Marathon Pundit: Saving Reagan's Chicago home: How you can help

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Saving Reagan's Chicago home: How you can help

Chicago Reagan apartment on
January 6. 2013

This morning the Drudge Report linked to William J. Kelly's article on the only Chicago home of Ronald Reagan. The University of Chicago owns the building and through a surrogate has applied for a demolition permit of the six-flat at 832 E. 57th Street where the Reagan family lived in 1915.

The apartment is across the street from the University of Chicago Medical Center's New Pavilion. The Med Center wants to replace the apartment with a parking lot. Several nearby structures have already been torn down.

Kelly's article is incorrect on one item. While the U of C is lobbying to be the site of the Barack Obama presidential library, to my knowledge not even a hypothetical location has not been chosen, let alone a city. Kelly's musing that the parking lot across from the New Pavilion could end up being used by visitors to such a library is wrong. I'm familiar with the geography of the neighborhood--one block west of the Reagan home is Washington Park, one block south is the university's football field. There is another medical facility one block east. And of course the New Pavilion is across the street. If the presidential library does end up on the University of Chicago campus, it won't be any closer than several blocks from 832 E. 57th Street.

Washington Park--New Pavilion center

Michelle Obama is a former senior officer of the Med Center and White House Senior Counsel Valerie Jarrett is the former chair of its board of trustees. The president is a former instructor in constitutional law at the university.

The Reagan home needs to be saved. My suggestion is to turn it into a museum about the 40th president--with a focus on the work of University of Chicago professor Milton Friedman. He was the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Economics--Reagan put Friedman's theories into practice and turned around a moribund American economy. And I believe the Chicago home should be added to the Ronald Reagan Trail.

To support the cause to save the Chicago Reagan home, tax deductible contributions can be mailed to:

Friends of President Reagan's Chicago Home
P.O. Box 3772
Washington, DC 20027-3772

Click here to read the corporate purpose statement for Friends' of President Reagan's Chicago Home.

Next week--February 6--would have been Reagan's 102nd birthday. Let's win one for the Gipper.