What’s That Building? Old Town School of Folk Music

WBEZ Chicago / by Dennis Rodkin and Haley Bloomquist / September 3, 2024

In the 1990s, a Chicago public library building that had sat unused for a decade got a second life. Or maybe, because of the traditions at the Old Town School of Folk Music, which took over the Art Deco building, it’s more accurate to say it got a Second Half.

The building is now a fine place to watch live music — or make some. In the main auditorium, 450-seat Maurer Hall, nobody’s more than 45 feet from the stage, and over that stage hangs a mural from the WPA era.

The Old Town School of Folk Music is a well-loved institution, not only as a concert venue but also as a place where people learn to make music.

Its two buildings on opposite sides of Lincoln Avenue in Lincoln Square — the former library, built in 1929 and our main focus in this segment, the other purpose-built for the music school in 2012 — are 10 miles and 67 years from the school’s origins in a family home on Lombard Avenue in Oak Park. Read More Here.