Chicago Textures

Moving again...

2011-01-01T19:56:00.000-06:00

...on the web, that is.

I got sick of trying to make Blogger show my photos right, so I got lazy and haven't been posting. But I really do have a lot of cool stuff to show you guys, and I can't keep it in any longer, so I'm moving to Tumblr. Here's my new blog address: http://oldcoolthings.tumblr.com . Hope to see you there! -Loosh

Vignette #4: Hobbit House

2010-04-29T07:00:00.000-05:00

While wandering around in Oak Park one morning, we discovered this. Not sure what to make of it. I would call it "Hobbit style" but I think it's officially some sort of English Cottage style. I can't help wondering how they roof it - and what do the rafters look like?

Bridge to the Past

2010-04-28T07:00:00.000-05:00

If there is a truly forgotten architectural mecca in Chicagoland, it is the town of Blue Island, just south of Chicago. It has neither had the redevelopment pressure to have teardowns, nor has it had the disinvestment that prompts neglect and arson. Rather, for the past 170 years, it has been stable but working class. That is the perfect environment for preservation.

Blue Island has much architectural grandeur, and you will see some of it here in the future, because I will definitely be exploring it more. But, just as interesting is its amazing array of ancient infrastructure. We were wandering around town one day and came across this old bridge. Obviously it's seen better days. Actually, it's kind of collapsed. But, if you look closely, you can see that the roadbed used to be wood planks. The supports are steel or iron, in patterns much like those you see on the oldest parts of the 'L'. So, I would date this bridge back to perhaps 1900, just as a guess.

Vignette #3: Funhouse

2010-04-27T07:00:00.007-05:00

Textures. An old brick hotel morphed and mutated by the materials of its modernist neighbor across the street. Awesomeness.

Raber House

2010-04-26T07:00:00.018-05:00

This Chicago Landmark is fairly well-known, but it's the first time I've seen it in person. Located at 58th & Lafayette in the Englewood neighborhood, it is a three story brick building. At first glance, and really at any glance, it's a fairly ordinary Chicago apartment building. There are a couple of reasons that it was made a city landmark, though. First of all, it predates the Chicago Fire, though not by much. Property records date its construction to 1869 or 1870. Also unique is that it was built as a country house, on a huge open lot, before Englewood even became a suburb, not to mention an urban neighborhood.

As you can see, though, it is in sorry condition. In 1895, it was divided into apartments and kept that arrangement until its abandonment and decay. The Englewood neighborhood was an extremely vibrant neighborhood up until the 1950s, but since then it has fallen about as hard as an urban neighborhood can fall. It has among the highest crime rates in the city and among its highest rates of foreclosure and abandonment. It has become something of an urban prairie, though not to the extent seen in neighborhoods of some rust belt cities, such as Detroit. The house has taken the brunt of the ravages of the neighborhood around it. Neglect and arson have taken a deep toll. However, it still stands, though mostly gutted. Ironically, though, when it was built 140 years ago, the house stood alone and stands mostly alone today.

An idea that has sprouted from that ironic state is to create an urban park that mostly mimics the old country estate in its form, about eight acres in size. This would require very little eminent domain and demolition. The idea is being actively recruited as part of a plan for a brighter future for the neighborhood surrounding it, though it will probably take many years to actually realize.

Prism Glass Sighting

2010-04-24T17:00:00.023-05:00

In honor of VersionFest 2010, or perhaps because I think that Bridgeport Coffeehouse is one of the best coffee houses in the city, I was walking down Morgan Street in Bridgeport this morning. Walking down that street, it is pretty obvious why artists have selected it as their next frontier. Lots of beautiful old building spared the destruction that is the usual wrath of time. The street is full of Czech gables and iron fronts. Even more rarely, though, is a sighting of intact prism glass in the city. For some reason, at least in economically stable parts of the city, it has become increasingly rare. Prism glass used to be quite popular in storefronts before the widespread introduction of electric lighting, and was used to throw light into the back reaches of a long, dark shop spaces. In the inner suburbs, such as Oak Park, you see it a bit more often.

Anyways, this is the fabulously forgotten building at 3143-3145 S. Morgan:

Vignette #2: Layers of Steel

2010-04-23T07:00:00.025-05:00

The Chicago 'L' has been described as the eighth wonder of the world. How many cities, after all, have flying trains?? In reality though, the 'L' is very much an earthbound system, and one with twelve decades of history. Over those many years, it has had things tied to it, riveted onto it, welded to it, strapped to it, and crashed into it. It has been many colors over the years. The whole thing was that putrid yellow color until they painted it maroon last year, actually. Such are the necessary truths, or perhaps necessary evils, in order for a Victorian-era train system to enter the twenty-first century. The many layers of its fabric sure make for interesting perspectives.

What's Worse Than a Facadectomy?

2010-04-21T07:00:00.001-05:00

A facadectomy used to cover up the seating area for a fast food restaurant.

I was in Memphis a couple months ago, and got to witness this complete preservation failure up close and personal. Memphis Heritage, the city's preservation organization, on the other hand, chalks this up as a success.

This Chick-Fil-A opened at 1978 Union Avenue in early 2009. A gothic church, Cumberland Presbyterian Church, built in 1951, had stood on the site before. While the church wasn't particularly special and wasn't particularly old, it is the preservation "compromise" that was worked out that raises eyebrows.

Rather than keep the church completely or demolish it completely, everything but the front facade was demolished and a small patio was added behind the retained facade, with tables for seating placed on it. Reproduction (or maybe refurbished) church lamps hang above the tables. The fakeness of the whole thing is reinforced by the "brick" that is painted onto the back of the coating that was put onto the back of the facade.

So, since I live in Chicago, I don't know the whole story on this one. But, I would tend not to blame Chick-Fil-A for this one. They are a modern corporation that doesn't particularly care about local character. Though they technically should, in our society it's assumed that they don't. However, the mission of Memphis Heritage is to defend that local character, and they seem to have failed. This church is old but not that special. Still, if they wanted to save it, they should have put out the manpower to really save it. Otherwise, the manpower should have been reserved for something that is more worthy of it. Going half-heartedly into a battle like this yields, very visibly, half-hearted results. And, if they keep going in this direction, Memphis will someday be a city of half-eaten carcasses of grand buildings that once were.

A note: I got an internship with an architecture firm in Buffalo, New York, which I am very excited about. So, for a while this summer, this blog will be Buffalo Textures. It will be fun to write about and explore one of America's grandest, and older, architectural cities.

Vignette #1: Dragons

2010-04-19T19:28:00.000-05:00

I was walking down the street today and who should I meet right there at eye level? These guys!

So, where does one go about finding kindly dragons in Chicago? Well, I assume they are kindly, since I'm still alive. That first one looks a bit mean, though.

Pretty awesome how the sculptor of the terra cotta gave them each their own unique looks and personalities. I stopped to take a picture and started petting one, and a woman and her kid noticed it, and she had a hard time getting him to stop petting it. So cute...

Guesses on which building? They're in plain sight, actually, flanking the southern entrance of the Fisher Building, on Van Buren just east of Dearborn.

The Ramova Theatre

2010-04-15T20:32:00.000-05:00

One of my current projects is to help evaluate the National Register nomination that is being developed for the Ramova Theater in the Bridgeport neighborhood, located just south of the intersection of 35th & Halsted. Because it is on the south side of Chicago, despite its relative wealth and the tourist draw that being home of the White Sox provides, the neighborhood has been unable to attract significant development to adaptively reuse the theater. Opened in 1929 and designed in an effusive Spanish Revival theme, the theater is very similar to the Music Box Theatre on the north side, which has seen quite fruitful reuse. Built as a movie theater, the auditorium is part of a mixed-use building. The bottom floor along Halsted is restaurants, including the long-lived Ramova Grill whose chili has a great reputation (and is quite yummy!) and the second floor houses apartments. These auxiliary uses remain in full operation, but the auditorium has been abandoned since the mid-1980s. At some soon before its abandonment, all the original seating was replaced with cheap plastic seats, but its elaborate ornamentation remains intact, though worse for the wear.

The lobby includes a double-sided staircase with sweeping railings and elaborate windows that glimpse into the spaces beyond. Sadly, one side of the lobby has been mostly obliterated from an unknown force. The auditorium is decorated to resemble an open-air Spanish courtyard and remains essentially intact, including the original air conditioning system which fed through holes in the floor. The twinkling stars painted on the ceiling of the auditorium, not unlike Grand Central Station in New York City, make the Ramova one of the last standing atmospheric theaters in the city. Like any abandoned building, the Ramova's biggest enemy is water. The auditorium and lobby are covered in fallen plaster and penetration continues, worsening the problem. The building has needed a new roof for several years, though it has been patched at times. Since the building is currently owned by the city of Chicago, maintenance has not been all that could be hoped for.

The exterior facade contains a beautiful terra cotta parapet and its centerpiece is a tall window in front of the entrance lobby. Often noticed is the theater's massive sign and marquee. The vertical sign is not the original, but it is quite old, having been added in the 1950s in a blast of neon glory. "Ramova" means "peaceful peace" in Lithuanian, a naming choice that gives a good sense of the character of the neighborhood when the theater was built. Originally a working class community centered around the Chicago River, Bridgeport housed several phases of immigrants, from Czechs and Swedes in the early days, to Irish, Italians, and Lithuanians by the 1920s. It was a neighborhood institution and quite successful for six decades. And it is apparently still quite loved. It has its own preservation group, Save the Ramova, which is still quite active and dedicated to the cause five years after its founding.

Chicago's Modernist Traditions

2010-04-12T14:29:00.000-05:00

I am, essentially, a modernist. I was trained in the tradition of Mies van der Rohe, the most conservative of modernists, but when I say that word, I actually am applying it quite a bit more loosely. Modernism is, essentially, the search for a personal architecture, rather than working to create an architecture that you believe society will expect. It is the great conflict in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead.

As I see it, Chicago has four major modernist architectural traditions:

- Frank Lloyd Wright and his disciples, Barry Byrne and Walter Burley Griffin. In his creation of the "Prairie" style, Wright was trying to create an architectural vocabulary that was in tune with the landscape in which he was building.

- Mies van der Rohe and his disciples, Myron Goldsmith, Jacques Brownson, and many others. This is the tradition that follows directly from "form follows function" and derives its roots from the German Bauhaus. It is a heavily aesthetic tradition that ignores many of the human elements of architecture in the pursuit of simplicity. While it is often stated to ignore history, in reality its sense of order is based primarily on values espoused in Classical architecture. The corporate architecture of the 1960s through 1980s was a continuation of this tradition, usually carried out by one of the city's two massive modernist firms of the time, C.F. Murphy Associates and Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill.

- Walter Netsch, Harry Weese, and Bertrand Goldberg. While each of these men was influenced by the Miesian tradition, they carry other influences as well, often from outside Chicago. This shows in each of their architectural styles, and each developed a very distinctive style in time. Netsch developed "field theory," which takes the modernist square or rectangular, uses many of them, and rotates them to create complex, if disorienting, forms. Weese was interested in an 'architecture of accidents' that allowed for unexpected moments in a buildings. Goldberg worked from the Miesian tradition but refused to be bounded by the orthogonal, and worked to push materials to their limits sculpturally as well as structurally.

- Bruce Goff, George and Fred Keck, and Paul Schweickher. Perhaps the least studied of Chicago's modernists, this group did some of its most interesting and unconventional work. Each of them used materials in bold and unexpected ways, was willing to defy tradition, and played with technologies that hadn't been yet fully explored. There was an interest in manufacturing techniques, and the use of everyday materials in architectural ways. These architects, in direct contrast to the Miesians, were intensely focused on the site on which they were to build, and their buildings relate directly and intimately to their sites.

Each of these traditions owes a debt to the very earliest men who developed a sculptural and personal architecture. Among the best known of them would be Louis Sullivan and Frank Furness, his mentor.

The last two of these four traditions have not been fully explored and researched, and they fascinate me. This blog will be my medium through which to explore them in the near future, so you will see bits and pieces of knowledge about them here.

Fay Jones Does Memphis

2010-04-09T14:30:00.000-05:00

I was in Memphis a few months ago and snapped shots of this beautiful house. It is located at 5715 Sycamore Grove in East Memphis. The architect is E. Fay Jones, an apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright who did most of his greatest and best-known work in Arkansas. His namesake work is Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, which is so loved that it was put on the National Register at only 20 years old. His typical material is wood and stone, in tune with the natural environment, and he often uses novel methods to integrate modern technologies such as air conditioning into his designs. I believe this house was built in the mid-to-late 1960s.

Sears Campus Power House

2010-04-02T07:00:00.033-05:00

A couple weeks ago, I had the honor of taking a tour of what has been rated the Best Historic Preservation Project of 2009. The power house for the old Sears campus in East Garfield Park has been renovated into a new charter high school specializing in green technology. The result, carried out by the Homan-Arthington Foundation, is pretty incredible. The old turbine room was kept as the central gathering space and the cafeteria, whereas the other (south) half of the building was filled with four stories of classrooms and offices. It is LEED (not sure what level yet, probably Gold) as well as very true to its historic preservation principles. Architect Farr Associates didn't have the expertise to really integrate preservation concerns into their design, but luckily they hired a very good historic preservation consultant and the two aspects of the project work very well together.

I know these aren't the greatest pictures. Hopefully I can get back and take some better ones someday.

4722 N. Winthrop - Update

2010-04-01T18:39:00.000-05:00

I wrote a post in November about 4722 N. Winthrop. It was an orange-rated historic house in Uptown that Chicago's Demolition Delay ordinance caught. Designed by architect Harvey L. Page, it was dilapidated but still viable.

The property's demolition permit was released on Dec. 3, 2009. Sadly, the site has now been cleared. All that remains are scraggly tree limbs. The block is full of parking lots interspersed between many of the remaining buildings already, so it's getting to feel a bit vacant of a built environment.

Cabrini-Green Demolition

2010-03-12T07:00:00.000-06:00

In January, one of the last of the Whites at Cabrini-Green fell to the forces of "progress," just northeast of Halsted & Division. These photos give a glimpse inside one of the notorious buildings, from a perspective we couldn't have seen while they were in operation. It's pretty fascinating the colors that people painted their apartments to make what were pretty dismal quarters more bearable. The icicles add to the composition. These photos were taken by a friend who has a more artistic eye than I, so don't hold me to that standard :-)

Chicago Metropolitan Correctional Center

2010-03-09T07:00:00.001-06:00

One of Chicago's most under-appreciated architects is Harry Weese. He was a modernist but he fell in his own mold, far apart from the conformist followers of Mies van der Rohe or the rebellion of Bertrand Goldberg. His influences came from studying under Eero Saarinen and physically visiting the work of Alvar Aalto while in Scandinavia. Weese is often pegged as a brutalist, but his work actually spans many styles. He was also a pioneer in several ways in the city. For example, he was among its first preservation architects, as his firm carried out the first restoration of Louis Sullivan's Auditorium Building.

One of Weese's most well-known works, and one of my favorite, is Chicago's city jail, the Metropolitan Correctional Center. It is a 27-story triangular building located along the 'L' tracks just south of the Loop at Van Buren and Clark Streets. Completed in 1975, it was intended to be one of America's first jails without bars. Its design supported this ambitious agenda by dividing the prisoners up onto different floors by the seriousness of their offense and making the whole floor viewable from a central location. Weese also designed the windows to be five inches wide and high enough off the street (the cells are on the upper floors) that escape would be impossible. Using an elevator for prisoner transport is a good idea because it helps eliminate the risks to guards in transporting prisoners long horizontal distances.

The jail itself is unabashedly brutalist and was even more so before the previously raw concrete was painted tan around 2005. The complex also includes a brutalist parking garage next door and a garden along the building's southeast facade.

Relating to Weese's growing respect for the historic integrity of the South Loop (Weese would begin the process to revitalize Printer's Row three years later,) the jail shows deference to the historic buildings around it within its form. The Fisher, Old Colony, and Manhattan buildings face the jail along its east side, and have a fairly consistent cornice line. The tenth floor of the jail is left blank (it is a mechanical floor) at the same level. A subtle gesture, but an intended one.

In case you are interested in Weese's work, here are a couple of the books available on him. There are a few more, but these are the most accessible.

Harry Weese Houses by Kitty Baldwin Weese. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 1987.

Harry Weese: Humanism and Tradition. Process Architecture No. 11. Katushiko Ichinowatari, ed. Tokyo: Process Architecture, 1979.

Probably the best source on him, though, is his oral history taken as part of the Chicago Architects Oral History Project by the Art Institute of Chicago. The oral histories of his brother, Ben Weese, and his long-time employee, Jack Hartray, also contain large sections about the man, his work, and his firm. For a time in the 1970s and 1980s, Harry Weese Associates was among the most prolific firms in Chicago. While Harry Weese died in 1998, both Ben Weese and Jack Hartray are still alive.

Michigan Avenue YWCA

2010-03-05T07:00:00.001-06:00

It's kind of flown under the radar, but if's you've walked down Michigan Avenue in the last week or so, you might have noticed a gaping hole in the famous streetwall. Located at 830 South Michigan, the hole was filled by the YWCA Building, a grand blue Beaux-Arts facade that for the last three decades has stood with blank eyes onto Grant Park. Before that, though, from when it was built in 1895, it was an affordable housing building for young women new to the city. You can still see where the light wells were in the floor plan by noticing where the neighboring buildings were clad or left raw. A second story open space above the front entrance looked out onto the lake. From 1929 until its abandonment, the building was used as a hotel. It apparently had some pretty major structural issues as well as severe degradation, as even landmarks organizations wrote it off as unsalvagable. Cool building, though. I might be in the minority here, but I kind of liked the blue-gray paint.

The building was condemned November 12, and demolition began in January. All that remains now is the facade of the first two floors.

(First image credit: Landmarks Illinois)

Ghost of a Building

2010-03-03T22:07:00.000-06:00

Sometimes "textures" are things that you seek out in a city, things are only visible when you are looking for them. A reward for those who seek the unexpected. Other times, "textures" are pretty obvious. What was once a building between 8th and 9th Streets on Wabash, is now a parking lot. But it leaves behind the ghost of what it formerly was. The ghost image is a "living section" of what, it seems, was a timber-frame loft building of six stories. Still, I love looking at the silhouette. From it, you can immediately learn more about a building than you would normally be able to learn, even from working within it everyday.

The story is actually that there were two buildings here (the two on the right end of the block in the Google StreetView image below.) They had some sort of code issues and East-West University, rather than worry about remodeling them, just decided to tear them down. They weren't historic or anything, so they could just do that. Funny how that surprises me these days. It's a little annoying, just because the South Loop already has so many parking lots and so more were really not necessary. And, given the economy, redevelopment in the near term is unlikely.

Bachman House

2010-02-26T07:00:00.001-06:00

I have a couple of major posts, on projects I'm working on, planned for next week. For now, though, you'll have to make do with yet another random photo post. It's a really cool one, though. Below are photos of the Bachman House, by Bruce Goff. As you probably know, Goff was an extremely eccentric, and extremely talented mid-century architect. His style was completely his own. His work has been referred to as "UFO"-like. What made him great as an architect was his ability to simultaneous balance the specific needs of his clients with his own very personal design explorations. Goff's designs have a tendency to use very unique materials and have very unique forms - but, despite all that, they are extremely functional.

Did you know we had Goff houses in Chicago? Well, he's buried in Graceland Cemetery, not far from Mies (the triangular headstone and green crystal on top match his personality perfectly.) That was my first clue. There are actually two Goff houses. One is the Turzak House located in Edison Park (on the northwest side, almost into the suburbs), and the other, this, is smack dab in the middle of the city, a five minute walk from the Red Line Argyle station, at 1244 W. Carmen. It is actually one of his less crazy, and very little known, works. Built in 1947-1948, it was actually a renovation (or perhaps we could call it a complete reworking) of an existing house that had been built in 1889. Both Goff houses in Chicago are designated Chicago Landmarks. There are several more of his works out in the suburbs.

My favorite part of Goff? He's from Tulsa, just like me :-) so we're kin, kind of. And I've seen some of his work, there, from when he was less than 20 years old, and it's pretty amazing. I'm not gonna lie, a perfect gift for me would be a copy of Bruce Goff: Toward Absolute Architecture by David G. DeLong. But the lowest price for it online is like $175. Sad but true. One day I'll have an attack of spontaneity and buy it anyway.

Sorry the pictures are all kind of the same. There's only one perspective to photograph this house from. And yes, that is unpainted corrugated metal on the facade...

Majestic Mens Store

2010-02-23T23:31:00.000-06:00

This is a building I know nothing about. It's just kind of a forlorn remnant of Chicago history, but you can see that some effort was made to make it beautiful once upon a time. This is located directly under the Red Line a couple blocks south of the Lawrence station. I would assume it was built when the embankment above it was, about 1920. It looks all to be terra cotta.

The View from Behind the Cornice

2010-02-20T20:10:00.000-06:00

I work behind the cornice level of the Carson Pirie Scott Building on State Street. As you might imagine, you can see some interesting stuff from up there. Here are some shots:

The Chicago Bee Building

2010-02-16T07:00:00.001-06:00

Just down the street from the Overton Hygienic Building is the Chicago Bee Building. It was built by the same man, Anthony Overton, but seven years later, in 1929. It is actually a combination of two buildings, a smaller brick one and a great Art Deco edifice. All the Art Deco ornamentation is rendered in shades of green. From 1929 onward, this building held all of Overton’s businesses, of which the Chicago Bee, one of Chicago’s African-American newspapers, was one. Overton Hygienic, the cosmetics company, continued to be headquartered in this building until the early 1980s. The architect for both the Overton Hygienic Building and this one was Z. Erol Smith, whom I've never heard of - was he an African American architect? There would have been very few of those in the 1920s.

From the 1980s until the mid-1990s, the building was abandoned until the Chicago Public Library stepped in to save it.The first two floors of both pieces of the building were restored and integrated together into the current Chicago Bee Library. It’s a weird location for a library because the Martin Luther King branch is only half a mile away, and given its usage patterns, it’s pretty much a glorified computer lab. Still, I’m glad it’s there because they did a nice job of saving the building.

The Chicago Bee Building is another of the nine buildings that make up the Black Metropolis-Bronzeville City Landmark District, which was created in 1998, and has also been on the National Register since 1986.

The Overton Hygienic Building

2010-02-12T07:00:00.020-06:00

I was down at IIT last week and wandered by this grand old edifice in Bronzeville. I’d heard of it before but never really stopped to look at the details. While I personally like the Chicago Bee Building down the street more, this building is still really nice. A cornerstone building in what used to be “The Stroll,” the grand African American Main Street of Chicago, it is located at 3619-3627 South State Street. The building was built in 1922, commissioned by Anthony Overton, who ran several businesses from within the building, including Douglass National Bank, Victory Life Insurance Company, and the Overton Hygienic Company. Overton Hygienic was one of the biggest-name African American cosmetics companies during the early to mid-20th century and remained in business until the early 1980s. In the later 20th century, Bronzeville fell on hard times, and the building became a 375-bed flophouse. It was recently restored by the Mid-South Planning and Development Commission as an incubator for small businesses. There were lights on in the upper floors but the retail in the first floor is vacant, looking for new tenants.

The Overton Hygienic Building is one of nine buildings that make up the Black Metropolis-Bronzeville City Landmark District, which was created in 1998, and has also been on the National Register since 1986.

Stateway Gardens Demolition

2010-02-09T22:34:00.000-06:00

Stateway Gardens, formerly located along State Street from 35th to 39th Streets, was among the most dangerous public housing projects in the city. Before Stateway was built between 1955 and 1958, the area was a low-rise African American community. While not a great neighborhood, it had a grand history near “The Stroll,” and many of its mid-century problems were due the racial covenant policies of the city, which had caused severe overcrowding in the African American districts. Like all public housing, Stateway was built with good intentions, but through both problems of design as well as persistent neglect and disinvestment, the eight sixteen-story highrises became severely run-down. By the 1970s, they were a hot spot for murder and drug sales that not even the police could control. In fact, the police often took part in the problems rather than solved them.

Public housing is a topic I am fascinated with, so you will see more on it on this blog in future posts. For now, enjoy these pictures I took of the demolition of the last building in this complex, in 2007. Note the bright colors a lot of the tenants painted their units – a way to fight the dark conditions that surrounded them in life, perhaps.

Good books to read if you are interested in the history, architecture, and sociology of public housing in Chicago:

Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets by Sudhir Venkatesh, 2008.

The Poorhouse: Subsidized Housing in Chicago, 1895-1976 by Devereux Bowly, 1978.

There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America by Alex Kotlowitz, 1992.

Esquire Theatre: Historic Photos

2010-02-05T02:12:00.000-06:00

These are from an article from 1938 in Architectural Forum in which the Esquire Theatre was honored as their Building of the Year.

Front with marquee and unspoiled scallops

Vestibule at front doors. This theatre, like many of its era, touted its cooling system. With modern climate control came the need to keep that climate inside the building.

View of the lobby. What you don't see in this photo is that the colors were salmon, bright blue, and brown. Vibrant and plush.

Second floor hallway (access to the balcony, art gallery, bathrooms.) Circles are a common decorative theme throughout the theatre.

This space is known as the "Little Gallery." Because the Esquire catered to a high-class clientele, it offered them an art gallery in which to relax before and after shows.

The incredible auditorium. Believe it or not, the Esquire was a movie theatre from the beginning.

A side view of the auditorium, including the balcony.

As with any grand building of its era, the womens' bathroom included a lounge for socializing.

The mens' room, on the other hand, looks surprising uninspired, given the grandiosity of the building. This could easily have been built today.

The Esquire Theatre

2010-02-02T07:22:00.000-06:00

The Esquire Theatre, located about a mile north of the Loop in the Streeterville neighborhood of Chicago, in the Near North Side Community Area, opened in 1938. Of the Art Moderne style, it featured a massive southern exterior wall faced in Rainbow granite and smooth tan brick. A massive neon marquee spelling the theatre's name denoted the entrance. When it opened, it was under the purview of H&E Theaters, Harry and Elmer being the youngest brothers of the Balaban family, of Balaban & Katz , the theatre company who had erected the Chicago, Uptown, and other theatres before 1920 and began the golden era of Chicago theatre architecture. While its Art Moderne architecture stood in stark contrast to the ornamented palace interiors of the theaters that had come before it, the interior held a streamlined and colorful elegance of a kind the city had never seen before. The Gold Coast was a wealthy place in the late 1930s just as it is today, and the design was intended to appeal to the highest sensibilities of its day. This high-style design seems to have received notice, as the Esquire was selected as the 1938 Building of the Year by Architectural Forum magazine.

To see a show at the Esquire, a patron would enter through a vestibule meant to keep the climate of the fully air-conditioned theater (a fairly new invention at the time, though Balaban & Katz had air conditioned their theatres as early as 1917) intact, and then into a sweeping lobby that curved around the wall of the single, main auditorium, which was faced in mahogany wainscoting with copper-colored plaster above. At the rear of the lobby rose a grand staircase, carpeted and edged by curving steel railings, leading to a circular overlook above the lobby. Recessed lighting was used throughout, often a blue tint, and highlighted by walls, ceilings, and carpets of salmon, peach, slate, smoke blue, and “cedar” brown. With no windows, it was a closed and fantastic interior wonderland. Curved walls led to unexpected nooks, galleries, and lounges, and circular porthole windows allowed unexpected views.

In its earliest days, the Esquire was considered the city's poshest movie house. Unlike other theaters in the city, it had been built well after motion pictures had entered the mainstream, and so the seating and amenities reflected this, with good sight lines. Its earliest operators played into its prestige by not offering popcorn for sale. Around 1970, it was taken over by Plitt Theaters, and it became a more typical modern movie house, with popcorn and drinks available to a more modest-income crowd, but it still had only one screen. Even given the massive number of seats that had to be sold for one show, it was still successful throughout the 1980s. The theater could have kept being successful for many more years, also, but the owner at the time, M&R Theaters, had other ideas.

In 1986, plans began to circulate that the multiplexing movement that had begun sweeping the metropolitan area was to hit the Esquire. At first, it was to be split into twin screens of 700 seats each, though that number later increased to six much smaller screens. The problem, though, was that M&R wanted to include retail space in the complex, to cash in on the increasingly soaring rents available on Oak Street, onto which the theater faced. Creating retail space would involve a massive reconfiguration of the floor plates and the landlord wanted to alter the facade to allow entrances and display windows for the new retail spaces.

However, in 1983, the city of Chicago had begun the Chicago Historic Resources Survey, which was intended to be a comprehensive list of buildings in the city that had historical or architectural merit and were worthy of preservation. Among the first batch to be surveyed was the Esquire Theatre, and it was rated “Red.” This was the highest possible rating in the survey, held by only 300 buildings in the whole city. As such, the Chicago Commission on Architectural and Historic Landmarks immediately tried to landmark the theater. However, the process was not complete by the time the changes were proposed and M&R Theaters was strongly against the designation. They obtained a demolition permit that they assumed could be used as leverage in a legal suit if the Landmarks Commission forced landmarking over their objection. Partially because of this threat and partially because only one member of the board of the Landmarks Commission was an architect who was willing to stand up for the issues at stake, the Landmarks Commission was willing to work with the developer under the pretense that the building permit would be held up indefinitely if they didn't cooperate. Thus, a compromise was reached. Essentially, the building would be rebuilt, including a replacement of the structure with concrete from the original steel, in return for the facade being retained and the lobby being kept 90% intact. However, the changes necessary on the facade for the addition of retail to the building were allowed.

The architect for the four million dollar renovation was Gelick Foran Associates. Hardly an experienced theater architect, their only other major theater project was the design of the Piper's Alley Cinema. The lack of respect the architect had for history is obvious on the facade of that building, as shown by a large portion of reused fabric from the demolished Louis Sullivan-designed Schiller Theater juxtaposed with the faces of The Second City cast immortalized in the facade of the theater, a parody of the Schiller since that facade included faces of famous Germans. The changes to the Esquire, similarly, show little respect for the grandeur and fabric of the original theater. Aside from the lobby, everything was gutted. In its place, behind the walls of the main auditorium, are two floors of modern retail, with modern storefronts punched through the staid 1930s monolithic brick facade. Some of the original ground floor doors leading to the main auditorium were repurposed as elevator doors. The new theaters, six screens with auditoriums of about 200 seats each, compared to the original 1,200 seats, are on the third and fourth floors. Simple boxes of drywall, they are small, steep, and narrow even by modern theater standards.

On Feb. 4, 1990, the new Esquire Theater reopened, 52 minutes late because the developer had not gotten the fire alarm system correctly certified with the city. Perhaps this should have been an omen of things to come. Through the 1990s, the theater showed art house films, and was fairly successful, though the loss of character in its new auditoriums, in contrast to the lobby that mostly still remained, was well documented in the press. By the early 2000s, the current operator, AMC Loews, was far less careful about which films were picked to be shown there, and the theater was falling into disrepair. This foreshadowed the plans to close the theater in 2006. The retail space remained rented until January 2009, but now lays fallow. In 2008, plans began to circulate that the theater would be demolished for good, and a new retail development would take its place. If it weren't for the severe economic recession that hit in late 2008, the Esquire would be demolished. As of now, it still stands, though sad and forlorn.

The text above is from a paper I wrote on the Esquire recently. You might be interested in a couple of articles I used in my research, which I have uploaded here. One is the article from Architectural Forum in 1938 in which they designate it as their Building of the Year. The other is a scathing review in Inland Architect, from 1991, of the renovation. Most of the rest of the research came from the Chicago Tribune archives.

Our Green Future: The Triumvirate of Transit, Preservation, and Sustainability

2010-01-29T10:58:00.000-06:00

In America, our priorities are a bit messed up. Each of the three things in the title of this post are very important to our country’s future, for different reasons, yet their importance has yet to be fully appreciated. More importantly, all three are deeply interrelated. It is hard to have one without the others.

Why Transit Matters:

As China gains more and more of a share of the world’s automobiles, a larger and larger share of the world’s oil will go there as well. While America currently subsidizes gasoline at a price that makes it viable for nearly everyone in the country to drive everywhere, that will become impractical in the near future. Gas prices will go up. Even in the unlikely event that China’s auto share does not increase dramatically, America’s infrastructure is getting decrepit at such a rate that at some point in the near future, it will be necessary to make a major investment in it in order to keep the country running at close to our current standard of living. One of the most commonly proposed ways to fund such a large investment is an increase in the gas tax. Currently, America’s gas tax is 18.5 cents, and has been at that level since 1993. Simply due to inflation, it should increase, and will probably increase substantially. Suffice to say, one way or another, gas prices are probably going up. That will ultimately make it financially impossible for an increasing proportion of the population to own, service, and drive one or multiple cars, as they currently do. In addition, a larger proportion of the low-income population of America is moving to the suburbs, as cost of living in cities is increasing beyond their means. Thus, poverty is steady or declining in cities as it increases in suburbs. Mobility is already a problem for those of lower income and only becomes a bigger problem due to the mobility issues common in the suburbs.

The answer to all these problems is better public transit. America now has some of the worst public transit in the developed world, though it had some of the best early this past century. Rather than improve the systems to accommodate recent record growth, as well as anticipate future needs, America is currently cutting transit service across the board. For example, here in Chicago, the CTA is the second largest public transit system in the country. On February 7th, it will be cutting 14% of its service. Despite serving 1.6 million people per day, it is considered OK politically to let this occur. Even New York City, as transit-dependent a city as exists in America, with 10 million riders per day, is facing massive cuts.

For preservation, decreasing transit options has instant negative effects. Because most preservation and adaptive reuse projects occur in deeply urbanized and dense areas, these tend to be older areas that were built before the age of the car in America. The advantage of such areas is that they tend to be walkable and physically the kind of place that people will pay a lot of money to live in. However, these areas tend to be very dependent on transit. Without buses and trains (formerly streetcars, usually), these areas would need massive parking garages, which to be built would necessarily destroy the small scale sense of place and character that defines many of the areas that we preserve. Thus, the parking garages have not been built, and parking remains hard to find. And, for the most part, that is a good thing. In a few years when less people are driving and many hulking concrete parking garages stand empty, these areas will be glad they were not built. But transit needs to remain strong for these areas to work.

Both preservation and transit relate directly to sustainability, or being “green.” It is such a buzzword nowadays that people have little idea what it really means. Recycling is great, but if you carry your recycling to the dump in an SUV, that kind of negates the good effect. The same hypocrisy is evident in many aspects of the modern green movement. For example, tearing down a green building to build a new LEED-certified building is a joke. It will take that new building at least 30, perhaps more like 70, years to make back the amount of energy wasted by sending that old building to the landfill.

Both preservation and transit are intensely green. There is a saying in the preservation movement that says “the greenest building is the one that is already built.” There are few greener options than renovating an existing building. There are few more harmful options to the environment than sending an old building to the landfill. By demolishing and carting away an old building’s remains, not only is the energy saved that would be used to build the new building, but a massive amount of energy is saved that would be used in demolition and in either burning or recycling the waste.

Transit is “green” in several ways. Biking or walking are as green as they get. No energy is wasted. However, many people use trains and buses. There is a huge caveat to this. Despite common wisdom, transit is not necessarily, in the United States, greener than using a car. YET. The average ridership in a car is 1.6 passengers or so, the average ridership in a train car is about 22 passengers, and the average ridership in a bus is 9 passengers. At that ridership, the three modes have about the same energy-efficiency. However, given that trains and buses tend to be very full during rush hour, at least in Chicago. Thus, at that time of day, they are 5-6 times as energy efficient as a car. So, for your typical commuter, transit is much more green. At night, not necessarily, but to foster a society where people can be dependent on transit, those late night and half-full trains and buses are necessary. However, Australia, Europe, and Asia don’t have the same problem. The energy-efficiency of transit there is 2.5 to 4 times that of cars. Why? Because ridership is so high there that buses and trains don’t run half-empty like they do here. So, the answer in America is that transit will be green when it is more heavily used at all times of day – ie. When more people start depending on it. Another problem is that much more energy-efficient buses are available than are often used currently, but they are not yet widely used because of a lack of will to spend the money on them. Thus, transit is very much part of our green future, even though the statistics don’t show it yet.

This was a wide-ranging post. I suppose it came close to a rant, but I felt it was important to get my philosophy on urbanity out there, especially given the threat of deep transit cuts in two weeks. All these are topics central to the future of design, city planning, architecture, and preservation, so I will mention them from time to time in the future on this blog, hopefully in more digestible portions.

Related Articles:

http://www.infrastructurist.com/2010/01/21/how-often-is-the-gas-tax-raised-most-americans-have-no-clue/
http://www.templetons.com/brad/transit-myth.html
http://www.planetizen.com/node/42593

More Movie Palaces Adapted for Bookworms

2010-01-25T19:30:00.000-06:00

One type of culture gives way to another... It turns out that the particular era of cinema that Memphis's Plaza Theatre was an example of - those dating from 1930 to 1955 - are quite often adaptively reused as bookstores. A new Barnes & Noble bookstore is usually about 25,000 square feet, and the large, windowless open boxes that cinemas provide tend to allow conforming pretty closely to this footprint.

More examples:

Varsity Theatre - Palo Alto, California
Built 1927, Closed 1994
This lavish art deco theatre included a mission style courtyard that was adapted as an outdoor circulation, sidewalk cafe, and retail space. The interior's two floors became a Barnes & Noble.

See this set by BWChicago on Flickr: Varsity Theatre
And this site by the Palo Alto History Project: Varsity Theatre

Alabama Theatre - Houston, Texas
Built 1939, Closed 1983
This beautiful Art Moderne theatre became a Bookstop in 1984. (The chain was later bought by Barnes & Noble.) However, it closed in September 2009 and is now awaiting redevelopment or possible demolition. Architect: Pettigrew & Worley

Set by mslnp on Flickr: Alabama Theatre
See this site by Cinema Houston: Alabama Theatre

Wikipedia - by Postoak

Fox Studio City Theatre - Studio City, California
Built 1939, Closed 1991
Currently occupied by a Bookstop, a chain which was bought by Barnes & Noble. Architect was Clifford A. Balch.

A couple of pictures by clearlight on Flickr: Fox Studio City Theatre and one by avilon_music.
Apparently it is also the location of Brenda and Dylan's first date on Beverly Hills, 90210 if you're into that sort of thing: click
CinemaTreasures page: click

CinemaTreasures.org

Belle Meade Theatre - Nashville, Tennessee
Built 1940, closed 1991
Much like the Plaza Theatre in Memphis, the old single-screen theatre closed in the early 1990s. Bookstar quickly moved in and reused it. However, that store closed in the early 2000s, and the theatre has gotten a lot less respect since. The cool spire is being reused (and apparently part of the lobby is being retained) as a kind of nostalgia piece, within a new generic shopping mall that is named after the old theatre. The old auditorium was demolished in 2006.

A quick search on Flickr turns up good photos: Belle Meade Theatre
Strangely, an archive of historical info about the theatre - created by the firm that is destroying it: History

I'm not gonna lie. I stole this pic from the website of the firm that is destroying the theatre. I figured it was only fair. They don't care anyway.

Loma Theatre - San Diego, California
Built 1945, closed 1988
Converted to a Bookstop in 1990, this theatre was a fairly late example of Art Moderne. Now a Bookstar, which is part of Barnes & Noble. Architect was S. Charles Lee.

"Switched on with dramatic fanfare on grand opening night, the giant neon marquee once again dominated the landscape, reclaiming its place on the street. Seeing the theater come “back to life” in this very visible way created tremendous buzz for the retailer, and gave the neighborhood a tangible morale boost."

Pictures of the marquee on Flickr, by bhindglass: here and here.
Page by the theatre's adaptive reuse architects, with interior photos: Loma Theatre

SanDiegoHistory.org

Lowenstein Theatre - Denver, Colorado
Opened 1953, Closed 1986
Unlike the previous examples, this old theatre was never really an architectural beauty, and it was not adaptively reused as soon as it closed. It stood empty for about twenty years before finding a new use. The complex was renovated as a retail center in 2005, and opened in late 2006. Unlike the Belle Meade above, though, the renovation was done sensitively. The main theatre space was reused as the Tattered Cover Bookstore, which is a small independent chain (2 stores).

A Flickr photo set on both stores. The theater is mostly the later photos, I think. Lowenstein Theatre
An article by the Denver Urban Renewal Authority on the theatre and its reuse: Lowenstein Theatre

AVClub.com

While it is true that each of these theatres, except for the last example, eventually came to be owned by Barnes & Noble after being converted to bookstores, and many still operate under that flag, only one began as part of that chain. They seem to have mostly been adaptive reuse projects commissioned by bookstore chains that saw the value in the easily adaptable open spaces offered by these old theatres. It seems really likely to me that Bookstop and Bookstar even actually sought out old theatres that would serve their purposes. For whatever reason, these theatres tended to be of the Art Moderne style. Perhaps earlier theatres were too small and too ornate for easy reuse.

It is good to see that bookstores saw the importance of establishing a sense of place in their mission, and acted to use adaptive reuse as the impetus to create that sense of place. While not every community in which these bookstores are housed appreciate that the old theatres have a new use - and one by a chain store, at that - it is unlikely that these old single-screen movie houses will come to life again, so this is probably the least of many evils. It allows appreciation of the old beauty without destroying it, which still imbuing new life in the structure because it houses a (presumably) profitable business enterprise. The profitability of the book business, of course, is becoming a thing of the past. As Amazon takes over and more and more people buy Kindles, it is a real threat that the old bookstore will fall into obscurity. I would, of course, like to believe that there is something about a tangible book - especially one that has been beautifully bound and embellished - that a stark plastic electronic device can never replace. But we will see. In any case, it's probably good to visit these places soon, before they start to disappear.

I'm pretty sure there's a lot more old theatres that have been reused as bookstores across the country. I would love to know about more! If you know of one I've forgotten, please comment!

Adaptive Reuse: Bookstar, Memphis

2010-01-22T00:58:00.000-06:00

One of the most awesome things in preservation is when someone decides to reuse an old building for a new purpose and treats the building’s fabric with respect when they adapt it to that new purpose. Every building has a history, and that history gives it character – makes it a specific place, instead of an undefined object that could be anywhere in anytown.

The old Plaza Theatre in Memphis, built in 1953 (the architect was Everett D. Woods) and closed before 1990 as a theatre, is just such a place. The theatre was originally used for movies (as opposed to live performance), but had only one screen and too large an auditorium to be profitable for modern use. In the early 1990s, it was renovated to become part of the Bookstar chain of bookstores (now a division of Barnes & Noble.) To modernize it as a bookstore, the seats were removed and better lighting was added. However, almost every other major element has been retained. The outside marquee was reused for the new signage and the concession stand for the cash registers. The box office remains, as do the very cool bathrooms, and even the screen, fronted by kitschy 80s theatre carpet. Barnes & Noble has a chain-wide policy of providing a internet-enabled coffee bar, but in this case, it was placed in a niche in the front of the theatre – perhaps originally these were the theatre’s offices or storage – and so doesn’t interfere with the most grand aspects of the renovation.

This is an example of a building that was never incredibly stellar in its design to start with. It was built as part of one of Memphis’s earliest strip-mall sprawl developments. While its design did have some endearing features of the 1950s, it had been significantly updated over time in most aspects. As such, it could have been easily renovated in a boring way and no one would have thought less of those making the changes. However, the new owners realized that by seeing its history and taking advantage of it, they could make this particular bookstore a place with soul – a destination. They succeeded in a big way.

Pickwick Theatre

2010-01-20T01:04:00.000-06:00

I lead a very city-centric life, but today I was hanging out with some friends in Park Ridge and we found this old theatre. The Pickwick was built in 1928, and is amazingly Art Deco (though it looks to have some streamline deco influence in it too.) The firm was Zook & McCoughey, which seems to have done a lot of homes in the suburb of Hinsdale. This theatre seems to be their most major work, and has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1975. It was also used in the opening credits to Siskel & Ebert's "At the Movies" in the 1980s. The theatre is actually very much in use, still for movies. The main auditorium is restored and undivided. Three smaller screens were added to the back, which in a brilliant preservation solution, make the theatre commercially viable in modern times without having destroyed its character in the process.

Chicago's Old Theatres

2010-01-18T03:59:00.003-06:00

Image: Riviera Theatre, Chicago. From CinemaTreasures.org

As you probably know, in the early decades of the twentieth century, the streets of Chicago were riddled with hundreds of theatres, showing live shows such as vaudeville and burlesque, silent films, and eventually modern movies - or any combination thereof, and thus provided for their patrons an escape from the dirty city around them and from their sweltering or freezing apartments. By the 1950s, television and radio became ubiquitous, and because of them, not as many people went to theatres. Soon, many of the theatres began to close. But, though time and technology have marched on, many of the buildings still stand. Some, like the Uptown Theatre are well-known. But many are not. From the data I can cull off of cinematreasures.org (awesome site!), there are currently 164 old theatres still standing in the city. Most are deep within the neighborhoods, serving some new function - perhaps a church or a retail store. In other cases, they have become community centers or gathering spaces for the neighborhoods that surround them. And, sadly, quite a few of them sit abandoned and forlorn. Some are amazing palaces still filled with grandeur evoking exotic lands. Others were utilitarian from the start and can easily be overlooked as just another building of the tens of thousands that make up the city.

Using data from that site, I have put together an Excel spreadsheet of the theatres that still stand. Use this to take a road trip around the city and see what you find :-) Report back if you find anything really cool...

Spreadsheet (In Excel 97-2003 Format - download the file to your computer for best viewing)

Here is a link to ForgottenChicago's page on old movie palaces, as well: click

McCormick Boys and Girls Club

2009-11-26T22:08:00.001-06:00

Discovered this building while walking down Sheridan one evening, and had to come back to photograph it. It looks pretty sleek with the stainless steel fins floating above a standard brown brick facade, and I find it quite interesting that the Boys and Girls Club were willing to spend the substantial extra money on that architectural flourish. I couldn't find the architect, but it was built in 1959.

List of Architectural and Historically Cool Retail Spaces and Storefronts in Chicago

2009-11-12T07:40:00.000-06:00

...Or, the post with a really long title :-)

This post will be added onto over time. I want to make a list of all the really cool retail spaces and storefronts in Chicago. I don't know about you, but I'm often willing to pay a little more or walk a little further in order to give money to a place that I know values, or at least spend some money on, its architecture. To get on this list, a space doesn't necessarily mean old, just unique, either in general, or if part of a chain, unique among the chain. You can kind of get a sense of what I mean by the entries on the list so far. Please comment! Need more...

The Loop

McDonald's - Wabash between Washington and Randolph
This McDonald's is unique not because it's old. It seems pretty newly-built. However, it is the most elaborate McDonald's I have ever seen. Leather seats, lacquered wood walls, and marble in the bathrooms.

Dunkin Donuts - Washington between Michigan and Wabash
This DD is cool because it has an exposed coffered ceiling in the dining room, surrounded by usual DD trim, but well lit and restored. Not often that DD spends effort on architecture.

Near North

McDonald's - Rock and Roll - Clark & Ohio
An obvious standout from the pack, this McD's is unique because of its size and the craziness put into its detailing. I mean, spider clips on a curtain wall at McD's? Also, how often can you eat a Big Mac on a Barcelona Chair?

North Side

The Green Mill - Lawrence & Broadway
With a space straight out of the 1940s, many important Chicago figures were involved in the creation and management of this famous Jazz Club, including Al Capone. It continues to be visited by celebrities often.

West Side

Margie's Candies - near Fullerton & Western, Wicker Park
Straight out of the 1960s with pieces from the 20s, this ice cream shop is yummy and architecturally unique. It is also an example of how best to get as many people as physically possible into a small space.

Near South

Eleven City Diner - 1111 S. Wabash
An awesome space. The dining room is a cavernous space, vaulted and probably 25 feet high, covered with subway tiles, topped by giant lights.

Mid-South

Uncle Johnny's Grocery - 32nd & Normal, Bridgeport
This space hasn't changed much since the 1920s. Everything from the ceiling to the freezers for the milk are original. It's also supposed to have one of the top 3 Italian Beef sandwiches in the city.

The Little House on Winthrop

2009-11-08T09:53:00.004-06:00

As you probably know, Chicago has a Demolition Delay Ordinance that stops building that the city finds to be historically or architecturally interesting from being torn down immediately when someone takes out a demolition permit on them. There is a required waiting period, which can be up to 90 days. Since this process began in 2003, it hasn't really kept that many buildings from being torn down (that's a subject for a future post) but it has brought to light quite a few architectural interesting tidbits of the city's history for a few weeks of investigation before they bite the dust. One of the two currently under review by the city is this house, located at 4722 North Winthrop. It's been on the review list for 60 days already, so presumably the Landmarks Commission found something interesting when they did some research on it. Curious, I set out to do some research myself.

It's a nice little frame Colonial Revival house built in 1899, and you can see that it looks pretty much original with its cool little Palladian window and porch. It doesn't seem to be in the best of shape, though. The architect was Harvey L. Page. He's not that well-known of an architect in Chicago, but he actually had a pretty interesting life. Generally a classicist but a conoisseur of all styles, he began his career in Washington, D.C. When H.H. Richardson died during the construction of the last house of his career, Harvey L. Page stepped in and finished the house capably in his style. In 1890, perhaps inspired by the opportunities of a great city rebuilding from a fire all at once, he arrived in Chicago. Throughout that decade, he built houses for several of Chicago's well to. This house was one of his last, as it was built in the same year that his firm went bankrupt and he left town. About 1905, we see him in San Antonio. His work, ever a potpourri, now echoes hints of the Spanish Mission Revival and Prairie styles. In 1913, he designed the Nueces County Courthouse, considered one of his greatest works and which is now on the National Register of Historic Places. It is also apparently haunted:

Aside from the architect, the other thing that makes this house interesting is that it is a vestige of the past. Nowadays, it is located less than a block from the Lawrence Avenue Red Line station, an extremely urban location to be sure. Surrounded by large brick apartment buildings and three-flats, it feels a bit out of place. Originally, though, the property was a development by a land speculator, Lewis Cochran, that was to include mansions along the lake as part of a new streetcar suburb, not so different than Ravenswood was then or Wilmette is now. As you can see from this photo from 1897, the area was pretty rural back then.

(from Chicago ‘L’, by Greg Borzo, 2007)

So, this house sticks out because it was intended to be part of a community of mansions that never actually came to pass. When the Northwestern Elevated Company extended its line to Wilson Avenue in 1900 and to parts farther north in the 1920s, the neighborhood began to develop with densely-packed apartment buildings. In the first decade of the 1900s, it also began to develop as one of the city's premier entertainment corridors. With the Uptown Theater and the Aragon Ballroom came a deep urban vibrance. Fast-forwarding to modern times, presumably the reason the house is proposed to be demolished is either for a parking lot for the surrounding private schools or to put up a massive condo building. Neither one makes a lot of sense right now. There are already three parking lots on the block. Condos don't make a lot of sense here because the lot backs right up to a four-tracked part of 'L' that was built in the early 1920s, that runs 24 hours a day. They would be hard to market due to the noise (though, obviously, it is often done,) especially given the current state of the condo market. The only viable thing is perhaps the owners are planning a McMansion for the site. They are well within their rights to do that, but McMansions obviously don't belong in the city, and it's too close to an 'L' station to justify construction of a new single-family house in good conscience. The organization that wants to tear the house down is Apna Ghar, which is an Asian American women’s domestic abuse organization. I think the house’s current use, then, is as a shelter for battered women. There is nothing that makes it unfit for this use, aside from perhaps deceptitude, so obviously if their hope is to replace it, they should come up with a reuse plan instead.

My verdict: Architecturally, I’m not sure the case for its architectural significance is that strong, but there is some, and it’s still a cool little house and a hark back to the history of the neighborhood, AND most importantly, there’s nothing being built right now, and a vacant lot is not good for the neighborhood, especially since it is surrounded by them.

The Old Colony

2009-10-16T21:29:00.000-05:00

[Note: this was originally published on my old blog, Memoirs of a Loosh. I'm moving all the old posts here. Since 2007, the Old Colony has changed a bit, so I will publish an update to this post in short order.]

(Originally posted Feb. 24, 2008. Later edited January 12, 2009 and October 16, 2009.)

(The top photo is an early photo, from about 1895. You can tell how old it is by the absence of the 'L', which has run right next to this front entrance of the Old Colony Building since 1896. The bottom photo is from 2001.)

Chicago has a few streets that are lost in time. One of those is South Dearborn between about Jackson and Polk, especially the block between Dearborn and Congress. The same buildings stand now as they did 100+ years ago, though a little worse for the wear.

The anchor for this old block is the Old Colony Building. When it was finished in 1894, it was the tallest building in Chicago, at 212 feet and 17 floors tall. Each floor is 9700 square feet, and the total square footage is 157,406. Because its developer was from Boston and the building fronts on Plymouth Street, it was named after the “Old Colony” in Massachusetts of the same name.

The site, 84 feet long along Van Buren and 168 feet along Dearborn, was bought by Francis Bartlett in 1884, for $126,000, a price that many people at the time considered too high a price for a lot so far from the central business district of Chicago. Less than five years later, Dearborn had evolved into one of Chicago's most prestigious commercial streets and so the price was considered more than reasonable. Soon after purchasing the site, Bartlett erected a "one-story taxpayer" structure on the site, which was actually supposed to be pretty interesting architecturally, with a facade completely of glass and iron. The designer is unknown but it may have been Holabird & Roche.

Here is a picture of the site from 1892, looking southeast. The building in the foreground is the mentioned taxpayer structure. The Manhattan Building (2 buildings to the south) was just completed. The building just to the south would be torn down very soon to build the Plymouth Building, which opened in 1895 (and is currently in foreclosure as of Feb. 2008.)

The Chicago City Council was set to pass an ordinance in 1893 that would limit the height of any new structures to 130 feet. When Bartlett heard about this, he decided the time was ripe to build the larger skyscraper he knew the site could support, and which would get him a greater return on his investment. Through his connections with Bryan Lathrop, the current manager of Graceland Cemetery, Bartlett learned of the firm of Holabird & Roche. He met them and awarded them the new commission for the new skyscraper. The firm of Holabird & Roche had been founded as a very modest venture in 1881 but by the late 1880s had at least 3.5 percent of the new construction in a booming city under their design, including the three recently-completed nearby Chicago school skyscrapers: the Monadnock (1893), the Pontiac (1888), and the Caxton (1892, torn down late 1940s.)

The design was elegant. It was traditional in the sense that it included the typical tripartite arrangement of elements, with a 2-story base, a shaft, and a cornice. However, it had very little ornament, as was typical of the Chicago school, but did include lots of elements to increase rentable space and make some offices unique, such as the turrets that overhung the sidewalks, about which the architects bragged "they had achieved more than 100% site usage." The material for the base was limestone. Brick and terra cotta were used for the upper levels. The windows are all double-hung except for the middle row along the original front entrance which are chicago-style windows. An odd thing to note is that the brick that we now see as brown (see pictures at top) actually started as off-white. While all that brown is technically dirt, it is historic dirt :-) so it has been left, per the recommendation of a restoration report done in the 1970s. The following picture was submitted by Charles McLaughlin, a CAF tour guide who loves and respects the building. From this color print of the building from its early years, it can be understood how stunning the color difference is between the building's original design and its current state.

The width of the lot allowed an interior well-suited to the rule that no office be further than 26 feet from the windows in those days, when they were the main source of light, which allowed the building to be a block with no interior courtyard or light court. A central ten-foot hallway was lined with small offices, with interior walls of frosted glass and operable transoms above the doors. The floors of the hallways were yellow-brick mosaic tile, their walls were wood paneling of quarter-sawn oak.

The staircases were iron and the stairwell was originally open from ground to the top of the building. The building only has one stairwell, with emergency exit requirements handled by old-style iron fire escapes on the exterior. The elevators were originally manually-operated and were surrounded by intricate open iron grillwork. Throughout the building, much thought was put into intricate details, such as custom doorknobs that had the letters "O-C-B" branded onto them by hand.

Not including space created by enclosing various spaces since the building was built, the Old Colony has 89% rentable space, efficient even by modern standards. The basement was used for mechanical and storage space, the first floor the lobby and retail shops, floors 2-17 for offices, and the penthouse is a mechanical space. Here is the typical floor plan:

Upon opening, the building generally got positive feedback. Brickbuilder said of it in 1895, “The exterior is elegant, the interior is cramped.” In The Story of Chicago, published in 1894, just after the building's completion, it was stated “With its strong, graceful, rounded corners, its massive base, simple centre and pillared cornice, it is a delight to the eye and an ornament to the city.” In 1964, in his book The Chicago School "Not a typical example of the Chicago School. It is elegant but does not meet the doctrine that the visual divisions in the exterior represent real visual divisions in the interior, as the two-story colonnade at the top, then, has no meaning.” Like many buildings built in Chicago soon after the Great Fire, the Old Colony was built to be among the most fireproof of its day. Its features to this end included hollow tile surrounds around the structural columns and steel vaults in the suites for fireproofing, and a foot of solid masonry around exterior columns. A Russian visitor studying American fireproof construction technologies at the time, Prof. Alexander Krupsky, called the Old Colony “the most completely fire-proofed and and best constructed piece of steel work he could find in the country.”

The building is a combination steel and iron structure. The beams and girders are steel, while the columns are iron Phoenix columns. Phoenix was a brand of column used mostly in bridges, manufactured exclusively by the Phoenix Iron Company, an independent steel mill in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.

The main mill structure is still partially standing, though Phoenix steel shapes were completely phased out by about 1900.

The structural engineer for the Old Colony Building was Corydon T. Purdy. Because a skyscraper had not been built to such a height before, a solution had not been found to deal with the huge wind forces that would buffet such a large building. The Old Colony was the first use of portal wind bracing. This consisted of four arches per floor. This resulted in no lost rentable space, and can only be noticed be tenants in the form of a few arched passages between rooms. The technology was successful, as it was tested soon after the building was completed, and with a 70 to 80 mile per hour wind, the building was off plumb only three sixteenths of an inch.

Some interesting structural details:

Beam to column connections:

Details of how steel was used to frame the overhanging turrets.

The foundation for the building is a system known as the raft grillage. It was first developed by John Root for the Rookery in 1888. It consists of a grid of steel beams embedded in concrete. The foundation of the neighboring six-story building went over the Old Colony's lot line and no agreement for a party foundation could be made. The architects got a signed agreement, however, that the old building's foundation could handle the weight of the Old Colony's southernmost column line. By the time construction had reached the third floor of the Old Colony, however, the old building's foundation had settled nine inches, so apparently the old foundation could not handle it. A new method had to be devised. Corydon T. Purdy developed a cantilever foundation, in which the foundation ends before the southernmost column line. Overall, the deferential settlement ended up being only one inch between the north and south ends of the building.

Foundation Plan

Section of Cantilever foundation

One of the most interesting aspects of the Old Colony Building in modern times is the fact that many of its mechanical systems are original, over 100 years later. Part of this is because its plumbing is all done via “wet” columns, meaning the pipes are embedded in the structural system, which makes them nearly impossible to fix or upgrade. Water is provided to the building gravity-fed via two original oak water tanks. The main one has a capacity of 1600 gallons, operates on a float system, and provides water to the lower 16 floors. A much smaller oak tank is higher, above the roof, and is fed from the lower tank, via a pump. It serves exclusively the seventeenth floor, because the pressure from the lower tank is not high enough to serve plumbing fixtures on that floor, crucial in the early days since the only men's bathroom was on that floor, in a massive skylit room. Because women were rare in office buildings in the late 19th century, a smaller restroom was provided for them on the 8th floor. By the 1970s, one had been added to the 17th floor as well. In addition to the main restrooms, a small closet off the stairwell landing including a urinal for use of building tenants. Each office originally had a closet that included a sink.

The building's heating system has been upgraded. The building is currently heated through three low-pressure steam boilers that were added in the 1990s. Until then, heating had been done by one high-pressure natural gas boiler and one coal boiler, though the coal boiler was out-of-service by the late 1970s. When it had been in operation, coal was delivered through a trap door in the sidewalk that led to a storage room in the basement. Steam is sent to the top of the building and gravity-fed down to radiators on each floor. The radiators were originally cast iron, and many of them remain. Heat flow to each tenant unit is controlled by manual valves on the radiators. There is no central air conditioning system. The roof cannot support the weight of a cooling tower, so cooling is done by individual smaller systems. The ventilation remains the operational transoms above the doors to each office.

This picture shows an unusual custom radiator that was built to curve around a structural column. (Left) One of the old boilers (Right.) The intervening years have held a variety of interesting challenges for the Old Colony Building. In the late 1940s, the Dearborn Street Subway (now the Blue Line) was constructed. To keep the building from settling as a result, caissons were added under the western side of the building. The Congress Parkway was built about 1950 just three buildings south of the Old Colony. This signalled the demolition of several old highrises in the vicinity, greatly altered the cityscape in the which the Old Colony sat and the blocks it inhabited, and because of the anti-pedestrian nature of the new highway, signalled the beginning of a decline of pedestrian traffic in the area, bad for a building with many first floor retail shops. However, these shops have generally remained leases, though the quality of tenants has varied. By the 1960s, the south end of downtown had become a forlorn, forgotten area, so attracting tenants was difficult. This remained true through the 1980s. In 1968, a restaurant exploded across Plymouth Court from the Old Colony's east entrance, so that entrance had to be rebuilt, and was done so in a modern style. At some point, the north – originally main – entrance was enclosed to provide more rentable space on the first floor and a storage area on the second. The elevators have also been replaced by modern automatic models. The freight elevator remains manually operated. These renderings show the difference between the originally north entrance and the enclosed one.

Despite these changes, some of the original flourishes reportedly remain intact behind the walls. The original ornamental elevator grillwork was never removed, just encased. The original coffered ceiling above the north entrance remains in the second floor storage space.

In the report written in the 1970s about the building (see references below), it was reported that some key pieces of the original fabric remained. Some of the yellow brick mosaic floors apparently remained in one hallway, much of the original woodwork, and the urinal closets remained intact. The building had received National Register status in 1976 and Chicago Landmark status in 1978. 30 years later, in October 2007, I went to see how much of that fabric remained. The area around it, however, has improved greatly since the 80s, and in some ways the building has been a victim of its own success as of late. Some floors are very well-appointed, some not, but none have much of the original intact. The urinal closets, may however, be. They were all locked upon my visit.

The old woodwork remains intact in many places, or is replaced quite faithfully. (Upper Right picture.) It's funny how this unit modification exposed the US Mail chute that runs through the building. A mail chute runs through most old buildings in Chicago (Bottom picture. Here's the door to the urinal closet on each stairwell.

The old iron staircase remains intact and open. (Left) Not sure what these transoms were for. Getting light and air into the stairwell, maybe? (Right)

What will happen to the Old Colony? Well, hopefully, someone comes around and restores the lobby to its old beauty. That could add a lot to the building's historic charm. Currently, a rather drab single-story modern lobby greets visitors. In general, it continues to do a good job of serving as an office building, mostly for lawyers and the occasional architect. I hope no one decides it's time to turn it into condos. This one still has many years to go before it can be written off by the business community. Its combination of historic statuses should keep it from getting maimed too badly or torn down for the foreseeable future, at least we can hope.

(All information in this post is my original research. I post it because you might fight it interesting. Don't steal it!!):

Where I got my information:

Birkmire, William H. Skeleton Construction in Buildings. 2nd ed. New York: J Wiley, 1894., 183-205.

Bruegmann, Robert. The Architects and the City: Holabird & Roche of Chicago, 1880-1918. Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1997.

Bruegmann, Robert. Holabird & Roche & Holabird & Root: An Illustrated Catalogue of Works, 1880-1940. New York: Garland, 1991.

The Chief Engineer. “The Old Colony Building: If These Walls Could Talk…” http://www.chiefengineer.org/article.cfm?seqnum1=525 .

Commission on Chicago Historical and Architectural Landmarks. Old Colony Building. Chicago: Commission on Chicago Landmarks, 1977.

Condit, Carl. Chicago School of Architecture: A History of Commercial and Public Building in the Chicago Area, 1875-1925. Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1964.

Historical American Buildings Survey. “Old Colony Building.” Published 1964. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/hhh.il0046 .

Historical Society of the Phoenixville Area. “Phoenix Iron and Steel: The Iron Works – Early Years.” http://www.phxsg.org/hspa/iron_works.html .

Kirkland, Joseph. The Story of Chicago, Vol. II. Chicago: Dibble Publishing Co., 1894.

Weese, Harry and Associates. Four Landmark Buildings in Chicago’s Loop: A Study of Historic Conservation Options. Washington: US Govt. Printing Office, 1978.

Retro Sears

2009-10-16T14:17:00.001-05:00

If it's 80 years old, is it still considered retro? Perhaps there's a different word for it. In any case, this Sears store is very old. It is the oldest continously-operating Sears store in the United States, tied with a store on the south side of Chicago on 79th Street (I will get down there to photograph it some day.) Both stores were built in the mid-1920s and both opened on the same day, November 1, 1925. Before that, there was only one Sears store, the very first, at Homan Ave. & Arthington, on the original Sears corporate campus on the west side. That store closed long ago and the campus has been mostly demolished. However, its old power house was renovated to become a new charter school, Power House High, this year.

Originally, as it is today, this store was surrounded by houses and urban streets, so it's now one of the smallest in the system. But, since Sears has never put out the money to fully renovate or replace it, it remains a cornerstone of the neighborhood, deeply embedded within it. Sadly, the enormous windows through which light once streamed abundantly into the massive warehouse-like space have been boarded up, and with vinyl siding no less, and the cornice has been removed (actually, it's hard to tell if there ever was one - look closely at the old picture - but something has been removed or massively changed at the top of the walls.) The only (most likely) original features remaining on the exterior are the fire escapes and the mosaic tile patterns in shades of brown featuring the old Sears & Roebuck Co. logo. It is a compliment to Sears that they have avoided covering the exterior with too much unnecessary modern signage - only one new Sears logo hangs near the front door. Yet, despite its physical devaluation over time, it's hard not to imagine this building's former beauty.

The interior is much like the exterior, once probably beautiful, nowadays far less so. I don't have pictures of it yet because employees were everywhere the last time I was there, and I prefer to ask forgiveness rather than permission. However, some original features are intact, including a beige escalator that is definitely old, though perhaps not original to the building. Because of the closely-spaced interior columns, the retail areas tend to be carved up in odd ways, and the store restaurant/coffee shop is located on a strange low-ceilinged third floor added later as a loft above part of the second floor. Again, though, it is possible to imagine the awesomeness of the space with light shining through the massive windows lighting up brand new appliances eyed by people seeking to spend their newfound wealth accumulated in the roaring 20s.

Textures #1: Ogden Asphalt Plant

2009-08-23T15:38:00.003-05:00

The seen:

The Unseen:

Location: Just east of the intersection of Chicago and Milwaukee on Ogden, in West Town.

Welcome

2009-08-23T15:17:00.001-05:00

Welcome to Chicagotextures . I am an architect and a preservationist, of sorts, that likes to go explore the city in all its shades of glory. Sometimes I take pictures. Sometimes I do research. I usually go on tangents. I have no idea what you'll find here over time, except that I'm sure that it will be an interesting, hopefully unique, and perhaps surprising, look at the city that I love.