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Through much of the 20th century, when de facto segregation excluded poor minorities from numerous upscale Chicago hospitals, thousands of America's top physicians offered world-class care to millions of the city's newcomers -- Eastern Europeans, African-Americans, Latinos, anyone in need. Cook County Hospital, the Beaux Arts gem on West Harrison Street, delivered their babies by the tens of thousands -- the future Mayor Harold Washington included.

Cook County Board members mothballed the nearly century-old structure after completion in late 2002 of its replacement, Stroger Hospital. Now the County Board can give this aging but solid landmark to Chicago's poor -- it's been called our Ellis Island -- new life as rehabbed and badly needed office space for the county's health system.

We hope today's board members appreciate the rich history they can preserve, and the sensible economics they can embrace. The opportunity to achieve both goals has just landed in their laps.

A county-ordered study by real estate analysts Jones Lang LaSalle recommends modernizing the old hospital to replace the county health system's current headquarters, a dilapidated former nursing dormitory that's begging to be demolished. The county's conversion of the old hospital to administrative space would offer "the highest and best market use and lowest overall cost," says the study, which also evaluated conversions to a hotel, rental housing, condos, senior housing and other possible improvements for the Near West Side's medical district.

Jones Lang LaSalle pegs the cost of a rehab for offices at $107 million. That's serious money, but probably cheaper than constructing new space. Seven years ago, county property managers estimated the cost of just demolishing the old hospital at $20 million to $30 million, owing in large part to the need for extensive asbestos abatement.

We've been applauding for years as Commissioner Larry Suffredin and Michael Quigley, a former commissioner now in the U.S. House, fought alongside architectural preservationists and urban historians to stave off the wrecking ball. Other board members eventually joined them in votes to aggressively explore how best to reuse the building.

The late County Board President John Stroger blew hot and cold on saving the hospital. Eventually, though, he grew intrigued about preserving a monument that had been so crucial to generations of black Chicagoans.

In 2007, his successor and son, Todd, proposed rehabbing the old hospital as medical office space. We said at the time and believe today that the right execution to preserve such a stately and storied structure would respect Chicago's history, taxpayers' dollars -- and common sense.

The concept now on the table evokes one Chicago opportunity seized, and one lost. Persistent lobbying by the late Eleanor Daley, the wife and mother of mayors, was key to saving the old Chicago Public Library building, now the Cultural Center. If only someone had similarly championed the Chicago Stock Exchange before it was demolished. Losing the old Cook County Hospital would be a similar mistake.

We watched some County Board members react skeptically to this plan when Jones Lang LaSalle presented it at a Nov. 17 committee meeting. If only board members always would react skeptically to county plans for spending taxpayer dollars.

But we hope the board members come to see the wisdom they can exercise here. If this proposal to preserve Chicago's Ellis Island also preserves as much of that taxpayer money as we think it does -- and finally permits destruction of the unsalvageable nursing dorm -- it would be a big triumph for a city that has let too many of its landmark buildings turn to dust.