Artist Buys Run-Down Chicago Bank for $1 and Transforms It Into Arts Center

Three years ago, Chicago bank Stony Island Savings & Loan was nearly a century old and had been completely untouched since the 1980s. The roof had caved in and weather took hold of the crumbled infrastructure. To most, it may have seemed best to tear the once-beautiful building down, but Chicago artist Theaster Gates Jr. had other plans.

Gates purchased the derelict building for a single dollar from the city of Chicago in 2012 and got to work. He managed to raise considerable funds to help restore the bank through a number of initiatives, including salvaging marble from the bank and selling it in rectangular pieces called "bank bonds" at Art Basel. After intensive renovations, the 17,000 square foot building opened to the public on October 6.

Under the new moniker Stony Island Arts Bank, the building is now home to art installations, artists, scholars, and archives on art history, architecture, and black culture. It also houses the Rebuild Foundation, a non-profit organization founded by Gates to invest culture in underdeveloped neighborhoods.

“This is a new kind of cultural amenity, a new kind of institution—a hybrid gallery, media archive and library, and community center. It is an institution of and for the South Side—a repository for African American culture and history, a laboratory for the next generation of black artists and culture-interested people; a platform to showcase future leaders—be they painters, educators, scholars, or curators,” Gates said in a press release.