Lee Bey: The Urban Observer

(photos by Lee Bey)
For nearly a year now, I've found it impossible to stay away from Michael Reese Hospital. But the reasons are architectural, rather than medical. The once top-flight institution has gone through hard times in recent decades, leaving a small collection of fairly nice modernist buildings sitting empty. 

The former waiting room above--look at the dust settling on those red chairs like old ghosts--is the shuttered Laz Chapman Pathology Institute. The institute once hosted research on kidney and lung diseases. It had the very latest in electron microscopes, animal testing labs--even an autopsy room--when it was built in 1965. Laz Chapman, for whom the building is named, was CEO of H. Kramer & Co., a brass-smelting company in the Pilsen neighborhood. His estate funded the $400,000 cost of construction. And that painting, there, above the down staircase: I wonder if that's Chapman himself looking out over the decay?

The empty circular Simon Wexler Psychiatric Research and Clinic Pavilion was designed by Chicago architects Ezra Gordon and Jack Levin. Built in 1962, this beautifully humane building was an outpatient facility with 35 interview rooms arranged around the circumference of the building. There is a skylight at the top and a research lab. Wexler was founder of Allied Radio Corp. His widow donated $150,000 of the building's $450,000 cost. The photo below (shot through a window) shows an interior staircase leading to the interview rooms. Peeling paint hangs from the ceiling and has collected on the floor.

 I'm not sure if the blood bank (below) is still in use. The lines and proportions of this low-slung, one story building are nonetheless worthy of attention.

Our visit today ends below...at the foot of the broken concrete steps of the former David T. Siegel Institute for Communicative Disorders. Built in 1970, the facility was designed to children who were blind, deaf or aphasic--or all of the above. The hospital's exterior way-finding sign, however, botches the building's name and mission, referring to the complex as the David T. Siegal Institute for Communicable Disorders.

Michael Reese represented a high-point in postwar medical campus planning and no wonder: Walter Gropius worked as a consultant to the hospital's planner Reginald R. Issacs. The hub of the campus at 29th and Ellis is a tightly-packed collection of buildings including a 1960s bedtower and a six-story main building from 1907. Things are less dense away from the center as low-rise, single- and two-story buildings dot park-like surroundings. I found one surprise during a recent visit: a monument marking the spot of the demolished Farragut Boat Club gym where the game of softball was invented.

These photos were just quick studies. What I'd really like to do is work with the hospital, walk the grounds and take the time needed to create a series of portraits for each of these buildings. And I'd love to get inside some of them. I'll let you know if I'm successful.