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First Annual Preservation Award to Marian and Leon Despres in February, 2005
Formal award description,
Despres Preservation Award
It is a great honor for the Hyde Park Historical Society to give
its first annual Preservation Award to Marian and Leon Despres.
For more than fifty years they have nurtured the movement to save
our city's architectural heritage. In a real sense they are the
parents of preservation in Chicago.
In 1957 Len, newly elected alderman from the 5th Ward, adopted
Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House sa it sat unwanted and threatened
by its legal guardian. This successful effort to save "America's
first modern house" gave birth to the City Landmarks Commission
which then chose 39 buildings as "honorary" landmarks.
That body grew up to become the present Commission on Chicago
Landmarks which was empowered by Desres's 1968 city ordinance
to select and protect 12 important buildings as our first official
Chicago Landmarks. Three of those original designations were in
Hyde Park. In 1960 Mr. Despres and friends formed the Chicago
Heritage Committee and walked the picket lines to defend Louis
Sullivan's Garrick Theater, threatened to be demolished for a
parking garage. This vigil, and a similar one to save Sullivan's
Chicago Stock Exchange in 1972, could not prevent the loss of
these two important members of our architectural community. But
even those failed efforts strengthened the growing preservation
movement by leading to the birth of organizations like the Landmarks
Preservation Council of Illinois and by raising a new public consciousness
of the value and worldwide fame of Chicago's "outdoor museum"
of historic buildings.
In 1965 Marian Despres and a small group of friends bought and
began to nurse back to health the long-neglected Glesner House.
Under Marian's caret he house as become a remarkable museum, the
only H.H. Richardson house in the country open to the public,
and the anchor of the Prairie Avenue Historic District. From her
efforts at the Glessner House grew the Chicago Architecture Foundation
with its world famous docent progrm. She served on the CAF Board
from 1970 to 1975 and as its President in 1976 and 1977. Marian
also served on the Landmarks Commission form 1983 until 2003,
where she inspired the Chicago Historic Resources Survey, the
comprehensive inventory of Chicago's historical and architecturally
significant resources--the most complete listing ever compiled
by a major city in this country. Both of the Despres were active
in the formation of the Hyde Park Kenwood Community Conference
where Marian created the "Segments of the Past" project
documenting 866 buildings that were demolished during Urban Renewal.
Beyond saving buildings, passing laws and forming organizations,
Marian and Len Despres have fostered a strong, vigorous preservation
movement in Chicago. They've helped raise an extended family of
preservationists that will survive and grow for many generations
to come.
Remarks by Bert
Benade