Polish National Alliance HQ / Studio Gang Architects, Chicago

Once the headquarters of one of the most influential ethnic fraternal organizations in the country and now home to one of Chicago’s most famous architecture firms in Studio Gang, the old Polish National Alliance HQ is a dignified bit of Depression Deco designed by Joseph Slupkowski and completed in 1938. But did you know that it could’ve been an eight-story tower designed by Raymond Hood, architect of Tribune Tower? 

(i didn’t) 

The Polish National Alliance was (and is) one of the largest ethnic fraternal organizations in the US. In the 20th century, the PNA’s mission was two-pronged: one, to provide a foundation for Polish people to flourish in the United States–through the provision of low-cost insurance to members, providing English lessons, and organizing Polish schools—and two, to fight for a free and independent Poland in Europe. 

Energized by the re-establishment of Poland as an independent country in 1918 and growing rapidly as Polish immigrants flocked to the US, the PNA needed a new national headquarters. Plus, their frenemies down the street, the Polish Roman Catholic Union of America, had built themselves a grand new home at Augusta & Milwaukee in 1913. 

The PNA bought this plot on Division Street in Chicago’s Polish Downtown in 1922 and launched a design competition two years later. 24 firms entered—Raymond Hood, fresh off his win in the Tribune Tower competition, was the only East Coast architect to enter. The jury—composed of influential Chicago architects Hugh M.G. Garden, John Wellborn Root, and Benjamin Marshall, as well as two PNA officials—chose Hood’s proposal, a temple-like eight-story box (honestly, I think it would’ve been ugly as hell, what we got is better). 

It didn’t get built. Apparently, building for the PNA—with all sorts of internal turf battles and complex fundraising dynamics—was harder than constructing Hood’s iconic American Radiator Building in Manhattan, designed at roughly the same time. 

It worked out in the end—when the PNA tried again in the late 1930s, they hired a local architect, Joseph Slupkowski, which seems more appropriate anyway. Slupkowski was a PNA member, did a lot of work for the local Polish community, and even went to school across the street at Holy Trinity. It’s interesting to compare Slupkowski’s downsized, stripped-down Art Deco with the original plans and the PRCUA HQ nearby.

Here, the PNA dispensed with a clubhouse, a banquet hall or anything super celebratory. Instead the building housed offices, a library, a small museum, etc. A serious building for a serious time for a serious organization—by the 1930s, the Polish National Alliance was a major fraternal benefit organization with more than 270,000 members, dispensing millions in burial insurance benefits and lobbying Congress.

The PNA sold the building in 1976 and moved north to a new headquarters in Sauganash. After the Poles sold it, 1520 W. Division housed a social security office, then the College of Office Technology, a private technical school that closed in 2013. 

Designated a Chicago Landmark in 2014 and added to the National Register of Historic Places, that year architecture firm Studio Gang bought the building for $2.5m. Studio Gang restored and renovated the building into an office befitting an world-renowned firm. Eating their own cooking, the firm added a neat indoor/outdoor event space and green roof prairie on the rooftop, which they consider a "living laboratory" for testing the biodiversity impacts of green roofs.

Further reading:

• City of Chicago Landmark Designation Report
• National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form
• Polish National Alliance Architectural Competition: Report of the Jury
• Chicago's Polish Downtown by Victoria Granacki
• PNA: a centennial history of the Polish National Alliance of the United States of North America by Donald E. Pienkos

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Józef A. Słupkowski designed a ton of buildings for Chicago's Polish community, including at least two for his alma mater, Holy Trinity. I thought this Polish-language ad from Dziennik Chicagoski in 1921 was particularly neat–it's him announcing he's organizing his own firm.

He also had a funny appearance in this 1938 article about an attempt to rename a small street in Avondale–Haussen Court, which Slupkowski happened to live on–to Crawford, which the Chicago Polonia hoped would make it impossible to reverse the change of Crawford Avenue to Pulaski (i.e. "well, we can't change it back now, there's already a Crawford Avenue). Clever.