In Praise of Marina City
(photos by Lee Bey)
Soaring above the north bank of the Chicago River at State Street, the twin residential towers of Marina City form an image of Chicago that is as indelible as those provided by the Picasso sculpture at Daley Plaza or the bronze lions that stand guard outside the Art Institute.
A made-in-Chicago movie might not feature a shot of the Sears Tower or Wrigley Field, but you can bet money Marina City will make the cut. The spiral-ramped parking garages hold a special allure for filmmakers, as was the case with this quite cool Allstate commercial (and a chase scene from the 1980 filmed-in-Chicago movie that inspired it, The Hunter, starring Steve McQueen.)
Built between 1959 and 1967 an designed by Bertrand Goldberg, Marina City symbolized the New Chicago that emerged under Mayor Richard J. Daley. The complex was planned as self-contained city that would provide top-grade architecture and amenities you couldn't find in the comparatively vanilla suburbs. Marina City featured an office building, a movie theater, a television studio, an ice rink and other features. Architecturally, the corncob-like concrete towers and the saddle-shaped theater (now the House of Blues) sat in relief from the steely, black, glass-box highrises of the day.
(Above) Contrast of the titans: A Marina City tower faces off again with Mies' IBM Building
As forests of bland, painted concrete residential towers now grow in Marina City's River North neighborhood, Goldberg's creation seems a quaint throw-back to when it took something more meaningful than a granite counter top and a Jacuzzi tub to entice highrise dwellers. "Look at Marina City," Goldberg once said. "[H]ow would one have done that without other people around him, bankers and owners, feeling as if there could be a new world?"
