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(photo by Lee Bey)
There is rapid change in and around the Ida B. Wells housing project at Pershing and King Drive. This amateur video, shot from a moving car and accompanied by running commentary, tells the story of what's to come. By the way, built in 1938, the Ida B. Wells Homes were supposed to be a model of public housing. Originally, prominent Art Deco-styled buildings with broad boulevards and fountains were planned.
The great planner Daniel Burnham proposed a high-domed, classically-designed civic center complex in his 1909 Plan for Chicago. Lesser known, however, is the Chicago Civic Center Plan, put forth by the Chicago Plan Commission in 1949. I unearthed this long-lost project as part of my ongoing research of unbuilt Chicago architecture.
The Chicago Civic Center would have combined Chicago's city, county, state and federal agencies, plus 100 courtrooms into seven slab-like buildings on a campus bounded by Madison, Wells, Van Buren and the Chicago River. A shopping center, underground parking for 3000 cars and subterranean streets were planned. One tower was proposed west of the river; the Plan Commission said the complex would run as far west as Halsted.
Architecturally, Chicago Civic Center dispensed with Burnham's "city beautiful" classicism in favor of the towers-in-a-park vernacular of Le Corbusier. Each form of government would have been financially responsible for construction its own building----which alone would have been enough to kill the proposal, had it gotten that far. Aldermen beefed about the site, which was then home to the city's wholesale district. The Chicago Wholesalers District Council mounted a campaign against the plan and by 1952, the Civic Center was basically forgotten.
An alternative plan developed in 1954 to build a civic center on 151 acres along the north bank of the Chicago River and Hubbard Street. Also dead and buried. But the concept never went away, it just scattered over time. Mayor Richard J. Daley built the modernist Daley Center (originally called Chicago Civic Center) for city and county offices in 1965 at Washington and Dearborn. Chicago Federal Center, with its government office buildings, skyscraper courthouse and pavilion-like post office, was built a few blocks south of the Daley Center. The state contributed the James R. Thompson State of Illinois Center in 1985.
(photo by Lee Bey)
The story of architectural modernism is often told in simple strokes: Mies van der Rohe, SOM, Mies and more Mies. But the city offered so much more---good stuff, too---even by lesser-known modernists.
The 21-story 320 W. Oakdale by architect Milton Schwartz is a sterling example. Built for $2 million, this residential tower was a bit of a revelation when it was completed in 1954. Its overhanging, exposed concrete floor slabs and horizontal bands of floor-to-ceiling window differed from the dark, steel-and-glass-tower model established by Mies' 860-880 Lake Shore Drive. Visually, the building appeared weightless at night as darkness reduced the tower's profile to streams of light shining out from its 57 units.
The tower took on a bit of infamy in 1960 when it was reportered mob underboss Frank "Strongy" Ferraro lived there. The overhangs were "concrete eyebrows [that] protected him from undue exposure," the Chicago Tribune quipped. Schwartz himself had a nice run in the 1950s and 1960s, designing what is now Hotel 71 at 71 E. Wacker in 1957; a modernist home in the city's Chatham neighborhood for Dr. Earl Renfroe, an African American orthodontist; and buildings in Philadelphia and Las Vegas. Schwartz also oversaw the interior restoration of a Louis Sullivan-designed residence at 2147 N. Cleveland in 1960.
^ Reservoirs Dogs: The Blue Collar Version
^ Waiting for the dust to settle. And the traffic to clear. At 61st and Halsted
^ An ode to the last Sonny Clark's Cool Struttin' album cover.
^An Urban Observer?
(photos by Lee Bey)
The cool curtain of autumn threatens to bring summer to a close--and with it, a time for reflection: Small regrets for the warm summer nights that ended too soon; the bright Saturdays spent idle; the sunkissed weekday afternoons that are lost like loose change at the end of the day. ...
Truth is, summer, like life itiself, is a gift--a wonderful inheritance given to imperfect people. We drink it so eagerly. And droplets of time fall from our lips.
(photos by Lee Bey)
The Bronzeville community on the city's South Side is one of the nation's cultural treasures.
The area, roughly bounded by the Lake, 55th Street, 23rd Street and the Dan Ryan Expressway, is experiencing a reawakening as its architecture, culture and history are being rediscovered. Read more here and here. And here. The building above is the former Mammoth Life Insurance company, once a major black-owned insurer at 46th and King Drive. Now lets take a brief walk around.
Above: Shuttered store at 43rd and Michigan heralds the neighborhood.
Above: A six-flat on east 46th Street with an ornate, Sullivanesque entrance
Above: A bit of modernism--in the form of a dry cleaners--along King Drive.
Above: Sunday morning @ 35th and King Drive
Above: An 1870s cottage I photographed about two years ago. I wonder if its demolished or refurbished now?
Above is the Rem Koolhaas-designed IIT student center located across State Street. This side of State Street was nothing but surface parking for decades. Koolhaas took advantage of advances in sound-dampening materials build a student center with this tube that deadens the sound of the passing train.
(photo by Lee Bey)
High-end auto dealership on North Clark Street.
(photos by Lee Bey)
I've been getting around town on trains since that maniac ran a redlight and wrecked my car in July. I'll get a replacement car soon, but for now I am enjoying the sights and sounds of public transit. It's quite a resource. A well-run, properly-funded mass transit system is one of the best tools to maintaining a well-planned and sustainable city and region. Now only if our lawmakers in charge of funding the system understood that.
(photos by Lee Bey)
Ok, well it isn't just me, but a team of us who were selected by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and American Express as part of this year's Partners in Preservation campaign. The effort, announced yesterday in Chicago, allows you to vote to help us figure out which 25 key historic places in the city and collar counties will get part of a $1 million pot of preservation money, set aside by AmEx. Will it be Quinn Chapel AME Church? Or one of the domes at the Cultural Center? A fish hatchery in Sugar Grove? Louis Sullivan's last remaining church? Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House? The South Side Community Arts Center? Or the Fountain of Time sculpture by Lorado Taft, pictured above, or the whimsical animal sculptures of the old Jane Addams public housing project (pictured below) Click on the link above for more info. Also check out Blair Kamin's piece here and sidebar here.
(photos by Lee Bey)
I am looking through a collection of portraits and "people shots" I've taken during the past four years or so. A pattern emerges. A fair amount of them are Chicago architects. Nothing formal, just images grabbed here and there.
The architect above is Mark Sexton of Krueck + Sexton Architects. The firm handled the stellar restoration of IIT's Crown Hall and was giving a tour of the building durings its re-openining in August 2005 when I took this photo.
This is Dirk Lohan in his office at Lohan Anderson Architects, May 2006. I was interviewing him for a book I'm writing and we got on a discussion about Mies van der Rohe---Dirk's grandfather, of course---and the IBM Building. Dirk begins to sketch how Mies sited the building over the tricky riverfront site. I also note that he is a fellow lefty and over the years I've found a lot of architects are. More than the average population, I wonder?
This is architect Dina Griffin, principal of Interactive Design. Her firm is the local architect of the Renzo Piano-designed Modern Wing, now under construction at the Art Institute of Chicago.
This is Ralph Johnson of Perkins & Will with Helmut Jahn of Murphy/Jahn Architects in the background. I took this in July of 2004 during a planning session for the book Visionary Architecture, published by the Chicago Central Area Committee. I was director of governmental affairs at SOM then, was asked to write an essay for the book. Three years later, I am now executive director of Central Area Committee.
Richard Tomlinson, a managing partner at Skidmore Owings & Merrill. I took this in December 2004 in Detroit as we were walking across some kind of skybridge at 1001 Woodward. We were in town checking out the last bit of work being done as part of SOM's renovation of Renaissance Center.
Above is Adrian Smith seated in a Barcelona chair in the lobby of this new firm, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture during a visit I took there earlier this summer.
And here is Santiago Calatrava, designer of the proposed Chicago Spire, photographed by me last year at Perkins & Will.
And this young woman--okay, is not an architect. I was just making sure some of you were still paying attention.
Seriously, I have to keep looking through the collection. Back in 2003 when I was working for the mayor's office, I took Calatrava on a tour of the lakefront in hopes of getting him to design pedestrian bridges here. I photographed him a few sites, including the North Avenue Bridge and on parts of the South Lakefront. But I took them on film and never got the pix developed! I know the undeveloped film is around here somewhere...
(photo by Lee Bey)
The old Chicago Sun-Times Building was too short to compete with its taller neighbors. And Trump Tower--the structure on the right that is replacing the Sun-Times, will be tall enough to overpower them. So for now and the next few months, we have parity at State and Wacker. Enjoy.
Above: The Marquette Building. I want to put on a fedora and a double-breasted 1940s suit and stride through these bronze revolving doors and flash my detective's badge.
Above: The Inland Steel Building. The more I think about it: It's the best-looking SOM building in Chicago.
Above: Heaven on wheels? At Michigan and Adams outside the Art Institute.
Above: Two faces of Daley Center Plaza
