designslinger
Mutually Insured
When you look at these pictures of the former Mutual Insurance Building, imagine the top
four stories removed and you'd know what the structure actually looked like when it was built in 1921.
Originally designed by the architectural duo of Fugard & Knapp, the additional four floors
came from the pencil of Leo Steif in 1926 when the Lumbermen's Mutual Casualty Company took up tenancy. Eventually the insurance firm occupied the entire building which grew into the Kemper Insurance Group, headed by Mutual's president James S. Kemper, and became the national headquarters of the growing insurance conglomerate.
The exquisite terra cotta details designed by Fugard, and continued up the facade by Steif,
have survived - surprisingly - virtually intact. Given that Kemper left the property in 1971 when they donated the building to the Chicago Ecumenical Institute, the exterior has held up fairly well during the past few decades. It currently houses the offices of the ICA-USA, an offshoot of the Institute, and a slew of non-profit, social service agencies. Kemper was gobbled up by a company called Unitrin in 2003.
And despite all the changes in and around the building, it still shines at the corner of
Lawrence and Sheridan.
Friday Snippets 2.5.10
Alberto Giacometti's Walking Man sets an art auction record selling for $104 million. [WSJ]
Dell buys vintage photo collection for a reported $100 million. [Lindsay Pollock]
The Metropolitan Museum of Art chalks up a record $8.4 million operating deficit.
[Bloomberg]
A ravaged movie palace set to have a dazzling, new premiere. [NY Times]
In Russia, President Medvedev becomes a champion of historic preservation.
[Art Newspaper]
The $8 billion dollar high-speed rail plan and Chicago's Union Station. [Cityscapes]
Typewriters seem so 19th century, but artist Jeremy Mayer has put them to good use.
[Wired]
A tribute to Lucienne Day, Britain's design doyenne. [Guardian]
Are these really the 27 most influential designers and design thinkers of today?
[Business Week]
Any big plans for the weekend? Our niece is coming in from London for a short visit.
See you Monday.
Elegance on Belden
A degree of service and appointment, rare even among the world's finest hotels, will be
inaugurated in Chicago tonight with the formal opening of the Belden Hotel and Apartments.
So proclaimed the Lott Hotel Company on the November 15, 1923.
Designed by Meyer Fridstein and built for $4,000,000. the Belden was all about opulent,
luxury living in a residential apartment hotel.
The 19th century French-inspired details were planted on to this 1920s modern high-rise
to reinforce the notion of elegance. Although the apartments weren't incredibly large, the building offered all kinds of services from in-apartment dining via the Belden Restaurant located on the ground floor, to the Tea Room, the Food Shop grocery store located in the basement, and if you so desired - maid service. Leases were offered for long and short term rental, just as they are today.
By November of 1924, the society columns were calling the hotel the Belden-Stratford,
and many social events were held in the ballroom. One service the current management does not offer comes from the original opening announcement:
Cooking may be done in the kitchenette by the housewife - or a chef will do it for her - if she's not an expert.
designslinger: Word of the Week
We're taking you back to September and our very first Word of the Week. It's related to
marble, not lion brawling.
The answer's here.
Last Station Standing
It stands tall at the foot of Dearborn Street as it dead ends into Polk Street. Once one of
six great rail stations crowding downtown Chicago, the old Polk Street Station is the oldest surviving depot in the city, and the only one from the 19th century.
Built in 1885, and designed by Cyrus L.W. Eidlitz, the Romanesque Revival exterior
explodes with ornamental terra cotta decor.
Once the home of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad the head house is all that
remains of a once thriving terminal. Today the building serves as a gateway to a large housing development called Dearborn Park, which covers the vast acreage once home to the train shed and a large network of rail tracks.
There is virtually nothing left of the old interior, but if you poke around you might just find
the remnant of one of the old staircases. A piece of architecture left over from a period in American transportation history that has virtually vanished from the landscape.
Flat Living at Hotel St. Benedict
While the building hasn't changed much since it was built in 1882, the surrounding
neighborhood would be unrecognizable to the first tenants who moved into the Hotel St. Benedict Flats.
Designed by architect James Egan, the building was constructed on the site of a former
church operated by the Benedictine order, hence the inspiration for the name.
It's hard to imagine today, but back then apartment/flat living was not considered
respectable by the upper middle classes, and developer Patrick Sexton was interested in catering to that social and economic group.This may have been a reason for Egan choosing to break the facade into alternating set-backs with multiple porticoed entrances. It made the St. Benedict appear as though it could be a series of large, individual single-family townhouse/row houses.
Originally there was one apartment per floor, per bay. Eventually the large floor plans
were divided into smaller units and first floor apartments were converted into retail spaces. So although a lot has changed, the exterior has miraculously survived virtually intact for 128 years, and would still be recognizable to those first, pioneering tenants.
Friday Snippets 1.29.10
Five ways the iPad will change magazine design. [Pentagram]
iPad and the sanitary napkin. [Fast Company]
It's been a week of Old Masters in New York at Sotheby's and Christie's.
Museums and the Internet take another leap into the 21st century with LACMA's
announcement that they will publish exhibition catalogs online. [Modern Art Notes]
In the ongoing saga of Shepard Fairey and his Obama poster, the artist is now facing a
criminal investigation after he revealed he deleted files and submitted false images in the AP case.
[LA Times]
Built in 1998, voted England's most hated building, soon to be demolished. [Guardian]
Fixing broken art. [NY Times]
A butcher's son makes good. Agnolo Bronzino at the Met. [New Yorker]
Clunky construction scaffolding may become a thing of the past. [Architectural Record]
After a few 40°F days we're headed back into the zero to 10 degree range. Maybe
we'll be staying in this weekend. See you Monday.
Trump's Towering Chicago Tower
designslinger]
Chicago's Trump Tower opened in 2009 without the kind of fanfare you might expect from
The Donald. There were no fireworks exploding from the rooftop, but his building makes quite a statement.
It soars above Chicago's River and peaks out above all the buildings on the city's skyline,
except for Willis(Sears) Tower, making it the 7th tallest building in the world.
Designed by Adrian Smith when he was still with Skidmore, Ownings & Merrill, (where he
also did the Burj Kahlifa) it has been praised for its shimmering skin and panned as uninspired. I'm not a fan of the lame, spindlely spire that sits on top, it diminishes the building for me. But I must admit, the towering tower catches my eye whenever I'm downtown, and when the sun is out, the place shines.
designslinger: Word of the Week
There is a word that describes this type of sculptural artwork. It was a Word of the Week
back in October. Does it ring a bell?
The answer's here.
Snowprints
Take a look at the abstract pattern in the snow. Can you tell what it is? In the photo below
I moved in a little closer....
Any ideas? Warning! In the next picture all will be revealed, so if you're ready....
Geese prints. Or is it goose prints?
I stumbled upon this gaggle of geese swimming in freezing cold water in a Lincoln Park
lagoon.
There were hundreds of them wandering around, taking a dip and looking for something to
eat. Guess these snowbirds saw no reason to head to Florida for the winter, unlike other Chicagoans we know.