Soaring above the north banks of the Chicago River
at State, the twin residential towers of Marina City
form an image of Chicago as indelible as that of the
Picasso sculpture or the bronze lions outside the Art
Institute. Built between 1959 and 1967, Marina City
symbolized the New Chicago that emerged in the
post-war decades under Mayor Richard J. Daley that
ushered in much of the city's iconic Modernist
architecture. The complex was originally a
self-contained city designed to provide top grade
architecture and amenities that you couldn't find in
the vanilla suburbs. Designed by architect Bertrand
Goldberg, Marina City was built with an office
building, a movie theater, a television studio, ice
rink, bank and other features. Architecturally, the
corncob-shaped towers and saddle-shaped theater
(now a House of Blues) were in contrast to the
steely, black glass-box high rises of the day. Today,
as forests of bland, painted concrete high rises grow
in River North, Goldberg's creation seems a quaint
throwback to when faith in science, engineering and
the future was commonplace. As Goldberg himself
once said: "Look at Marina City...[h]ow would one
have done that without other people around him,
bankers and owners, feeling as if there could be a
new world?"
photo by Lee Bey