Back in 1983, when he was interviewed for the Art Institute’s Chicago Architects Oral History Project, Edo Belli, the most important Chicago architect you’ve probably never heard of, told a charming story about how he became the chosen architect for the Archdiocese of Chicago and wound up designing Uptown’s Cuneo Hospital and scads of other Catholic institutions in the city and beyond.
“Cardinal Stritch was a nice, easygoing individual. He ends up looking at me and he said, ‘Edo, if you were sitting here and I was sitting where you’re at, would you do what you’re trying to convince me to do?’ And I told him, ‘No, it’s like putting new shoes on a bum.’ But I said, ‘If somebody is going to do it, I’d like to do it.’ So he said, ‘That’s what I wanted to hear.’ And with that he dismisses us, and we go downstairs, and the priest [was so furious he] didn’t even want me to take him home.”
Which has led some of the building’s admirers to think there might be a way to save it—and to ask why the construction of upscale residences on such a rare chunk of park and lakefront land should require any TIF funding.
