Tom Bleck Founder

Happy Father’s Day! Shout Out to our Dad, Tom Bleck!

Happy Father’s Day to all the great Dad’s out there! Special shout out to our own Dad, Tom Bleck!

Tom was the Founder of our firm and he has been a wonderful influence on us and our practice.  Safe to say, we wouldn’t be the people we are without our special Dad. Although Tom has been retired from the firm for 25-years, we are fortunate that he lives right in the area and he regularly stops into the office.

Tom Bleck – Starting Out

Our father grew up in Waukegan and attended Waukegan High School, where he met the love of his life, Virginia Pavlik. They both went to University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), married soon thereafter, and Tom served with the US Army Corps of Engineers in France after World War II. While in France, his first child was born and Tom did not meet Tommy in person until he was a one-year-old. Tom loved France and its people! Recently, he returned to the city of Orleans while on a trip to Europe with his daughter Cathie and her husband George.

Tom worked for a few years for the well-respected design firm Ganster and Henninghousen in Waukegan. In 1956, he founded his own firm and built a one-story brick office building on Glen Rock Avenue, just north of Belvidere Road.

Henry Bleck, Tom’s father, served as the City Engineer of Waukegan for many years. After his retirement, he established his own civil engineering practice and shared an office with Tom. Tom’s brother Jack joined Henry in the practice and the engineering firm later moved to Lake Forest, where it is led by the family’s third generation of civil engineers, Pat, Mike, and Jack Jr.

In the early ’60s, Tom’s brother Dan joined the firm after graduating from UIUC in architecture. The brothers practiced architecture together for many years before Dan established his own successful practice on Milwaukee Avenue in Libertyville.

Adversity Brings Opportunity

Quite often, Tom likes to talk about how tough times sometimes bring great opportunity. The firm had work with Ocean Spray in North Chicago and they parlayed that into work at Ocean Spray’s bottling plant in New Jersey. In 1964, the County of Lake instituted a sewer connection ban in Lake County. This ban effectively prevented all building development in the county. Tom felt very grateful for the Ocean Spray work, which helped the firm to survive the period where no work was happening in our area. On grocery shopping trips, Virginia always purchased Ocean Spray products as her way of thanking and supporting the company.

The work with Ocean Spray grew with time and eventually led to projects in Texas, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and additional work in New Jersey. Since that time, our firm has always pursued work in a wider geographic range than most people realize. For instance, currently, we are working on projects in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Iowa, Indiana, Wisconsin, Ohio, and of course Illinois.

Under Tom’s leadership, the firm completed a variety of projects, including commercial, financial, office, industrial, restaurant, multi-family residential, institutional, and municipal projects.

Key projects also included those at Six Flags’ Great America amusement park. Tom started working with Marriott’s Great America in 1978, with the design of a t-shirt shop. That project led to Captain Morgan’s Restaurant and many others before working on the American Eagle rollercoaster, designed by Intamin. Since then, the firm has completed over 325 projects for the park, now owned by Six Flags. We enjoy the exciting amusement and hospitality industry and we work with a number of amusement parks throughout the US. Chuck and Bob attend the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA) trade show every year.

Family and the Future

Throughout the years, the Bleck kids (all nine!) worked in some capacity at the office. They spent a fair amount of time there, cleaning the office, doing their homework, or waiting for Tom to head home. Tom and Virginia were proud that all nine children attended UIUC and graduated from their alma mater. Both Bob and Chuck had an interest in architecture and worked part-time at the office throughout their time as students at Waukegan East High School and UIUC.

After working at architecture firms in Texas for five years, Bob joined his dad in practice in 1986. Bob attended UIUC (BS in Architecture) and Rice University (M Architecture) in Houston. When Chuck graduated from U of I (BS in Architecture) 1990, he also joined the practice. Tom retired from practice in 1994 to enjoy spending time with Virginia and visiting family and friends.

A neighboring company and client purchased Tom’s office building in 1999 and the brothers moved the firm to new office space on Church Street in Libertyville. We currently serve clients out of offices in Chicago and Libertyville.

Tom and Virginia were married for over 60 years and raised nine kids together: Tom, Jim, Cathie, Marilynn, Bob, Susie, Linda, John, and Chuck. Tom is also Grandpa to 26 grandchildren and Great-Grandpa to 8 greatgrandchildren. Tom enjoys daily hikes, meeting new friends, and visiting with his very large extended family. He is an avid and talented watercolor artist and he teaches a weekly watercolor art class in his community. We love that he regularly stops in the Libertyville office for coffee and a visit!

From all of us at Bleck & Bleck Architects, we wish you a Happy Father’s Day!