West Loop somewhere, I believe.
I should remember, but am having a momentary lapse of memory. Must be getting old…
Tag: architecture
Metropolitan Correction Center Blues
a Harry Weese joint, 1975
such a strange building, really. According to Chicago’s Famous Buildings 5th edition, “The splayed windows (five inches wide at their narrowest) are the maximum that federal standards will permit without bars.” There is apparently a rooftop exercise yard, though it isn’t visible from the street.
Bids Start at $300,000 for Chicago’s Old Post Office
[address listed as 358 W Harrison St, Chicago, IL, but I always think of it being on the corner of S. Canal and Van Buren – directly north of where Congress turns into the Eisenhower Expressway, aka I-290]
After 13 years of failed redevelopment efforts, the United States Postal Service is giving up and auctioning off its largest vacant property: the hulking 2.7-million-square-foot old central post office here.
The suggested opening bid for the auction is $300,000, which is less than an individual condominium goes for in many of the surrounding downtown buildings.
[Click to continue reading Bids Start at $300,000 for Chicago’s Old Post Office – NYTimes.com]
[corner of Van Buren and S. Canal]
The building is actually quite a lovely structure, I hope it doesn’t get torn down to have a mixed-use building in its place, or shudder, condos. The article doesn’t mention what property tax on it would be1, but even annual maintenance, utility and security costs are nearly $2,5000,000
The behemoth, which is nine stories tall with 14-story corner towers, is several blocks southwest of the Loop, the downtown central business district. It was designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst & White in a Neoclassical Art Deco style and built in phases from 1921 to 1932. (Graham, Anderson is the firm responsible for Chicago landmarks like the Wrigley Building, the Civic Opera House and Union Station.) The total cost was $22 million.
A peculiarity of the building is that it was built using air rights over railroad tracks that terminate several blocks to the north, at Union Station, and so it has no basement. In addition, the Congress Expressway literally passes through the structure. The two-story-high tunnel carries six lanes of traffic.
I’ve never been inside2, but I want to
“I miss the grandeur of the lobby,” said Musette Henley, who worked in the building in a variety of jobs from 1961 until its closing day and is now a customer relations representative in the new facility. “They don’t build buildings like that anymore.”
The imposing Neoclassical lobby at the north end of the building, which has cream-colored marble walls and an elaborate inlaid marble floor, is certainly a stunner: 340 feet long and 40 feet wide, with a towering 38-foot ceiling.
[Van Buren side]
—
couple other photos:
the Chicago River side
- astronomical I assume [↩]
- other than by watching the Batman movie, The Dark Knight [↩]
Margot and Harold Schiff Residences
Walked by here the other day, looks like it is doing well still
Dorothy Barry says that she moved in to the Margot and Harold Schiff Residences on a “blue-sky, ain’t-nowhere-I’d-rather-be-than-Chicago” kind of day back in the summer of 2007. She says you can’t do much better than this sleek, new Helmut Jahn–designed building on the north side of the city: She gets a millionaire’s view of the skyline and is just a short ride from downtown and the beaches of Lake Michigan.
At Division Street and Clybourn Avenue, though, she’s also within blocks of the infamous Cabrini-Green public housing. Those towers are mostly torn down, replaced by mixed-income residential towers and townhouses—but their shells remind Chicagoans to do better when it comes to housing the less well-off.
Neighbors call the one-year-old stainless-steel Schiff Residences “the train,” and it does indeed resemble a polished railroad car cruising through the neighborhood. Its walls angle out as they rise up five stories, curving back over to form a roof before sliding down the other side. In a practical city raised on railroads this residential railcar is romantic. Strips of dark windows punctuate the walls, staggered to evoke forward momentum. In the ground-floor lobby, sunlight pours through great panes of floor-to-ceiling glass. Prada or Barneys could set up shop on the ground floor and no one would be the wiser.
But the Schiff Residences are permanent supportive-housing, with onsite case managers and other voluntary services. All of the 96 units are single-occupancy studio apartments. Residents here have struggled with physical and mental illness, substance abuse, and limited education. At the Schiff, you can stay as long as you follow the rules. It opened in March 2007, and already 300 people have expressed interest in moving in.
[Click to continue reading All Aboard – Ideas – Dwell]
Marina Towers – Polapan
Is the Marina Towers Condo Assocation Board still policing the internet trying to claim copyright protection for any photo of the towers? We’ll see.
[view large on black at my photoblog: www.b12partners.net/photoblog/index.php?showimage=218 ]
Demise of Gehry Design for Nets Arena Is Blow to Brooklyn
The New Jersey Nets were supposed to have moved into a new stadium in Brooklyn by now, but there have a myriad of problems relocating the team from New Jersey. Now the stadium itself has been down-sized.
As Nicolai Ouroussoff writes:
Whatever you may have felt about Mr. Gehry’s design — too big, too flamboyant — there is little doubt that it was thoughtful architecture. His arena complex, in which the stadium was embedded in a matrix of towers resembling falling shards of glass, was a striking addition to the Brooklyn skyline; it was also a fervent effort to engage the life of the city below.
A new design by the firm Ellerbe Becket has no such ambitions. A colossal, spiritless box, it would fit more comfortably in a cornfield than at one of the busiest intersections of a vibrant metropolis. Its low-budget, no-frills design embodies the crass, bottom-line mentality that puts personal profit above the public good. If it is ever built, it will create a black hole in the heart of a vital neighborhood.
[Click to continue reading Architecture – Demise of Gehry Design for Nets Arena Is Blow to Brooklyn – NYTimes.com]
Sport stadiums, and the financing of them, is one of the most puzzling and irritating aspects of US corporate welfare. Take Yankee Stadium, for instance…
One more quote from Mr. Ouroussoff’s piece:
Typically, a developer comes to the city with big plans. Promises are made. Serious architects are brought in. The needs of the community, like ample parkland and affordable housing, are taken into account. Editorial boards and critics, like me, praise the design for its ambition.
Eventually, the project takes on a momentum of its own. The city and state, afraid of an embarrassing public failure, feel pressured to get the project done at any cost, and begin to make concessions. Given the time such developments take to build, sometimes a decade or more, we then hit the inevitable economic downturn. The developer pleads poverty. Desperate to avoid more economic bad news, government officials cut a deal.
It’s a familiar ending, made more nauseating because we have seen it so many times before
Familiar, and sad. If owners of sports teams cannot afford to build a stadium for their team(s), perhaps they should be sold to the city that houses most of the team’s fans? End the public financing/private profit bullshit, in other words. In the New Jersey/New York plan, not only does the public pay for the stadium, but the stadium has no character and will probably destroy a vibrant neighborhood. Ever been past a million dollar condo near Chicago’s United Center? No, me either.
Court challenge could jeopardize Chicago’s landmark ordinance
[Louis Sullivan’s Carson Pirie Scott & Co. store, now vacant]
[Bertrand Goldberg’s Marina Towers]
Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) … urged protected status last year for the iconic riverfront complex designed by architect Bertrand Goldberg. “When you look at any snow globe they sell at O’Hare or Midway, there’s Mr. Goldberg’s beautiful towers,” Reilly said.
Yet the effort to safeguard this mid-1960s classic is grinding forward rather than speeding ahead. That is a consequence, some preservation advocates contend, of a court challenge that could jeopardize Chicago’s 41-year-old landmark ordinance — and the 281 individual landmarks and 51 districts it safeguards, including Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Crown Hall, Louis Sullivan’s former Carson Pirie Scott & Co. store on State Street, and Wrigley Field.
In January, the Illinois Appellate Court deemed the law to be unconstitutionally vague. When the Illinois Supreme Court denied the city’s appeal of that ruling last Thursday, it sent the case back to the Cook County Circuit Court, where a judge is thought to have little choice but to strike down the law.
[Click to continue reading Blair Kamin’s Landmark ordinance: Court challenge could jeopardize Chicago’s 41-year-old landmark ordinance and affect U.S. preservation efforts — chicagotribune.com]
[stairway of The Rookery, Lobby designed by Frank Lloyd Wright]
Personally, landmarks are what makes a city interesting, what gives a city an identity, what makes a city great (or by contrast, generic). Haphazardly demolishing and “reconfiguring” landmarks to make sterile condo buildings and office parks is a travesty. I sincerely hope, after what will probably be years of litigation, the City of Chicago and other metropolitan authorities come to their senses and write a stronger landmark preservation bill, protecting our shared architectural heritage.
Jonathan Fine, executive director of Preservation Chicago, an advocacy group, argues that Chicago’s landmark law is inherently political and that it represents a fine-grained application of zoning power, which allows the city to decide what uses go on what properties — and how dense those uses can be.
“It’s a land-use planning tool,” Fine said of the landmarks law. “It’s not a wrench. It’s a needle-nosed plier. It fits in there with every tool that this city has to guide and direct responsible planning.”
[Harry Weese Cottages]
Reading Around on May 15th through May 17th
A few interesting links collected May 15th through May 17th:
- A Mattress Here, A Mattress There….Why are they everywhere? | Today's Photos: Today's best Chicago photos, handpicked by our editors. in Chicago – Carryout on 17 East Ohio
by: swanksalot
- Chicago for the Architecture Buff – my photo of the Rookery stair used here:
"Rookery Building
Photo: swanksalot
209 S. Lasalle St.
Mon-Fri: 9am-8pm
Sat: 9am-4pmNamed for the giant flocks of pigeons that once roosted onsite, the Rookery is really two buildings in one."
- City Room – Metro – Alderman Destroys Public Art – "BALCER: You know I don't know if there was hidden gang meaning behind it with the cross, with the skull, with the deer, with the police camera's. Was there something anti-police about it? I don't know what's in his mind.
MARSZEWSKI: It's really too bad that he didn't know that was art.
Ed Marszewski is the art festival organizer who asked Villa to paint the mural. And it's his mom that owns the building that Villa painted on.
MARSZEWSKI: We didn't realize that you need to get a permit to paint your own wall. Do you know if that is in fact a law?
A spokesman for Chicago's buildings department says section 13 25 50 of the City Code requires building owners to have a permit for painted signage or to alter or repair painted signage on a building. But a spokesperson for the city's law department says there's no permit necessary for a mural on the side of a private building as long as it's not an advertisement and as long as the property owner has given their permission. "
Aqua project delayed
I bet the Aqua doesn’t delay too long, it has gotten so much publicity1
The ongoing credit crisis is putting the brakes on a significant Chicago building project.
Chicago-based Strategic Hotels & Resorts, Inc. said it is scrapping plans to purchase the hotel development at the Aqua Building, currently under construction and adjacent to the company’s Fairmont Chicago Hotel.
“Despite the opportunities this property presents, the financial markets and economic operating environment have changed significantly since we first entered into the agreement to purchase the space in 2006,” said Laurence Geller, president and chief executive of Strategic. “We remain committed to our thoughtful and disciplined business approach which, given the higher cost of capital, escalating total project costs and our dedication to maintaining sufficient liquidity for all market conditions, makes it imprudent for the company to proceed at this time.”
[From Financial crisis fallout: Strategic Hotels pulls out of Aqua project — chicagotribune.com]
A couple of photographs of Aqua I took earlier this year2
[other versions of these same photos found here]
Footnotes:Stairway to a Two Bedroom
Stairway to a Two Bedroom, originally uploaded by swanksalot.
R+D 659 is overpriced, really
still working on our RFP1that never ends. 2 o’clock today might get some relief2
Footnotes:664 N Michigan
Alderman Brendan Reilly emails:
664 N. Michigan Avenue-Farwell Building
Emergency repair work at the Farwell Building has necessitated closure of adjoining sidewalks on Michigan Avenue and Erie Street. The sidewalks will be closed on the west side of Michigan Avenue between Erie and Huron and on the north side of Erie between Michigan Avenue and Rush Street. The duration of the closure has yet to be determined.
What the heck is that all about?
The 11-story Farwell Building represents one of the few remaining buildings left on Michigan Avenue from the 1920’s, the period that transformed sleepy residential Pine Street into “The Magnificent Mile.” This French inspired design, highlighted with both Art Deco and Classical Revival details, exemplified the work of architect Philip Maher. Clad in limestone, the building features ornamental cast stone panels and a slate mansard roof. Its delicate scale elegantly anchors the prominent corner of Erie Street and Michigan Avenue. In addition, Maher designed 5 other buildings on the boulevard including the Women’s Athletic Club, which is also a city landmark. These remaining buildings reflect the aesthetic of the 1909 Burnham Plan, which was an attempt to turn our gritty industrial town into the “Paris by the Lake”.
and I wonder if the emergency construction is related to this:
A line in the sand has been drawn between preservationists and developers. That line is represented by the historic Farwell Building, located in the heart of the Magnificient Mile, where the Prism Development Company plans to skin the building’s historic façade, demolish the entire building, and then reapply it to a parking garage.
Jam buys Uptown for $3.2M
Finally. I truly hope Jerry Mickelson does restore the building, I’ve always had a certain fondness for it.
[Click image for full view]
Without any drama, a venture led by concert promoter Jam Productions Ltd. bought the historic Uptown Theatre on Tuesday for $3.2 million in a court-ordered foreclosure sale.
Jam principal Jerry Mickelson was the high bidder for the long-vacant theater at 4816 N. Broadway. The sale price was essentially a “credit bid” that covers repayment of about $1.8 million owed on a first mortgage and $1.4 million owed on a second mortgage that’s held by Mr. Mickelson’s group.
The only other bid came from the holder of the first mortgage.
Mr. Mickelson, who has said he plans to restore the Uptown, declined comment on the sale.
[From Chicago Business News, Analysis & Articles | Jam buys Uptown for $3.2M | Crain’s ]
I’m not even sure if I’ve ever been inside, I just like vintage theater buildings.
Jam competitors Live Nation Inc. and Madison Square Garden Entertainment both looked into buying the 1925 building, which was originally constructed as a movie palace. Jam in 2006 bought the Riviera Theatre down the street and also owns the Park West in Lincoln Park and the Vic Theatre in Lakeview, all music venues.
Zucchini In the Sky
We’ve been intrigued by Dr. Dickson Despommier’s hydroponic urban utopia ever since he made an appearance on the Stephen Colbert show a few weeks ago. Such a richly imaginative and evocative idea: much better than another parking garage or condo building.
Dr. Dickson Despommier, a professor of public health at Columbia University, hopes to make these zucchini-in-the-sky visions a reality. Despommier’s pet project is the “vertical farm,” a concept he created in 1999 with graduate students in his class on medical ecology, the study of how the environment and human health interact.
The idea, which has captured the imagination of several architects in the United States and Europe in the past several years, just caught the eye of another big city dreamer: Scott Stringer, the Manhattan borough president in New York.
When Stringer heard about the concept in June, he said he immediately pictured a “food farm” addition to the New York City skyline. “Obviously we don’t have vast amounts of vacant land,” he said in a phone interview. “But the sky is the limit in Manhattan.” Stringer’s office is “sketching out what it would take to pilot a vertical farm,” and plans to pitch a feasibility study to the mayor’s office within the next couple of months, he said.
“I think we can really do this,” he added. “We could get the funding.”
[From Country, the city version: Farms in the sky gain new interest – International Herald Tribune]
There is a slide show of some possible designs for the building here, a permalink to the New York Times article here, and Dr. Despommier’s Vertical Farm website is found here.
Chicago Center for Green Technology
Took a trek out to the very cool Chicago Center for Green Technology at 445 N. Sacramento Boulevard yesterday to inquire about green roofs and to solicit advice re: Neighbor Space parks.
Chicago Green Tech’s building was originally constructed in 1952. Since then a number of different companies have owned the building. When it came to the attention of the Chicago Department of Environment (DOE) in 1995, the building and its 17 acres were owned by Sacramento Crushing, a company which had a permit to collect limited construction and demolition debris. The Department of Environment became involved because Sacramento Crushing had gone far beyond the scope of its permit and had filled all 17-acres with illegally dumped debris. The site was littered with 70-foot high piles of rubble, one of which was so dense it sank 15 feet into the ground.
The Department of Environment successfully fought Sacramento Crushing in court and not only closed down their operation but also became the owner of the site itself. It was then DOE’s job to clean up this Brownfield. The clean up took 18 months to complete and cost about $9 million. In this process, the site was cleared of over 600,000 tons of concrete, which took 45,000 truck loads to remove. The city recouped some of the clean up cost by selling the concrete and other materials to recycling firms and to other city departments for use in their projects. For example, some of the crushed concrete was used by the Chicago Department of Transportation to lay the foundation of the parking garage at the new Millennium Park.
In 1999, DOE was the proud owner of a cleaned site and vacant building. Rather than simply renovating the building using traditional methods, DOE seized the opportunity to create an energy efficient building using the highest standards of green technology available. The Chicago Chapter of the American Institute of Architects Committee on the Environment formed a design team for the project. This team of local architects, led by Farr Associates, designed the building using a set of guidelines established by the US Green Building Council called LEED (Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design).
Apparently, some of the mounds of debris were over 70 feet tall, and compressed the ground below another 15 feet. Anyway, the building is worth a visit if you are into such things. Plus they gave us each 2 LED light bulbs.
Vegetative Green Roof – Chicago Center for Green Technology. Wild chives, succulents, and clover, I believe.
Vegetative Green Roof closeup- Chicago Center for Green Technology
We didn’t get much help regarding Neighbor Space parks and City of Chicago plant and soil resources, but we learned a lot about green roofs. I’d love to be able to install a meadow on our roof like this one, but the roof would need to be able to support 40 lbs/sq. foot, which might not be easily accomplished. Maybe, though, so a next step would be to ask a structural engineer to investigate. There are also the smaller modular vegetative green roof options: a box about 12 inches by 12 inches, filled with a few inches of soil and covered with succulents. You would use as many as you needed, they weigh less, and are easier to remove if necessary. The meadow concept is more fun though – I’d be napping up there right now if I could.
Another thought would be to install a rain water cistern and drain system, so as to utilize the water to keep plants moist at the street level (where our Neighbor Space park allegedly will be located).
Solar Panels – Chicago Center for Green Technology
Solar panels would be cool, even if the technology isn’t advanced enough to supply all of our electric needs, we still could ameliorate some of our electric costs (and have backup power if ComEd has problems as they so often do).
Money to pay for it all? Ha, that’s what home equity loans are for. There are a few tax credits available (Federal, some state programs, even less at the City level) for installing solar and green roofs, but the national demand is much greater than the supply of money available, so one’s application has to be blessed with the support of somebody politically connected to get approval. Got to fund wars in the desert, don’t you know; we as a country don’t really want to encourage sustainable living. Unfortunately.
A Semblance of Peace
Still digging through my archives. Found this shot of an architectural detail I liked. I think the photo was taken on Wells Street because the next photo in sequence was of House of Glunz Wine Shop (Wells and Diversey).
All apologies to WB Yeats
(view large on black www.b12partners.net/photoblog/index.php?showimage=20 )