Days before a fire ravaged Bronzeville’s historic Swift Mansion, tenants filed lawsuits alleging the owner illegally evicted them to convert the 131-year-old building into a shelter for migrants.
The owner planned to renovate the top two floors, but the fire broke out before the work could begin, tenants say.
Police are investigating it as arson but have not arrested or charged anyone.
The blaze started in a back stairwell, Chicago Fire Department officials said. But it’s unclear exactly how or why it started.
The blaze spread throughout the castlelike structure at 4500 S. Michigan Ave. late Sunday morning, destroying the roof and the belongings of its 10 tenants.
The fire flared up two more times, once that afternoon and again Monday morning, a fire department spokesman said.
“It’s sad to see it get burned,” said James Otis, president of the Inner City Youth and Adult Foundation, the nonprofit that helped house formerly incarcerated people at the mansion.
Otis said he was in the building as fire spread from the second-floor stairwell. He rushed to save memorabilia about his late mother, Christine Perkins, the building’s former owner. The fire destroyed photo albums with pictures of her with Harold Washington and Barack Obama, he said.
“I was trying to drag so much of her stuff, but I got overwhelmed,” Otis said. Firefighters “had to drag me out of there.”
Otis has been in charge of the nonprofit since his mother, the organization’s last president, died in 2019.
The building is owned by an entity managed by Otis’ half brother, Marcus Perkins, and Perkins’ wife, Tracy Hughes, according to county records.
Tenants displaced by the fire said they lost more than just a place to live.
“I didn’t just lose my house, I lost my job too,” said Jesus Suarez Rodriguez, who said his landscaping tools were destroyed in the fire.
Rodriguez is one of at least three former tenants who filed lawsuits in late November alleging the building’s owner illegally evicted them by turning off the water and locking doors.
Their lawsuits, filed in Cook County Circuit Court, allege they heard Marcus Perkins had talked about converting the building into a shelter for migrants, which would be more profitable than housing ex-convicts.
Marcus Perkins told the tenants about the plan to vacate the top two floors on Nov. 6, according to the lawsuits. The owners planned to knock down the building’s inner walls to create more space for housing migrants, according to the lawsuits.
With nowhere else to go, many of the tenants moved to the home’s basement. But they couldn’t stay for long.
A day after filing their lawsuits on Wednesday, Perkins allegedly locked tenants out of the building and shut off the water, the suits state. Tenants called 311, then 911. The owner said he’d resolve the problem, but he never did, the tenants allege.
Marcus Perkins did not reply to requests for comment. Otis declined to comment on the lawsuits.
Another tenant who filed suit, Wendell J. Smith, said he was away donating plasma when the fire broke out. When he returned, he said he “couldn’t believe it.”
Smith said he was released from prison in 2019 and had been staying at the home since August 2021.
The Red Cross gave Smith $300 for a hotel and food, he said, but he’s already spent it all. Smith, 28, said he makes money by playing bucket drums, and has no family who can house him.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said.
Neighbor Dwayne Branch lamented the loss of the mansion, which he had volunteered at years ago for Open House Chicago.
The Swift Mansion is “a national landmark, a Chicago landmark, a part of national history,” he said.
Built in 1892 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, the building originally was a gift from meatpacking executive Gustavus Swift to his daughter Helen for her wedding to Nelson Morris, the son of another executive in the industry.
It previously served as a headquarters for the Chicago Urban League and as a funeral home.
The estate of the late Christine Perkins transferred ownership of the mansion in late October to a legal entity managed by Marcus Perkins and Hughes, according to records in the Cook County Clerk’s office.
Building records show the Swift Mansion last failed an inspection in 2013 for missing mortar and other minor violations. Owners got a permit on Nov. 1 to patch and replace drywall, the records show.
Otis is collecting donations for the building’s displaced tenants.
