Originally a mansion and coach house that contractors built in 1892 for grain elevator business owner George A. Seaverns, Jr., and his family, the current site has been home to the South Side Community Art Center since 1940. Prior to purchasing the site, the original members of SSCAC organized themselves in the late 1930s as a collective of artists as the Arts Craft Guild. SSCAC is the only surviving African American Community Art Center of the Roosevelt Administration’s Works Progress Administration’s (WPA) Community Art Center Program. Original SSCAC founders were Dr. Margaret Taylor-Burroughs (also the founder of the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago), Eldzier Cortor, Bernard Goss, Charles White, William Carter, Joseph Kersey, and Archibald Motley. 

Unique to the building is its interior — select spaces such as the main staircase renovated by contractors and designers in the New Bauhaus style in 1940 for SSCAC.

wrkSHäp | kiloWatt is Chicago-based architect Future Firm’s historic preservation consultant for their historic renovation and addition to the historic site.