A fixture in Chicago’s dynamic literary scene, Keir Graff is no stranger to living a life imbued with the arts. A full-time novelist, former executive editor at Booklist, co-writer to James Patterson, and co-founder of a much-loved local literary group, Graff’s day-to-day is steeped in his work. It’s no wonder, then, that the Chicago Fine Arts Building piqued his interest. Filled with musicians, sculptors, opera singers, violin makers, and artists of every kind, the Chicago Fine Arts Building is brimming with creativity. Graff’s upcoming book, Chicago’s Fine Arts Building: Music, Magic, and Murder, tells the singular story of a building that has become renowned in Chicago and beyond for its rich legends and history, as well as its unwavering dedication to the arts.
Chicago’s Fine Arts Building: Music, Magic, and Murder, featuring 200+ images, will be available in spring 2025.
How long have you been a tenant of the Chicago Fine Arts Building?
I’m an artist tenant. I have a studio, but that's just the nomenclature here. It's really an office. I’ve been working here coming up on three years.
What’s it like having a studio there, doing all your work there, writing your books there? Does the place have a certain energy to it?
Oh, yeah, for sure. This building has very unique energy and sound and smell. There’s music in the halls at all hours, and there’s always fascinating things happening at the least expected time. In some ways I feel like it could be distracting for somebody who's not great at focusing, but I find it helps me open up and let a little more of the world in while I'm working. It’s replaced some of the community that I lost when I left Booklist. I left as the executive editor in 2019 to finally go out on my own and write full-time, which is what I always dreamed of doing. At first, I just worked from home, and then the pandemic forced everybody to work from home. During the pandemic, I so missed colleagues, and being here in the Fine Arts Building, it's like I have colleagues. Of course, we don't all work together on the same projects, but you get to know people, you get to learn about what they're doing, and you've got random encounters in the halls.
Writing this book gave me an opportunity to meet more people and learn more about what they're doing and connected me to the building even more. It was the best excuse to get the behind the scenes tour. I got to go on the roof and see a lot of stuff that visitors to the building don't normally see.
What initially drew you to this building versus another co working space in the area?
I first became interested in the Fine Arts Building because my friend Javier Ramirez co-owns The Exile in Bookville bookstore with his wife, Kristin, on the second floor here. We've been friends for a long time, and he's worked at many different bookstores, and I would follow him from store to store and spend a lot of time at whatever store he was currently working at. And when they took the space on the second floor, he kept nudging me to get a studio here. And at first I thought, “I can work from home. Why do I need to do that?” But he won me over.
To do my due diligence, I did look at some other spaces to compare not only the rents, but the working environment. There were other places that were fine. I found some vintage buildings not far from here that would have been nice quiet places to work out of. But I’d be working next to dentists and doctors. There was no vibe. There was no communal energy from being around other people who are doing the same thing.
And not only that, the space is just magnificent. I have this large bay window that looks out over the Venetian court. My ceilings are about 14 feet tall. The windows are ginormous — it’s flooded with light. I can hear world-class pianists and opera singers because the sound carries around. And that's magic. You can't get that anywhere else.
So the building itself encourages that creativity?
Yeah, I think that's true. And then there's something too about being connected in some way to this lineage of great artists. I don't count myself as a great artist, however, there have been a lot of great artists working in this building. It’s fun to come across a plaque in the hall and see that the guy who illustrated the Wizard of Oz…this was his office. Chicago’s most famous sculptor, Lorado Taft, worked on the 10th floor. Those days seem kind of lofty and inaccessible in some ways, but at the same time, it's a pleasure to be connected with that.
What is some hidden lore surrounding the building that most locals probably don’t know about?
There are so many stories about this building, and a lot of the tenants will tell you stories that are impossible to fact check and may not be true. Like the rest of Chicago, everybody says, "Capone was here. Capone was there. This was Capone's office. Capone had a speakeasy/brothel in this part of the building.” I haven't been able to verify any Capone connection to the building, even though many people will cheerfully tell you about that.
In the book, one of the chapters is about this gruesome murder of a drama teacher on the 10th floor. And that's a story… some tenants do not want to talk about that stuff at all. I think most people feel that it’s ancient enough history that it becomes a story at some point. There's been a lot of shady, violent stuff that's happened here over the years that becomes this weird, melancholy chord underlying all the happiness that bubbles on top.
Does it feel a little haunted because of that? Do you feel that you’re living amongst all these memories?
You know, it's a cliche to say something feels like living history, but I do think that of all the places I've been in my life, that phrase most applies to the Fine Arts Building. You really do feel like you're in a place where stuff happened. And certainly researching the book, I was just blown away at the clubs and organizations and things that were founded here that continue today. Poetry Magazine…The Little Review, which no longer exists, but was a super influential publication that went on to publish James Joyce's Ulysses, and then the government sued the publisher for obscenity. Organizations like the Chicago Arts Club were founded here 100 years ago and still carry on today. There’s this continued sense of all the people that have passed through the halls here, and all the work they did. Their living legacies still endure.
In my research, I would find out funny little things. Like, David Letterman held auditions for Stupid Pet Tricks here. Or Stewart Copeland of The Police had a studio here for a while. It’s so overwhelming, it's really impossible to catalog. One of the hardest things in writing the book was figuring out what to leave out.
Why is a building like this so necessary in a time of rampant change in the US? We’re dealing with total technological and political upheaval at the moment. Do you find that spaces like this ground us?
I agree completely. The arts are always endangered, but they're certainly under attack with this current administration. But also, societal changes and trends like staring at your phone and living this virtual existence…there have been all these studies that talk about the damaging effects of technology on mental health. I think places like this are an antidote to that. You’re more present, you’re doing things with your hands or are around people who are making art with their bodies or with their hands or with their minds, or just doing things the way that they've been done for a long, long time. I think there's something necessary about that. I’ve been in the violin workshops here and to watch somebody carving the body of a cello using a tool that is not substantially different from what they would have used hundreds of years ago…I think that’s an important reminder that our current fever dream of, you know, digital life, isn’t the way it always was, and doesn't have to be the way it always will be.
Do you have a favorite personal memory surrounding this building and your time in it?
Javier and Kristin at the bookstore are not only amazing booksellers and lovely people, but they're very congenial hosts. In the early days when the store was getting going, I would help out down there, and even worked the register for them a few days when they were shorthanded. We had some great parties afterwards. It was just so great that there were writers and book lovers and people just gathered around, staying late, having a few drinks, sharing community, you know, spilling out the door a little bit.
Just being in this fantastic place, it felt very magical. It just felt special. And it felt to me like the beginning of the community that I was searching for.
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