Some consider it the most beautiful residential design of the 20th Century.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House in Plano, Ill., which is about 60 mi. southwest of Chicago, features floor-to-ceiling glass walls offering views of the Fox River. Framed in white steel and elevated, the house seemingly floats above a lush riverside landscape.

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The house, which was completed in 1951 for Chicago physician Edith Farnsworth as a weekend retreat, has been described as "elegant," "sublime" and a "masterpiece" of the spare International Style that Mies' championed.

And it could have been taken out of the state, said David Bahlman, president of the Chicago-based Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois.

The previous owner, Lord Peter Palumbo of Britain, who had purchased it from Farnsworth, decided to sell the house partly because he had health problems. The possibility arose that the house could have been closed to public tours or moved after acquired by a prospective new owner. Some potential bidders had indicated that they would move from the site for which it was designed.

The LPCI swung into action when it was announced in fall 2003 that the house would be sold at auction.

The group joined forces with the Washington, D.C.-based National Trust for Historic Places and Friends of the Farnsworth House to cobble together a plan to keep the house in Illinois.

John Bryan, former chief of Chicago-based Sara Lee Corp. and widely respected culture patron, lent his name to the effort. Fundraising and public relations campaigns were mounted.

The threat was real. The house, which Palumbo allowed people to visit, suddenly was open only to prospective buyers.

In December 2003, the auction was held at Sotheby's in New York, and the LPCI-led joint-venture outbid several other parties with an offer of $7.5 million. The house was saved, kept on its original site in an unaltered condition and open to the public. It is now operated as a house museum.

In September, the LPCI received the Trustees' Award for Organizational Excellence from the National Trust, which cited the plan of the Farnsworth House for the honor.

"We wanted to celebrate [the Farnsworth purchase] because we believe strongly in partnerships," Richard Moe, president of the National Trust, said in an interview.

Richard Nickel's Vision

Even though the push to save the Farnsworth was successful, the LPCI traces its roots to a failure.

The group formed in 1971 over the fight to save Dankmar Adler's and Louis Sullivan's Chicago Stock Exchange (1894) on LaSalle Street. Early volunteers took their inspiration from ardent preservationist Richard Nickel, who had photographed the destruction of renowned Chicago buildings and plucked building pieces from condemned buildings and demolition sites for years.

The effort to save the stock exchange fell short, and the building was demolished, other than the entry arch - now on Columbus Drive where it serves as a preservationists' wailing wall - and the trading room - now in the Art Institute of Chicago.

Tragically, Nickel lost his life while trying to save other pieces of the stock exchange and was entombed for a time in the building's carcass. His life is commemorated in a book, "They All Fall Down: Richard Nickel's Struggle to Save America's Architecture" (Wiley).

In his death came life for the LPCI. The organization grew under the leadership of attorney Richard Miller. Funding trickled in, and by the mid-1980s, it had a paid staff.

Bahlman, 60, an architectural historian, was named chief in 1999 after two previous executives had served the organization for less than a year each.

Before coming to Chicago, Bahlman was the executive director of San Francisco Heritage, a preservation group, and previously served as director of the Society of Architectural Historians in Philadelphia.

Today, the LPCI has an annual budget of about $1 million. Funds are raised from its annual real estate and building industry awards dinner in the fall and preservation ball in the spring. The rest comes from patrons, grants and investment income.

The organization currently has nine employees, seven of whom work full-time.

"I think the LPCI is better than ever," said Alice Sinkevitch, executive director of Chicago Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. "They're getting the message out about preservation."

Savvy Preservationists

The organizational know-how and public relations savvy the LPCI showed in saving the Farnsworth are the group's everyday traits.

The organization employs a battery of initiatives to ensure preservation is kept in the forefront of the public.

Like a lot of preservation organizations, the LPCI publicizes endangered buildings, but it has two lists, which were started in 1995. One focuses on structures in the Chicago area and the other on Illinois buildings.

A careful process is used to ensure the most deserving structures make the lists.

Nominations are solicited, and every year about 40 are received for each list. A jury of five to seven people looks at the recommendations for listing.

Three key resources are used to keep tabs on important buildings, including listings in the National Register of Historic Places, Chicago Landmarks and the Chicago Historic Resources Survey.

The latter is a listing and ranking by importance of 18,000 buildings in Chicago. There are seven rankings, with the color red given to the most significant buildings, blue to the least significant and gradations in between.

"The orange-rated buildings are the ones most in the press," Bahlman said. "These are properties possessing significance to the community, and there are about 9,600 of them."

Other things are looked at, including whether a local preservation group is fighting to save the building or whether a demolition permit has been issued.

Buildings on the 2005-06 Chicagoland Watch List include the National Register-listed Main Post Office (1934), which remains empty since a new postal facility was built in 1998; the Chicago Landmark-listed Chicago Union Station (1925), which is being considered for redevelopment; and four vacant or underused, late-19th Century churches in Joliet.

Structures on the statewide list include the alteration-threatened Lincoln Hall at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1929); the vacant Old Lincoln School (1894) in Rock Island; and the venerable Cook County Hospital (1916), given a "special 11th designation." That building, which has been vacant since John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook Country opened in 2002, has appeared on three previous "10 Most" lists to keep it at the forefront of the public.

"The lists are probably the biggest thing they do for the greater good of the public, to keep it in the public eye," said Harry Soenksen, principal of Chicago-based Booth Hansen, an architecture firm.

As a result of the most endangered lists, the LPCI calculates that about 85 percent of the buildings that it has listed have been spared, Bahlman said. Still, he rues the loss of buildings like the old Chicago Mercantile Exchange (1927), which was demolished in 2003.

A third list of sorts is the group's preservation awards, which were started in 1991. Here, the LPCI benefits from a patron.

The award program is formally named the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Preservation Awards after the eponymous benefactor who provides a "large" amount of financial support.

Driehaus is a self-made money manager from the city's South Side who owns Chicago-based Driehaus Capital Management Inc. and loves architecture.

He restored the Ransom R. Cable House (1886) on Erie Street in the River North District to house his business. Kitty corner from it is the Samuel M. Nickerson House (1883) that he recently acquired, and he is redoing the American College of Surgeons Building (1926), also on Erie.

Despite having a patron, the LPCI could always use more money to carry out its work, said Ellen Shubart, manager of the Chicago-based Campaign for Sensible Growth, a nonprofit.

"It would be helpful if the LPCI could get some additional funding to do more inventorying of properties," she said.

Other LPCI Programs

Publicizing endangered structures and celebrating successes only goes so far, and the Chicago-based Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois has other programs: