Old Buildings New Uses
lavander.fortunecity.com /Artwork: designslinger]
For those of us who love old buildings, there is a constant conundrum about what to do
with a structure once it has outlived it's original purpose. Here in LA this weekend, patients began moving from the old County Hospital building into a brand new state-of-the-art facility. The older building was opened with great fanfare in 1933 with Mary Pickford as the celebrity ribbon-cutter. Designed by an architectural consortium, Allied Architects, the 2 million square foot hospital has all the earmarks of a restrained Art Moderne design theme. The white terra-cotta building sitting proudly on a hilltop served as the iconic symbol of the opening credits of "General Hospital" for over 20 years.
katherine via flickr; (Inset) Terra-cotta detail, kelliekp via flickr /Artwork: designslinger]
Chicago's Cook County Hospital went through a similar transition in 2002 when a new
facility replaced a building that opened in 1914. The Beaux-Arts structure was designed by the County's staff architect Paul Gerhardt along with Chicago based architect Richard Schmidt. Schmidt, Garden & Martin was an architectural firm that followed the Frank Lloyd Wright/Louis Sullivan school of organic Prairie-style architecture. Two of the firm's best buildings in Chicago are the Humboldt Park Boathouse and the Madlener Residence. The Madlener house is now the home of the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and worth stopping-by if you're ever in Chicago's Gold Coast neighborhood. Schmidt incorporated some of the Prairie School massing and brick pattern in the hospital building, so maybe the cartouches, decorative cornices and Ionic columns came from Gerhardt. The hospital also served as the inspiration, and fictional location, for the long running TV series "ER."
When each County governmental body decided that the older hospital buildings needed
replacing, the big question was, "What do we do with these hulking white elephants?" In the case of LA County, a decision was made to use the first 4 floors of the building as administrative office space, leaving the upper floors vacant. The Cook County Board, on the other hand, had determined that the old building was a useless wreck of a place and ordered that it be demolished and the land turned into a park. The preservation community, along with a large portion of the general public, thought that the building was worth saving. The Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois published a reuse plan for the hospital in April of 2003, and by 2007 a compromise was worked out. Portions of the back of the building would be demolished, but the main building would remain standing and be converted into medical office space. Once again, reason prevailed and we have not one, but two, historically significant structures that have found a new life in an old body.
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