A historic South Side school long overshadowed by its North Side twin has taken a major step toward National Register recognition. Last week, the Illinois National Register Advisory Council voted to recommend adding James H. Bowen High School at 2710 E. 89th S
For more than a decade, Marc Edelstein kept showing up for a building most Chicagoans could pass without noticing.
At 2710 E. 89th St., James H. Bowen High School carries the kind of architectural confidence that’s hard to ignore—yet it never received the landmark treatment his North Side comparison point did. Built in 1910 and designed by architect Dwight Perkins. Bowen has long been the architectural doppelgänger of Carl Schurz High School: both opened the same year. both share distinctive design language. and both still shape the neighborhoods around them.
Last week, the Illinois National Register Advisory Council voted to recommend the National Park Service add Bowen to the National Register of Historic Places. The Park Service’s decision could come by September.
“It hasn’t really sunk in yet, and I’m the kind of guy who waits to feel good about stuff only when it actually happens,” said Edelstein, a 1968 Bowen graduate who has spent a decade trying to win National Register status for the school. “But this is really a stunning building.”
Schurz made the National Register in 2011 and has been a protected city landmark since 1979. Bowen, on the other hand, isn’t a Chicago landmark—an omission that Edelstein and others have pointed to as part of a pattern of neglect for the South and West sides.
That sense of being passed over is sharpened by what the city’s own 1979 designation report did with Schurz. The report that made the case for Schurz’s landmark status omits Bowen, even as it lists virtually every school Perkins designed as chief architect for the school system.
Edelstein said his fight has always been rooted in more than nostalgia.
“I’ve devoted a lot of thought to this. and I am totally in support of [the] theory that the South and the West sides get ignored. ” Edelstein said. “But … in order for something to be recognized and given landmark status of any sort. someone has to put up the fight. And it’s just quite possible that there were people at Schurz who thought that was important back in the ‘70s. No one had done this for Bowen — to the best of my knowledge — except for me.”.
Bowen’s design is unmistakable once you’re looking. It is a wide four-story building clad in red and orange brick and terra cotta trim. with prominent overhanging gabled roofs. strong vertical lines. and an abundance of windows that bring in natural light and provide views of Bessemer Park across 89th Street.
The nomination report describing Bowen’s place in Perkins’s work goes further than aesthetics. It says: “This Bowen/Schurz prototype was the first complete expression of the modern high school in Chicago.”
That nomination document was created for the Bowen High School Alumni Association by Chicago’s Ramsey Historic Consultants. Work on the application was supported by a $2,800 award in 2025 from the Landmarks Illinois’s Timuel D. Black Jr. Grant Fund for Chicago’s South Side.
Inside, much of the school’s original character remains, including a near-cavernous domed auditorium and the dramatically arched ceilings above the balcony and stage.
“The [school’s] main entrance is lined with marble and has this vaulted ceiling that’s wonderful,” Edelstein said. “On the top floor, there is this place that’s currently used as an exercise room. It had been a study hall. … It’s got huge skylights and a phenomenal view of the city looking north.”
The school was built to serve the kids of South Chicago-area residents who worked in the neighborhood’s then-vibrant steel industry. Its mascot is a boilermaker—not the drink, but the person who makes and fixes the high-pressure tanks used in the steelmaking process.
“When I went to school there, the mills were operating three shifts a day,” Edelstein said. “And when you graduated, you went to college, or you went to work in the mills.”
Andy Davis, a 1964 Bowen graduate and film director—including for the 1993 film “The Fugitive”—said the building reflected that steel-era community in ways that still stick.
“It was in the heart of the steel community, and Bessemer Park across the street was named after the Bessemer steel process,” Davis said.
He also recalled the school’s study hall skylights and remembered the building wasn’t always maintained well.
“We all felt the pigeon droppings had something to do with keeping it together,” Davis said. “Somehow [it] felt like a haunted house.”
Bowen’s shape has shifted over time. The school was expanded in 1940 and 1969, changes that throw off the building’s original symmetry. Even so, the brickwork on those additions approximates the color of the original building and was done sensitively enough not to overpower Perkins’s design.
Bowen also has its advocates among people who may never have intended to become architectural champions. Shaun Fleischhacker—described as a Perkins devotee—said the proposed National Register listing matters for more than one school.
“It’s a great day for proud Boilermakers everywhere and the Southeast Side specifically,” Fleischhacker said.
Fleischhacker became a fan of Perkins’ work while serving as a beat cop in the 1990s. He later spent years pushing for recognition, and last year, he got a stretch of Milwaukee Avenue in front of Schurz named in the architect’s honor.
“The recognition further highlights the remarkable collection of fabulous architecture in that overlooked area of Chicago,” Fleischhacker said.
Still, there’s urgency in the numbers and in the condition.
Bowen needs work. The Public Building Commission of Chicago said Bowen has received no significant work since the 1990s, and none is planned. If the National Register listing moves forward. it would require renovations to preserve the school’s historic character. as outlined in the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation.
The school’s enrollment doesn’t match its size anymore either: the big building, overcrowded in the 1960s, now has only about 300 students.
Yet even with the strain, Edelstein sees the structure as a possible anchor for the neighborhood’s next chapter—especially as the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park is being built nearby at 80th and Lake streets.
“This would be phenomenal architecture” to preserve, Edelstein said. “It’s just like a rock around which things can be built.”
Bowen High Schurz High School Dwight Perkins National Register of Historic Places Illinois National Register Advisory Council National Park Service Chicago landmarks Prairie School South Side Chicago Bessemer Park Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park