Part 1: The threat to neighborhoods

Their charge: To inventory all the architectural jewels, some well known, most unheralded, strung along 3,676 miles of streets, then color-code them according to their aesthetic and historical value.

The survey took 12 years and cost more than $1.2 million. In that time, the experts turned up thousands upon thousands of sparkling gems.

There was, for example, the ornate movie house that enlivened life along 47th Street near the old Chicago Stockyards; the neo-classical office building that rose majestically above the squatting storefronts of the West Side; and the Art Deco bank that graced Rogers Park with exquisitely crafted stone details, including a stylized figure of a man holding a sun.

Each of the three buildings was historically and architecturally significant, the city declared when it published the results of the survey in 1996. In time, the city said, the structures could be designated official Chicago landmarks and be protected forever from demolition or defacement.

Now they are gone.

And so are hundreds of others, a nine-month Tribune investigation has found.

Mayor Richard M. Daley and his administration have failed to back up the survey with the necessary protections, and in essence have encouraged the rampant demolition of buildings they purportedly had sought to preserve.

Hundreds of buildings have been smashed to bits, carted off to dumps, buried in the ground, the shards of their decoration destroyed or sold to salvagers who peddled them to art museums, restaurants and affluent homeowners.

A simple spot-check of some of the more than 17,000 buildings listed as significant by the survey, conducted by Tribune reporters driving and walking through randomly selected Chicago neighborhoods, identified more than 200 structures that have been destroyed -- often, as further investigation showed, with the knowledge and approval of the city.

The demolished structures -- Beaux-Arts commercial buildings, Chateauesque rowhouses, Georgian mansions, Queen Anne taverns, Romanesque churches, Spanish Baroque theaters -- stretched from Rogers Park on the north to Roseland on the south, from the Gold Coast on the east to Austin on the west.

There were enough to fill a small town.

The demolitions have punched gaping holes in the city's poor neighborhoods while radically altering the character of more affluent ones.

They have cost taxpayers millions of dollars. They have been carried out by companies that stock mayoral and aldermanic campaign chests. And, in many cases, they have been done without permits, violating the law.

The total number of razings is assuredly much larger than those found by the Tribune reporters' random sampling -- hundreds, perhaps thousands, more. But the actual number is unknown because city officials say that they cannot put together a digital list of demolitions that would enable the Tribune to determine how many potential landmarks have been destroyed.

The record of the demolished buildings contrasts starkly with the national acclaim Daley has received for saving such high-profile gems as the clifflike wall of Michigan Avenue buildings across from Grant Park.

It also indicates that a Daley-sponsored amendment to the city's building code, trumpeted as a means to save historic buildings and expected to be approved by the City Council on Thursday, will have far less impact than city officials suggest.

The measure would delay the issuance of a demolition permit for 6,200 buildings but would not provide that protection for thousands of others on the city's survey. Even the buildings that supposedly are safeguarded are likely to remain at risk because of loopholes in the law and because some buildings are razed illegally -- without city permits.

"We have what is tantamount to stealth demolition," said David Bahlman, president of the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois, a statewide advocacy group. "You can protect 11 blocks on Michigan Avenue and everybody sees it and everybody knows about it. But you can go down to 79th Street and demolish a whole block of buildings and nobody knows about it."