Wilbert R. Hasbrouck, "a pioneering Chicago preservation architect who breathed new life into buildings designed by some of the city's renowned architects and co-owned a beloved architectural bookstore," Prairie Avenue Bookshop, died February 10, the Chicago Tribune reported. He was 86.
With his wife of nearly 60 years, Marilyn Whittlesey Hasbrouck, he co-edited and co-published the architectural magazine Prairie School Review, and to help support it, Marilyn Hasbrouck opened what became the Prairie Avenue Bookshop, which the Financial Times once called "the best architectural bookshop in the world."
Hasbrouck distinguished himself "with high-quality restoration work on a lot of Chicago's important 19th-century buildings," said Pauline Saliga, executive director of the Society of Architectural Historians. "But he also was kind of an intellectual backbone of Chicago because of his passion for the Prairie Avenue bookshop."
Originally a catalogue operation, the bookshop opened as a store on Chicago's Prairie Avenue in 1974. By 1995, "it was housed in impressive quarters at 418 S. Wabash Ave., where it held 50,000 books and gold letters on its forest-green walls spelled out the names of more than 300 architects," the Tribune wrote. The bookshop closed in 2009.