Rotary International's world headquarters on Sherman Avenue in downtown Evanston. Photo: Punzunltd at English Wikipedia / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.5
Most people who walk past 1560 Sherman Ave. in downtown Evanston see an office building. Inside is the secretariat of an organization that counts about 1.2 million members and more than 45,000 clubs worldwide, according to Rotary International. The whole enterprise started with four men and a Chicago law office.
From the Unity Building to the North Shore
On Feb. 23, 1905, attorney Paul P. Harris called a meeting of three business acquaintances in the Unity Building on Dearborn Street in Chicago. The meeting took place in the office of Gustave Loehr. From that first gathering grew a service organization with clubs around the world.
Rotary’s administrative home stayed in Chicago for years. From 1923 to 1928, its office was in the Atwell Building on East 20th Street, now East Cullerton Street. The headquarters later moved north to Evanston, where it is today. A Wikimedia Commons photograph labels the building Rotary International Headquarters, 1560 Sherman Ave.
Where it sits among Evanston employers
Rotary is not the biggest employer in town, and it does not try to be. A list of the city’s top employers drawn from State of Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity data as of 2015, put Northwestern University first at 9,471 employees. NorthShore University HealthSystem followed with 3,727, and Evanston-Skokie School District 65 had 1,600.
Rotary International came seventh, with 525 employees. That placed it just ahead of Evanston Township High School District 202 (520), Jewel-Osco (480) and C.E. Niehoff & Co. (450). Of the ten employers on the list, Rotary was the only international membership organization.
The 2015 list also shows how Rotary compares with other local institutions. Presbyterian Homes had 602 employees and the City of Evanston 918, so Rotary’s payroll was about the size of a mid-sized school district or retirement community. It is also one of the few large employers on the list whose work serves people far outside Illinois.
The ranking is a decade old, and headcounts move, so the 2015 numbers are best read as a snapshot of scale and not a current payroll figure.
A global group with a local address
Rotary’s charitable wing is The Rotary Foundation, and the organization’s General Secretary also leads it. Clubs elect their own leaders and run their own projects, so the Evanston office serves a network of volunteers who rarely visit. Rotary reports 1,165,554 Rotarians and 142,506 members of Interact, the youth program, while other totals run larger once other programs are counted. The figures do not fully agree, so they are approximate.
The group’s programs have broadened over time. Rotary Fellowships, interest-based groups for members, were launched in honor of Harris in 1947. For Evanston, the arrangement is a quiet one. A world headquarters does not dominate the skyline or the city budget. But it keeps an institution with 1905 Chicago roots, and, as of 2015, more than 500 jobs, in downtown Evanston.
Daniel Okafor covers business, startups and the Innovators section for The Evanston Edge.
