The lower level of the DePaul Center, at 1 E. Jackson Blvd., is a wide, open concourse that most days serves as a pass-through for students heading between classes, the bookstore, and the Loop's Jackson Boulevard corridor. On September 17, from 1 to 4 p.m., it becomes something else: a drop-in art studio where students paint and decorate vinyl records, meet one another, and eat free Kona Ice.
The event is called Spin Art Social (Loop), and it is the kind of low-stakes, hands-on gathering that has become a fixture of DePaul's downtown campus programming. There is no ticket, no formal instruction, and no expectation that anyone arrive with a group. The premise is simple: a record spins, paint goes on, and what comes out is a one-of-a-kind object. The listing promises painting and decorating records alongside free shaved ice, and an RSVP link through DePaul's student engagement platform.
The event belongs to a recognizable family of DePaul programming. The DePaul Activities Board, known on campus as DAB, describes itself as "for students, by students," and its stated purpose is to promote community across the student population by planning and organizing diverse events, to create a positive out-of-classroom experience, and to increase active participation on campus. DAB runs a range of traditions, including the late-night series DePaul After Dark and the spring music festival DAB Fest. The Office of Student Involvement, which operates the Loop Life Office in DePaul Center room 125, runs its own craft-oriented series called Crafternoons, where students stop by for conversation and making. Spin Art Social sits comfortably in that lineage: a craft table, a soundtrack, and an open door.
A near-identical event earlier in 2026 shows how the format gets dressed up. A "Loop Spin Art Social with Kona Ice" was scheduled for April 8, 2026, in the same concourse, from noon to 4 p.m. Its description leaned hard into a 1970s theme: "Step back into the vibrant vibes of the 70's with our Spin Art Social! Groove to the sounds of classic vinyl as you unleash your creativity with colorful t-shirt and vinyl record spin art painting. Craft your own dreamy flower crown to top off your retro look, all while surrounded by creativity, groovy music, and a laid-back, love-filled atmosphere." That version added t-shirts and flower crowns to the record painting. The September edition, as listed, keeps the records and the Kona Ice and leaves the rest open.
The choice of vinyl as a canvas is a small joke that the venue makes almost on its own. The DePaul Center is not a purpose-built university hall. It is a converted department store, and one with a long commercial memory. The building began life in 1912 as the A. M. Rothschild & Company Store, designed by the prominent Chicago School firm Holabird & Roche. It was the firm's first and only full-block department store design, and it carried the hallmarks of its era: a skeletal steel frame and large windows typical of Chicago School construction, wrapped in extensive terra cotta ornamentation in the then-popular Beaux-Arts style. The store was built for Rothschild & Company, a department store founded in the late 1800s by Abram M. Rothschild. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 27, 1989.
Rothschild's did not last as a retailer. The company was acquired by Marshall Field's in 1923 and renamed the Davis Store the following year. In 1936, the Goldblatt department store chain purchased the building for use as its flagship downtown store, and for decades Chicagoans knew the address as Goldblatt's. The conversion of the Goldblatt's store into the DePaul Center essentially involved erecting a new building within the old shell. DePaul acquired the property in 1991, and the fully renovated, 11-story DePaul Center opened in 1993 with modern classrooms, student services, and a business library.
Today the building's first floor and lower level hold a full-service Barnes & Noble bookstore that serves as DePaul's Loop campus academic bookstore, along with shops, eateries, and offices not affiliated with the university. The DePaul Student Center occupies the 11th floor, where DePaul Market, the main Loop cafeteria, sits alongside the Student Union, the Activities Board, and University Ministry. The concourse itself, according to the university's event management office, is a large open space that can seat up to 125 people at dining roundtables, available from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, with the weekday end time set by DePaul's evening class accommodations. It is, in other words, a room designed to be walked through, which is exactly what makes it work as a place to stop.
The free Kona Ice is its own bit of backstory. Kona Ice is a privately held mobile shaved ice company founded by Tony Lamb in 2007, headquartered in Florence, Kentucky, with Lamb serving as CEO. Lamb started the company after deciding he wanted to build a better ice cream truck; by the end of that first year he had designed and produced five prototypes, and the company began franchising in 2008. It was later named one of the fastest-growing franchises in the United States, and its mascot is an animated penguin named Kona. In October 2012 the company launched the Kona Mini, a smaller replica of its truck built to sell shaved ice indoors during the winter months. A shaved ice brand that engineered a smaller machine specifically so it could serve customers inside buildings is a fitting partner for an indoor concourse event in September.
What the September 17 gathering ultimately offers is modest and specific: a few hours in a historic downtown building, a spinning record, some paint, a cup of shaved ice, and the chance to meet someone new. It is the sort of event that does not announce itself as important. But it puts students in a room that has been a gathering place for Chicago shoppers and, later, for DePaul students for more than a century, and it asks them to make something with their hands. The records they decorate will be the only ones in the building that were never meant to be played.