1986 | The Harold Washington Library -- a building that almost wasn't
The Harold Washington Library at State and Congress was brought to you by the Sun-Times.
While Chicago leaders planned on turning the old Goldblatt's store on State Street into a new central library, investigative reporter Charles Nicodemus' dogged reporting revealed that wasn't such a good idea.
Nicodemus' stories pointed to the building's structural deficiencies and soaring costs. Much of the building's space, Nicodemus discovered, could not even be used for book collections because floor supports were so weak.
Nicodemus kept at it for more than a year, until city leaders and the Library Board decided to build what's now the Harold Washington Library -- gargoyles and all.
The stories "sparked the debate, which led us to reconsider," Library Board President Cannutte Russell said in December 1986, minutes after the board agreed on the location for the new Harold Washington Library. "That debate has now produced a consensus behind the new library site and given the library a prominence it never enjoyed before."
The new, $144 million library opened in October 1991.