All Systems Crash
[Trustees System Service Building (1929) Thielbar & Fugard, architects /Images & Artwork: designslinger]
There is a lot to see on the exterior of the Trustees System Service Building and some of one of the best views are from a train car on Chicago's northbound Brown or Purple Line's elevated track as it heads out of the Loop. You feel like you can almost touch the building as the train slowly bends with the curve as you head north.
[Trustees System Service Building, Chicago /Images & Artwork: designslinger]
In June of 1929 architects Thielbar & Fugard announced plans to build a 32-story high-rise on a site fronted on two sides by the el. Their building would replace a post-Fire building constructed long before the el appeared, and even though the location wasn't great the team still went all out and in creating some classic Art Deco detailing to fill out the facade - from top to bottom. Unfortunately a few months after the announcement, in October, the stock market crashed and the Trustees System building was one of the last, high-rise commercial structures built in the city until the early 1950s.
[Corn Products Building, Chicago /Images & Artwork: designslinger]
The Trustees System Service was a financial services company and from the moment you entered the building, money and industry was the theme. Panels designed by Eugene van Breeman Lux depicted figures performing activities related to finance and capital while Edgar Miller cut thin sheets of lead to create silhouettes of workers plying their crafts. But the economic downturn caught up with Trustees and by 1932 the company was in dire straights. With liabilities of $18,000,000 and assets of $1,800,000 the company was taken over by its creditors. Sound familiar?! Apparently the seven directors of the System were the only employees at the time and while they had been selling stock supposedly underwritten by gold-backed bonds, the whole exercise was a kind of Ponzi scheme, a term not nearly as well known as it is today. By 1949 the Corn Products Refining Company moved in and the building was known as the Corn Products Building for the next 20 years.
[Century Tower/Skyline Century of Progress /Images & Artwork: designslinger]
In the late 1990s the building underwent a $60 million rehab and conversion from commercial to residential. After years of weather, coal dust and soot the exterior was cleaned, once again revealing Thielbar & Fugard's dynamic gradated color scheme in the brick work. Darker tinted face brick starts at the lower floors and lightens up as it rises to the ziggurat at the top, which conceals the buildings mechanical systems. The step back was the result of zoning laws requiring buildings of a certain height to move inward as they climbed high so their shadows wouldn't plunge the street below into perpetual darkness. Although the decoration above the 22nd floor isn't easy to see from the street, if you go into the parking garage across the way and take the elevator to the top level, you can get a different close-up view of this Deco delight.
Posted by designslinger at 11/16/2010 4:11 AM 
Categories: Architecture, Preservation, History, Adaptive Reuse, Decorative Arts
Tags: Thielbar and Fugard commercial architecture
Categories: Architecture, Preservation, History, Adaptive Reuse, Decorative Arts
Tags: Thielbar and Fugard commercial architecture
Comments