is in bad shape and needs an expensive fix. Continue Reading

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