Historic Building in Downtown Northbrook Will Soon be Razed

The 18,700 square foot building at 1856 Walters Ave. will soon be demolished once permits are approved, the Chicago Tribune reports.
The two-story downtown Northbrook structure is one of the last surviving buildings left behind by Culligan Zeolite Company.

"From its Culligan days, and its other role as a business incubator, the building has been an important part of our history," Northbrook Historical Society President Judy Hughes said in the story. "But at this point, it's so neglected that it's a hazard to the community."

The Chicago Tribune reports:

Company founder Emmett Culligan had moved his growing business to Northbrook in 1936 because the village had built new streets 12 years earlier in expectation of a housing boom. But the streets were still vacant in the mid-1930s, and Culligan won permission to spread industrially-produced "zeolite" water-softening crystals on the pavements to dry, according to "Northbrook: The Fabric of Our History (2000).

Culligan moved the company headquarters to Northbrook's Shermer Road industrial district in the 1950s and later to a site at Sanders and Willow roads, its last local headquarters.

But Culligan kept some operations within the brick building and an attached hut and small wooden building, and space was leased at below-market prices to local entrepreneurs, according to Pioneer archives.

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