Lee Bey: The Urban Observer

Click on the above photo and check out a video clip of me rattling on a couple of years ago about Pride Cleaners at 79th and St. Lawrence.

I decided to revisit this clip today after reading the current edition of Focus, the publication of the Chicago Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. There is a pretty good cover story on the need to preserve buildings of the recent past, especially those of the mid-20th century. It's a worthy discussion. Chicago closed the 1990s and began this decade with an impressive flourish, granting protected landmark status to the Inland Steel Building (1956), IIT's Crown Hall (1956) and the Daley Center (1965)--but as of late, nothing. (It still amazes me that Marina City has not been landmarked, but this building has?) 

At any rate, its time to move mid-century buildings to the forefront. It can provide Chicago with another opportunity to lead other cities by good example, given how endangered moderism is around the U.S. (Google "modernism demolition" and the toll is surprising). The city's landmarks division should be given the resources to  finally complete its long-under wraps survey of buildings built after 1940. The survey could become a tool to drawing attention to these treasures and rallying the interest and financing needed to preserve them. The effort must include the powerful ensemble to modernist towers downtown, but it must laso make room to assess the worthiness of funky Googie motels, dry cleaners and neighborhoods such as Jeffrey Manor, Marynook, Pill Hill and others that were also shaped by modernism's faith in design, technology and the future.