Architecture: the face of a city
In Chicago, everybody has an opinion about which buildings matter
posted 9-17-2010 - 11:25 pm

 
It was inevitable that architecture would matter to me. I am the daughter of an architect (my mother) and the goddaughter of an architect (my mother's best friend). My father and nearly all my uncles were engineers; many of my parents' friends were architects or engineers. I grew up surrounded by art and architecture books: H.W. Janson's History of Art and the remarkable, now out-of-print book series on the Masters of Modern Architecture by publisher George Braziller were my wish books. Out-of-date Sweet's catalogs and spec samples were my playthings. I've been to more architecture lectures and tours than some people have movies.

I prefer Architectural Record (professional) to Architectural Digest (pretentious). I redesign rooms in my head all the time and have a project box full of floor plans and ideas for changing the place where I dwell, if ever I get the funds. And I have lived virtually all my life in Chicago, the city where modern architecture got its start and where the residents take a more than customary interest in buildings both modern and historic, and in how their city looks.

So of course, when Chicago magazine published its list of the top 40 buildings in Chicago, I had to read it. And formed opinions almost immediately, which led to comment. Unlike most people, however, I talk (and think) in paragraphs – so my comments are usually more than the customary few lines. That might bother me if I thought online editors should cater to readers with short attention spans, but I don't. I remain one of those people who still thinks the Internet is there to give you more context and background that you'd get in a newspaper's or magazine's tight news hole, not less. After all, if you decide you don't want that much, you're free to ignore it; but if you do want that much and the writer skimps instead, you're out of luck. Occasionally, it strikes me that there's no reason a longer comment of mine should go to waste by languishing at the end of someone else's article. And it is my comment, so I ought to be able to reproduce it here. Which I've done.

There will be those who dissent from one or another choice of what gets included in a top-40 list of Chicago buildings, but what is remarkable, really, is how much we usually agree. We who live here know which buildings matter, and we're proud of our skyline, of the character of our streets and neighborhoods. We know that these buildings and their creators have made a significant difference in the way architecture has developed during the last century, and that the effects will be felt for years to come. Our job as citizens is to appreciate this legacy and do what we can to preserve it. Given that much agreement, then, we feel perfectly free to nitpick the rest. We love argument, too: you'll find Chicagoans as willing to argue the merits of one building over another as they are to dispute who makes the best hot dog or the best pizza. It's just the way we are.

So, then: on to the details ...

I'm glad writer Geoffrey Johnson noted that Schipporeit and Heinrich took a Mies van der Rohe design and turned it into Lake Point Tower. No other building is more characteristic of Chicago's lakefront than this. Schipporeit and Heinrich had worked for van der Rohe before they struck out on their own, so they knew about his design. The original plans were for an office building; the big changes were all on the inside, which S&H altered to create apartments. The exterior was kept as Mies had designed it. I still think of it as a Mies building, even though his proteges got it built.

Johnson refuses to call the Sears Tower anything but that, and I concur. I'd no sooner call it by another name than I'd resort to calling White Sox Park by whatever name some advertiser paid for it (hey, I'm not getting paid to shill, and I wouldn't on principle). That's just historical architectural tradition: a building is customarily known by the name it had when it was first built. The Tribune Tower will always be known as such, no matter who may occupy it in the future. Ditto the Marshall Field & Co. Building on State Street – Macy's may do business there now, but those folks are the only ones who call it by that name, and that won't last when/if Macy's sells out or goes out of business some day. Likewise, the Robert Morris building is no such thing; the college just happens to occupy a good chunk of that structure (although the second Leiter Building has less of a ring to it).

The Aon Center is really the Standard Oil Building, once known as 'Big Stan' (oddly appropriate in a town with a big Polish population). The Hotel Burnham may occupy the Reliance Building, but it's still the Reliance Building. The Smurfit-Stone Building is really the Associates Center (I'll always be fond of that one; although Sheldon Schlegman of A. Epstein and Sons got credit for the design, in fact he had an entire team for the design, and my mother's dearest friend, Bronė Kova, was part of that team). The so-called Chase Tower is really the First National Bank Building, even though that enterprise is long gone. And so on.

That doesn't mean people won't still try to rename buildings just because they buy or occupy them; it just means they'll be wrong when they do. Can you imagine anyone trying to rename the Rookery Building, or the John Hancock?? The new names would be completely meaningless. The renaming thing is all vanity, anyway.

We retain original building names, just as we keep our own names instead of changing them every time we move or get a new job, because we need to remember who we are and where we came from. Because like a person, a city has an established identity. Building names, especially those of important, easily recognized buildings, are part of that identity, developed over decades or centuries. History trumps vanity every time, and well it should.

One commenter thought it a travesty that Edward Durrell Stone's Standard Oil building was included in the list and ranked lower than other landmarks. Well, these lists are always somewhat subjective, and we could easily have a list of 100 buildings instead; I believe an AIA guidebook does as much. Chicago has enough important buildings that you wouldn't have to pad the list. So no, it's not a travesty that the Standard Oil Building was included. Besides, it was much more impressive when it was new, clad entirely in white marble; I remember the way it looked, subtly luminous against the sky. You had to see it at dawn or midday to get the full effect. But the slabs used were too thin and cracked, and the adhesive used by the construction company didn't hold for more than a year; pieces fell off and the marble became a safety hazard, causing a big scandal, so it all had to be removed. More's the pity. I keep wishing technological advancement would find a solution, so that the building could be re-shod in its original Cararra marble and returned to former glory.

There are others that should be on the list, such as the Seventeenth Church of Christ, Scientist on Wacker Drive, the Chicago Temple, the Merchandise Mart, the IBM Building, Illinois Center, the Santa Fe Building, the Chicago Board of Trade Building, the Civic Opera House, and the original Chicago Public Library central library, now known as the Chicago Cultural Center. On a longer list, they'd all be there, without question. The debate only begins as the list shortens. But at least The Dick That Trump Built, on the site of the former Sun-Times/Daily News Building, wasn't included (Trump's Folly has no architectural significance; it's merely big and expensive, and it alters the profile of the riverside in a bad way).

I was most pleased, however, by what made the top of the list: the John Hancock Center. Long before the Sears Tower, the Hancock reminded the modern world that Chicago remains an architectural power to be reckoned with. It made the profile of our skyline instantly recognizable. And it's still the fourth tallest building in Chicago and the sixth tallest in the U.S.

But the Hancock is famous for more than its height and distinctive design. In order to get it built, Fazlur Khan of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill had to develop innovative new engineering algorithms that would keep a building that tall together and able to handle stiff winds encountered at that height. Those algorithms for his "tube" structural system subsequently allowed the Sears Tower and all other mega-tall buildings around the world to be constructed. Which just goes to show you: we not only invented skyscrapers in Chicago, we also invented the means of building them ever taller. Everywhere. Eat that, New York.