Chicago’s skyline and civic landscape were hit by surprises in 2025 that no one had on their bingo card. A modest brick house in suburban Dolton became an international pilgrimage site, the White House’s East Wing vanished without warning, and a bland 1970s office tower gained landmark protection simply for replacing a lost Louis Sullivan masterpiece.
In July, Dolton rushed to buy and landmark the childhood home of newly elected Pope Leo XIV, a single-story post-war tract house now slated to open for public tours. Two months later, the General Services Administration—under the second Trump administration—quietly tore down the White House East Wing, echoing Mayor Daley’s midnight demolition of Meigs Field in 2003. The same agency floated plans to sell off portions of Mies van der Rohe’s Federal Center and the recently preserved Century and Consumers Buildings, setting up another year of fights over Chicago’s modernist heritage.
Downtown, the city’s attempt to steer subsidies toward office-to-residential conversions took a strange turn when the Commission on Chicago Landmarks gave preliminary status to the forgettable 30 N. LaSalle, a move critics call an abuse of preservation law. Meanwhile, Google’s overhaul of the James R. Thompson Center revealed more glass terraces than expected, yet the tech giant still refuses to release updated renderings, leaving residents to watch the redesign unfold in real time.
Lincoln Yards got a fresh start under new owners, rebranded as Foundry Park and featuring a toned-down plan by Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture. The Chicago Architecture Center weighed in with a study urging stadium projects for the Bears, Fire, White Sox, Bulls, and Blackhawks to double as neighborhood assets. Yet the Bears closed the year hinting at a move to northwest Indiana after once again abandoning Arlington Heights.
The architectural world also lost giants in 2025. Frank Gehry, Leon Krier, Robert A.M. Stern, David Childs, Ricardo Scofidio, and Chicago bookseller Marilyn Hasbrouck all passed away. Looking ahead, June will bring the opening of the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park, and Studio Gang is set to unveil renovation concepts for the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock. After a year this unpredictable, 2026 seems almost certain to deliver more shock waves.
