Posted on: Friday, July 2, 2004

Trendy loft was once a bowling alley

By Kathy Kaplan
Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO — Resourceful city dwellers will find unusual living opportunities throughout Chicago's neighborhoods. Taverns, churches, bakeries — even a gas station — have been transformed into distinctively urban domiciles. Such novel spaces present challenges that often foster unique results.

And so it was when Shallan and Whipple Hazlewood began looking for a home.

"I fell in love with the idea of turning an old, commercially used space into a home," says Shallan, 31. She had passed up a bakery because it was much too large. But when her real estate agent showed her a former four-lane bowling alley in Chicago's Lincoln Park, she knew she had found what she wanted.

"It was just four brick walls, very loft-like and it had a front and back courtyard," she says of the one-story structure.

While they were contemplating the purchase, an adjacent lot became available, so they bought it, knowing it would provide a side yard and a place for a garage.

The Hazlewoods hired Linda Searl, an architect whom Shallan had interviewed when she was remodeling Soapstone, her Lincoln Park bath and body boutique. "I couldn't afford Linda at the time, but I've followed her work. I had seen her exhibit at the Art Institute on women architects, and I liked the idea of working with a woman," she says.

The Hazlewoods, who got married midway through the project, charged Searl with designing a contemporary three-story home with open spaces that took advantage of the two courtyards at each end of the building. "I wanted to be able to see all the way across to the back courtyard when I walked in," Shallan says. They also knew they wanted to use the bowling alley lanes in some "not so obvious" way.

Searl proposed three different conceptual schemes for her clients to consider. "In each case the stair became a focal point," she explains. "In one scheme the stair ran up the east wall, in one it ran up the west wall and then in this scheme the stair turned perpendicular to the (main floor)," she adds.

"The most compelling trait of the chosen scheme is that it allowed us to create a grand gesture that unifies the upper two floors with the existing space," Searl says. "The stair became the focal point of the house," adds project architect Greg Howe.

"The stair is sculptural — we wanted to be able to see through it, yet we wanted it to have a big impact," says Whipple, 27, a partner in REED Partners Ltd., a commercial real estate services firm specializing in tenant representation.

At the base of the stair is a large plinth made of bowling alley wood separating the living room from the dining/kitchen/ family room area. The framework of the staircase is cut out of a single piece of steel. The stair treads and landings are made of bowling alley flooring.

Cladding the stair tower is cement board fastened with steel bolts and gasketed washers.

"The staircase also links the house to the side garden that recognizes the luxury of such an exterior space in a dense urban neighborhood," says Searl. Across from the base of the stairs are French doors leading to the side yard. Continuing along the east wall are four more pairs of French doors allowing natural light to flood the interior.

Searl pays homage to the building's heritage by hanging panels of maple and pine alley material from the first-floor ceiling. "It was important to recall the linear concept of what this used to be," Searl says. "The lanes became the circulation space through the house." On the second level, the same material is reused as flooring in the alley-like hallway.

Another reference to the building's origin is the choice of commercial and industrial materials. The French doors as well as the front and back windows are storefront systems. A 38-foot-high wall of commercial glass forms the east wall opposite the three-story stair tower. The cement board is commonly used in industrial structures like laboratories. Kalwall, a fiberglass panel seen in warehouses in the home's immediate neighborhood, is used in the window openings of the original facade and the fencing of the side yard. And patinated zinc is used on the exterior of the second level of the east elevation.

But ultimately, the interior, done by Shallan, who learned a lot about design growing up from her interior-designer mother, has a warm, residential feel to it, Searl says.

Floors on the first floor as well as in the second-floor bedrooms are 10-inch-wide distressed oak planks stained black, making a nice contrast to the bowling alley maple.

Given the contemporary lines of the architecture, Shallan chose a mix of art and furniture that makes the couple feel at home. In the living room, she opted for a modernist L-shaped couch paired with four armchairs salvaged from her father's office after he sold his company in a business merger. She covered those pieces with gray wool flannel and added colorful pillows and art, and accessories acquired on their honeymoon last year in South Africa. For the more casual family room, she grouped three sofas upholstered in red wool flannel around the media center.