Chicago Landmarks Central YMCA as Envoi Lines up Conversion

Another piece of Chicago’s early skyscraper history is receiving landmark status, clearing the way for a major residential conversion in the Loop by Igor Gabal and Envoi Partners.

The Chicago City Council approved the designation of the former Central YMCA Headquarters this week at 19 South LaSalle Street, a 132-year-old building designed by William Le Baron Jenney, widely credited as the father of the skyscraper, Urbanize Chicago reported. The vote formally protects the building’s exterior just as local developer Envoi Partners moves forward with plans to redevelop the property into apartments and ground-floor retail.

Envoi acquired the 16-story building in October 2024 through a venture backed by Chicago Gabal that bought the troubled 159,000-square-foot building’s loan note for $4.2 million. Envoi Partners, led by Nate Ernst and Cory Faulkner, assumed an ownership stake alongside Gabal in the property, and has since secured permits to demolish the interior as part of a $64 million adaptive reuse project, The Real Deal previously reported.

Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture is designing the conversion, which will deliver 207 apartments on the upper floors and new retail at street level. Power Construction is slated to begin work in spring 2026.

City officials found the building met multiple criteria for landmark status, starting with its historical role as the headquarters of the Central YMCA during the organization’s rapid expansion in Chicago in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Unlike most YMCA facilities of the era, the LaSalle Street property combined association programming with a high-rise commercial office component, packing nearly 40,000 square feet of rentable offices into the building to help offset costs in the central business district, according to the outlet.

From the 1920s through the 1950s, the building served as the hub of the YMCA’s educational programming, benefiting from its central location and ample classroom space.

The designation also rests on architecture. Completed in 1893 by Jenney & Mundie and expanded in 1913 by successor firm Jenney, Mundie & Jensen, the structure is an early example of a fireproof, steel-frame skyscraper. Its design blends late-19th-century historicism with the emerging Chicago School emphasis on structural expression and restrained ornamentation. According to Urbanize, the west tower’s Romanesque and later Classical Revival treatments contrast sharply with the stripped-down south elevation, reflecting Jenney’s functional philosophy.

The building is one of only two remaining Jenney-designed structures in the Loop, alongside the New York Life Building across LaSalle Street. Though altered over time, including changes to storefronts and the removal of its cornice, the property retains much of its original massing, materials and window patterns.

— Eric Weilbacher