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Farr Associates

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Farr Associates is an award-winning sustainable architecture and planning firm located in the heart of Chicago.

10/21/2026

I woke up like this ✨

10/14/2026

📝 Farrside Field Notes: Follow your bliss and visit our top three recommendations for Open House Chicago weekend!

⭐️ Climate Action Museum
📍 Downtown — 300 S. Riverside Plaza
💧 Climate got ya down? Visit climateactionmuseum, co-founded by Doug!, for a dose of climate optimism and check out the new riverside Route 66 mural by maestro Tom Melvin.
📸 Slides 1-2: Tom, Doug, and the pontoon paint crew create a mural on the Chicago River; 3-4: Scale wall section replicas feature Academy for Global Citizenship, 860-880, and the Monadnock (also an Open House Chicago site!)

⭐️Charles H. Shaw Technology and Learning Center
📍Garfield Park / North Lawndale — 931 S. Homan Ave.
🏭 Visit the power plant originally designed by Nimmons & Fellows for the Sears, Roebuck and Co. campus. Farr Associates led the historic preservation, adaptive reuse, and rehabilitation of the vacant facility now home to DRW College Prep, a public charter high school. Tours will include all campus spaces, the Sears Sunken Garden, the Powerhouse, and Nichols Tower.
📸 Slides 5-6: The Great Hall; 7: exterior view of the powerhouse.

⭐️ Pullman State Historic Site
📍 Pullman — 610 East 111th St.
🤠 Experience historic industrial archaeology and catch a rare glimpse inside the last remaining section of the Rear Erecting Shops, one of the Car Works buildings developed by George Pullman. Stop by our table on Saturday to say hello! Please note the Hotel Florence will *not* be open this weekend.
📸 Slides 8-9: Exterior view of the Rear Erecting Shop; 10: group portrait of workers in front of a Pullman train car (source: State of Illinois Digital Archives).

Chicago Architecture Center
Landmarks Illinois

10/08/2026

No Time Like October 🍂 For the next two weekends, Pullman State Historic Site will be offering rare tours of historic spaces:

⭐️ Saturday, October 10, 11am - 5pm
In coordination with the Friends of Pullman’s Pullman House Tour, the Hotel Florence will be open to the public for free, guided tours. Learn more about the workers who lived and worked at the Hotel Florence in the 1880s and 1890s and take a sneak peek at the first floor before comprehensive restoration begins. For safety reasons, tours are limited to 20 people and will take place every half hour starting at 11am and ending with a final tour at 4:30pm.

⭐️ Saturday, October 17 - Sunday, October 18, 10am - 5pm
As part of Chicago Architecture Center's Open House Chicago, the Rear Erecting Shops will be open for guided tours. Visitors will don hard hats and learn about the building’s history and current restoration efforts. For more information: https://openhousechicago.org/

We’ll be tabling on both Saturdays, with buttons-while they last! Hope to see you there! 🤠

Images: Mark uses the Monadnock’s light box (operable window) to hand trace Florence Pullman’s signature from her portrait in the State of Illinois Digital Archives. The signature is included on some of Florence portrait buttons, as shown in the last slide with a pile of pinback buttons featuring the Historic Hotel Florence, carpet design currently in the parlor, and stained glass shield with “HF” initials.

09/17/2026

We ❤️ Restrooms! Bathrooms, WCs, Comfort Stations—you name it. Restrooms are a baseline amenity for health, wellness, and dignity. We have a future case study in the works, but first: we recently completed two elementary restroom renovations for Chicago Public Schools and have three more on the boards for the new academic year.

Named for its neighborhood, Park Manor Elementary School currently serves over 300 students in the Greater Grand Crossing community. The school was built in 1913, designed by Chicago Board of Education architect Arthur Hussander, and passed through many architects’ hands including John C. Christensen. Christensen was assistant architect to Hussander before serving many stints as official architect for the Chicago Board of Education and later as Supervising Architect for the State of Illinois.

The images here display title blocks, north arrows, textures, and penmanship clipped from digitized versions of Park Manor’s original 1912 drawing sets and renovation sets from 1945 and 1975.

Fun Facts about Christensen:

🏛️ Architect of Avalon Park’s Chicago Vocational High School.

🏛️ Designed an addition in 1923 for West Pullman Elementary School. The school was recently converted into 60 units of affordable senior housing, designed by UrbanWorks and led by our Hotel Florence project partner, Celadon. Notably, that conversion received the 2021 Landmarks Illinois Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Preservation Award for Adaptive Reuse.

🏛️ Christensen’s philosophy of school architecture was to design each school as distinct units that were “absolutely different from every other school in the city,” which meant using a variety of architectural styles, including Neoclassical, Gothic Revival, and Tudor Revival.

We’re proud to continue to serve Chicago Public Schools and its students, faculty, and staff through these renovation projects. Go Mustangs!🐴

Sources: Chicago Historic Schools, Preservation Chicago, Landmarks Illinois, Chicago Public School Buildings Pre-1940 Context Statement

Landmarks Illinois
Preservation Chicago
Chicago Public Schools
Beckett Murtaugh

09/11/2026

The end of summer marks back-to-school and we’re proud to steward several educational projects from restroom renovations to best-in-class new construction! 🤠 Learn more in our latest substack: https://farrside.substack.com/p/its-the-most-wonderful-time-of-the

09/02/2026

material library
so fresh and so clean
shining brightly in the light

🧱🫟🪎

08/18/2026

Today we celebrate our intern Amajay “Jay” Smith! 😎 Jay has been involved in a variety of projects, from Hotel Florence community engagement to documentation of existing conditions to organizing many documents in our archives. To name a few!

Jay will begin his civil engineering studies at Vanderbilt University this fall! We sat down with him to reflect on his Farrside journey, which began through the internship program at Bennett Day School:

“Starting as a high schooler, I would come in for only a few hours of the day, working with the team to help with the marketing side of their projects while still taking time to shadow the architects. I got unique insight into the architecture world, learning Revit and how to design architecture models. I also got to learn about the firm’s previous and current projects, and how interconnected the office is with the city and its sustainability.

I was offered the opportunity to come back as a summer intern, taking on more hands-on tasks with the team. It felt different working in the summer than in the school year. I had more flexible hours and more projects to work on. I also traveled to the Pullman area of Chicago to put up flyers for a community meeting to gather resident perspectives, and to the Indiana Dunes homes with Mercedes to take measurements, mark-ups, and photos of existing conditions.

This summer, I felt like I was truly getting a sense of architecture work. While I could only take on so much without the proper experience and education, I’m grateful that the team found ways to include me and let me learn, even in small ways.

The most rewarding part of my time here in the studio was the connections I made. I got to meet some of the most innovative architects in Chicago, and listening to their projects and overall lives made me very happy… it showed me this is something that I’d want to do in the future, or something closely adjacent. Each architect here is unique, and I can tell by the different assignments and projects that they get detailed on. It’s been amazing to listen and learn from them and analyze the way that they conduct themselves.”

Congrats, Jay! ✨✨ The future is bright with you in it!

---
Milestone photos compiled by Jay. Captions by Breanne:

1: Jay with Governor JB Pritzker and Farrside President Mercedes Miley at the press conference announcing the public-private partnership for Pullman’s Hotel Florence & Annex. The governor speaking at the podium. Farrside designer Mark Melvin with TERRA Engineering, Ltd.’s Dustin Erickson in the commercial kitchen of the Hotel Florence.

2: Flyer for community engagement with Hotel Florence in the background with an inset photo of the clock tower at Pullman National Historical Park.

3: Wooden ironing board covered with signatures and a piece of blue painters tape that reads “house”.

4: Empty interior residential space with wood paneling and floors, and fireplace.

5: Sunset office sailboat outing with Doug, Beckett, Len, Mark, Jay, and Breanne. Not pictured: Moid, Mercedes, Aaron, and Justin.

08/04/2026

📣 9th Ward Community Meeting Recap 📣

Read all about it: https://www.farrside.com/campaigns/view-campaign/QyvYNPu9teBfq6SAAfhpYsrYlQSYXHtDt-NM7xjD2YHCx2bu27mI-wFIifzK5Bj5K7_OSfhT23dUa_mmcuQBKvyDB7sl4gct

Subscribe to our Pullman mailing list to receive future updates: https://www.farrside.com/pullman-hotel-florence

07/30/2026

One of our biggest dreams just became reality.

Academy for Global Citizenship's Chicago campus is officially Living Building Challenge® certified by Living Future, achieving the world's highest environmental building standards! 🌟

This makes AGC the first project in Illinois, as well as the first whole school building in the world, to reach this bar.

Our values have always included action and audacity. We share this news on Nature Conservation Day to honor our unwavering foundational commitment to sustainability, innovation, and environmental stewardship as we continue working to advance both human and planetary well-being. 🦋

Thank you to everyone who helped nurture our campus into its full potential, including our Southwest Chicago community members and our visionary architecture partners SMNG A, Farr Associates, Trung Le, Urban Resolve, and Power Construction. Even the highest bar couldn't stop us!

🌱 Read the full press release featuring our key collaborators here: https://agcchicago.org/blog/agc-becomes-first-project-in-illinois-to-earn-living-building-challenge-certification

07/16/2026

While the city is on environmental red alert, here's a breath of fresh air — the Hotel Florence, surrounded by snow and basking in the sunshine against a clear blue sky.

⚠️ Our 9th Ward Community Meeting has been officially rescheduled! ⚠️ Join us on July 29, 2026 to meet the development team and receive updates on the future of the Hotel Florence & Annex.

Wednesday, July 29, 6:15pm–7:30pm
Pullman Community Center
10355 S Woodlawn Ave
Chicago, IL 60628

✅ Register for event reminders: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hotel-florence-community-meeting-tickets-1993622592842

☎️ For more information: Contact the 9th Ward Alderman Anthony Beale Service Office (773) 785-1100 or [email protected]

📸: Library of Congress
https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/il0122.color.572101c/

Address

53 W Jackson Boulevard, Ste 650
Chicago, IL
60604

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 5pm
Tuesday	9am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 5pm

Telephone

+13124081661

Website

http://www.farrside.com/

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