Several of these buildings lack the grandeur or design pedigree of typical preservationist causes. Take the “three-flat” apartment building where Panther co-founder Brooks lived — a modest red-brick structure that looks like thousands of others in Chicago. Yet this building still tells a story about Black wealth creation (if you were the landlord) and Black wealth extraction (if you were a tenant). So does its setting, a West Side neighborhood full of empty lots. “More people have been in three-flats than buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright,” says Elizabeth Blasius, a preservationist that was on the state council that recommended the Panthers’ nomination. “That’s where history happens.”