designslinger

Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago

designslinger — Mon, 21 May 2012 08:00:00 GMT

[Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago (2012) Zimmer Gunsul Frasca, architects /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

In a couple of weeks, when Chicago's Children's Memorial Hospital leaves the neighborhood it has called home for 130 years and moves about a mile-and-a-half-south, it will have a new address, a new state-of-the-art building and a new name. The move will physically bring the hospital into the multi-block, Northwestern University Medical complex, an institution that Children's has been closely associated with for a number of years. Their new home is one of a number of healthcare facilities in the portfolio of architects at Zimmer Gunsul Frasca (ZGF), including Children's Hospital in LA. The $915 million, 23-story, structure will have twice as much space as the old facility and provide patients with 288 beds in private rooms. In addition, the architects have given both patients and visitors a special, dramatically spacial moment in a two-story "sky lobby," all wrapped-up in an environmentally LEED conscious building.

[Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, 225 E. Chicago Avenue, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

Children's started life as the Maurice Porter Memorial Hospital in a two-story house located at the corner of Belden and Halsted Street in the city's Lincoln Park/DePaul neighborhood in 1882. Julia Foster Porter was born in Chicago in 1846, one of three daughters of Dr. John Foster. In 1874, when Foster died after being thrown from his carriage, the three girls inherited a large portion of their father's estate which included some of the city's most productive, income producing property. Way back, when Chicago was no more than a few log cabins and a fort, Lt. Amos Foster (John's brother) was stationed at Fort Dearborn and purchased a number of recently plotted city lots in and around the intersection of Wabash, Randolph and Washington Streets, in what would eventually become Chicago's downtown Loop district. When the unmarried and childless Amos was shot and killed in 1835 by another soldier while stationed in Wisconsin, John was the beneficiary of those empty city lots, which became the bedrock of the Foster family fortune.

[Lurie Children's Hospital /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

After her father's death, Julia, married to Episcopalian minister Edward Clark Porter pastor of a church in Racine Wisconsin, bought out her sisters share of the inheritance when they decided they weren't interested in real estate and wanted to sell. Edward and Julia Porter had two sons, Maurice and James, and after Maurice's death at the age of 13, soon followed by her husband's death of a ruptured appendix, Julia moved back to Chicago, and in 1882 purchased the Belden Avenue property and opened the city's only hospital devoted to children's care, in the name of her son. Soon after establishing the small hospital, she purchased a large, corner piece of property nearby and built a three-story brick building on Fullerton at Orchard Street. By the time of Julia's death in 1938 at the age of 90, the hospital campus had grown to include the triangle of land it sits on today, and the name Children's Memorial Hospital.

In 2007 the trustees announced that a new facility was needed, and instead of tearing down the jumble of buildings built in the 1920s and 1960s on their triangular plot and starting over, it would be better to move to a location closer to the top-notch facilities located in and around Northwestern. Ann Lurie who had once been a nurse at the hospital in the early 70's stepped in with a donation of $100 million. Lurie's husband Bob was real estate mogul Sam Zell's partner, and in 1988 Bob Lurie was diagnosed with colon cancer and died two years later. A widow with six children to raise, Ann made the decision to devote time and energy into overseeing the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Foundation, which has given away over $300 million to a variety of causes, including founding and funding children's care hospitals, the Africa Infectious Disease Village Clinics, in Kenya.

See another recent Chicago hospital's latest addition at: Rush University Medical Center.

Friday Snippets 5.18.12

designslinger — Fri, 18 May 2012 08:00:00 GMT

[Overalls Shirts Pants /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

Scaling tall buildings. [Bustler]

Jubilee Queen. [Telegraph]

City type. [Inhabitat]

Here's the skinny. [Guardian]

Underground art. [Travelettes]

Vivid space. [yatzer]

And another week speeds by. Whew. See you Monday.

EnV Chicago

designslinger — Wed, 16 May 2012 08:00:00 GMT

[EnV Chicago (2010) Valerio Dewalt Train Associates, architects /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

While a giant drill began to burrow holes deep into the ground of the former parking lot at the corner of Kinzie and Wells Street in late August 2008, prepping the site for the solid concrete caissons that would support the luxury apartment high-rise, the country's economy was on far shakier ground. Just 3 weeks later, it looked like the U.S. was on its way to another Great Depression, but construction continued on EnV Chicago.

[EnV Chicago, 161 W. Kinzie Street, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

Lynd, a large developer and property management company based in San Antonio, Texas, had decided to break into the Chicago market with a cutting-edge apartment tower. The 24-story building, designed by the architects at Valerio Dewalt Train Associates, included a floor plate comprised primarily of studio and one-bedroom apartments, with a two-bedroom unit on one end. Sitting just 8 feet from the steel super structure supporting a branch of the city's famous El, the designers installed 1 1/4" thick glass to help and cut down on the noise. Floor to ceiling glass was also used to enclose small, balcony-like sky-boxes that projected out from the corners, which would provide a non-acrophobic tenant with great views, while being suspended in air.

[EnV Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

For the next 2 years while other projects around town never got off the ground at all, or were destined to end up as just a hole in the ground, or to have several floors of their concrete framework rise into the sky only to be stopped as the economy tanked and end up sitting it there forlorn, unfinished and wrapped in plastic, the glass sheeting on the EnV tower continued its march upward. When the building was completed in the summer of 2010, the developers optimistic promise that its 200+ apartments would be fully leased on opening day fell a bit short. With some of the highest rentals rates in the area, the project only had about 40% of its apartments leased. But insurance giant MetLife must have seen potential in the building, because in January 2012 they plunked down a reported $120 million for the shiny blue, El-adjacent tower, in a hot rental market that has loosened the purse strings.

See two adjoining neighbors at: 325 N. Wells Street, Chicago; and 300 North LaSalle.

Marshall Field & Co. - Wabash Avenue South Building

designslinger — Mon, 14 May 2012 08:00:00 GMT

[Marshall Field & Co. - Wabash Avenue South Building (1892) D.H. Burnham & Co., architects; Charles B. Atwood, designer /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

The year 1891 did not start out well for architect Daniel Burnham. Although his office was   as busy as ever and he was overseeing the design and construction of Chicago's huge Columbian Exposition, on January 15th, John Root, his business partner, friend, and creative genius, died of pneumonia. Into the void left by Root's death stepped Burnham & Co. architects Ernest Graham, Dwight Perkins, and a recent hire, Charles B. Atwood.

[Marshall Field & Co. - Wabash Avenue South Building, 104 N. Wabash Avenue, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

Atwood had been recommended to Burnham by one of the Fair's consulting architects William Ware, founder of the architecture programs at MIT, and New York's Columbia University. Atwood had gained recognition in New York as the in-house architect and lead designer for Herter Brothers, New York's exclusive, high-end interior decorating firm. He was credited with the interiors of William Henry Vanderbilt's double mansion on Fifth Avenue, and a number of other Beaux Arts, classically-inspired projects on the East Coast. Charles McKim, one of New York City's pre-eminent architects cautioned Burnham that while Atwood was very talented, he was also, well, perhaps a bit unstable. Burnham brushed aside McKim's concerns and brought the 42-year-old architect to Chicago, putting him in charge of the design of over fifty Fair structures, as well as projects needing attention unrelated to Fair business. One of those projects was for retailer Marshall Field, who was looking to expand his State Street store.

[Marshall Field & Co. - Wabash Avenue South Building /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

When you visit the massive Macy's State Street location today, which was once the   flagship store of the Marshall Field & Co. chain, the seamless looking property is actually a series of interconnected buildings constructed over a period of 15 years. The original store stood on the northeast corner of State and Randolph Streets, and by 1890 was bursting at the seams. Field turned to Burnham & Root, who had just finished the design for an armory for Illinois' 131st Infantry on land donated by the retail baron. With Root's death, and an important client to impress, Burnham turned over the design to Atwood.

The new building would stand on the corner of Wabash and Washington, directly behind   the existing Field & Leiter store. Field was only going to use the first 4 floors of the new 9-story building for retail purposes, and rent-out the upper 5 floors to business clients, where the "New Marshall Field Building" would offer the most up-to-date office space available in Chicago's burgeoning business district. Atwood may have helped with the marketing of the 1st class office building by designing a skyscraper that looked nothing like any other building on the city's bustling downtown streets. The structure stood-out among some of Chicago's latest and greatest because with its elaborately decorated "Spanish Renaissance" facade - the city's first purposefully Beaux Arts high-rise. Unfortunately, not long after the building was completed in 1893 the steel girders of Chicago's elevated railroad system rose up along Wabash burying the east facade in shadow. And, as the store you see today began to rise, it slowly began to engulf Atwood's stand-alone structure to become known as the Wabash Avenue South Building. With the store building completed and the Fair on its way to being launched, Atwood turned his attention to another Burnham & Co. project just a block away from the "New" Field Building, the Reliance Building. Completed in 1895, it was Atwood's triumph and his end song. Just a year later, Atwood was dead, succumbing to an opium addiction which may have explained the erratic behavior that Charles McKim had once cautioned Burnham about.

See more of Burnham & Co.'s Marshall Field complex at: Retail Revived, and more of Atwood at: The Reliance Building.

Friday Snippets 5.11.12

designslinger — Fri, 11 May 2012 08:00:00 GMT

[Stevens (ca. 1923) Stevens Building /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

Friezing. [NY Magazine]

Printing. [Design Observer]

Sketching. [National Geographic]

Viewing. [Wired]

Buying. [Telegraph]

Styling. [Guardian]

See you Monday!

Albert F. Madlener House

designslinger — Wed, 09 May 2012 08:00:00 GMT

[Albert F. Madlener House (1902) Richard E. Schmidt, architect /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

The Albert Madlener house is one of those Chicago architectural wonders often referred to as "groundbreaking," and making all kinds of "must see" lists. Originating from the architectural office of Richard E. Schmidt and his lead designer Hugh M. Garden, and paid for by liquor distiller and investment banker Albert F. Madlener, the house is a blend of Prairie School styling with a touch of Arts & Crafts, and a dash of Louis Sullivan.

[Albert F. Madlener House, 4 W. Burton Place, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

Madlener & his wife Elisa Seipp Madlener, daughter of one of the city's wealthier brewers Conrad Seipp, raised their son Albert Jr. in the house, who, in 1963, decided to sell the old family homestead following his mother's death the previous year, to a real estate developer. Once word got out that the Madlener house was on its way to becoming a pile of rubble in order to clear the site for a modern high-rise apartment building, a small but vocal group of architects began writing letters to the the editor of the city's newspapers in an attempt to raise awareness of the impending demolition. Charles F. Murphy, Jr. a Chicago architect and partner in his father Charles, Sr.'s firm, stepped in to save the day.

[Albert F. Madlener House/Graham Foundation /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

The Murphys were trustees of the Graham Foundation for the Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, founded in 1956 from a bequest left by architect Ernest Graham after his death in 1936. The country was in the midst of the Great Depression at the time so there was no interest income being generated by the principal monies left in the estate, and it took another 20 years before the Foundation was able to award its first grant. By 1963 the lease on the foundation's Superior Street office was set to expire and Charles, Jr. thought a move into the Madlener house seemed like the perfect solution. He went to see his parents and proposed the idea, they agreed, and because of all of the bad publicity surrounding the loss of the house to the wrecking ball, the developer agreed to sell the property for $450,000.

Although the house was saved, all of the original hardware had been stripped from the interior. Prior to the sale, Albert, Jr. held an auction where the hardware was put-up for sale to the highest bidder, and the money raised was given to charity. Other than that, the house had survived the previous 61 years intact and unchanged, and has been meticulously cared for by the Graham Foundation ever since.

See more of Schmidt & Garden's work at: Montgomery Ward & Co. Mail Order & Catalog House Building, Humboldt Park Boathouse, and Reese's Pieces.

Charles A. Stevens Building

designslinger — Mon, 07 May 2012 08:00:00 GMT

[Charles A. Stevens Building (1912) D.H. Burnham & Co., architects /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

In 1886, Charles A. Stevens left the tiny town of Colchester, Illinois and journeyed 250 miles northeast to Chicago. Stevens and his brothers were running a dry goods store in Colchester at the time, when middle brother Charles decided to take a chance in the big city. He saw a future in the silk trade, and opened a small store on the second floor of Burling & Adler's Central Music Hall Building which shared the same city block with Marshall Field's State Street emporium. Selling silk exclusively paid off. By 1889 all of the male Stevens siblings had relocated to Chicago, and the following year Charles A. Stevens & Bros. moved into the ground floor space beneath the second floor shop. The company was on its way to becoming the largest, exclusive silk-seller in the country.

[Charles A. Stevens Building, 17 N. State Street, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

By sticking to one commodity, the company cornered the market on offering fine silk products from around the world, and required more space in which to do business. In 1890, Stevens moved into a larger storefront just down the street, and by 1901 had expanded into the upper floors of that building as well as having taken over two adjoining properties. Then in 1912, Chas. A. Stevens announced that they would build a brand new store on their multi-building, rather disjointed piece of land, designed with a sparkling white terra-cotta exterior by D.H. Burnham & Co. The 19-story structure would be unique among its mammoth merchandising neighbors because Stevens wanted to lease the upper floors to smaller retailers. He wanted to give them an opportunity to rent space in one of the country's most popular (and high-rent) retail districts, which was totally out of reach for many small business people. It harkened back to the days when he started out in his small shop on the second floor of the old Music Hall Building, which by this time had been demolished to make way for an ever expanding Marshall Fields.

[Charles A. Stevens Building, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

The ground floor included an arcade passageway that extended from State Street through to a Wabash Avenue property that Stevens had acquired in his earlier expansion binge. The arcade was actually more of a long hallway which included a row of display windows along one side that featured the goods and services sold by the upper floor tenants. Once you'd been enticed to take a further look, a bank of strategically placed elevators would whisk you up to the retailer of your choice. It seemed like a great idea, but it never really took off as intended, and many of the upper floor Stevens Shops became home to a cluster of shoe repairmen and manicurists.

Charles A. Stevens & Co. The Store for Women, celebrated in 100th anniversary in 1986, and closed for good in 1989. The ground floor retail space has continued to host variety of women's clothing stores, while the upper floors have lost their shoe fixers and fingernail filers to Westwood College and other non-retail focused tenants.

See a few more gleaming white terra-cotta State Street former retail establishments at: Relics of Retail; The Boston Store, Chicago; Maurice L. Rothschild & Co. Building; Three R's - Rothschild, Renovation & Reuse.

Friday Snippets 5.4.12

designslinger — Fri, 04 May 2012 08:00:00 GMT

[Oriental Theatre Building (1925) Rapp & Rapp, architects /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

Meiered in Rio. [Architizer]

Simply modern. [Wallpaper]

What a Scream. [Artinfo]

Breakout! [New City Art]

Cam captured. [Architectural Record]

Hi-tech mix. [Bustler]

Having fun this weekend? Hope so. See you Monday.

Ford Oriental Theatre

designslinger — Wed, 02 May 2012 08:00:00 GMT

[Ford Oriental Theatre (1926) Rapp & Rapp, architects /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

It was once known as the Randolph Street Rialto, four city blocks of hip, happening entertainment. Thousands of lightbulbs and neon outlined a long row businesses which included restaurants, clubs, hotels and seven gigantic theater marquees, cloaking teeming nighttime crowds in a blaze of light. The opulent 3,200-seat Oriental Theatre, the largest on the block, survived through those good times, and some bad.

[Ford Oriental Theatre, 24 W. Randolph Street, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

A couple of decades before the Oriental opened its doors on May 8, 1926 the site had been the scene of a horrific fire. The Iroquois Theater opened in November, 1903 and 5 weeks later was closed after a fire ripped through the interior auditorium and left over 600 men, women and children dead in its wake. The death toll was larger than the official final estimate of 250-300 lives lost in the aftermath of the city's huge conflagration of 1871. There were approximately 2000 people attending a holiday matinee on December 30th when a fire broke out backstage, and leapt into the auditorium causing panic and mayhem. Soon after the fire, the Colonial Theater rose-up out of the ashes.

[United Masonic Temple/Oriental Theater /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

In 1922 the local Masonic order decided to leave their 32-year-old, Burnham & Root designed Masonic Temple building at State and Randolph Street, and were on the hunt for a new location. They found one a half-a-block to the west on Randolph where the Colonial Theater stood. After a series of lease agreements with various land trusts that owned adjoining property, the Masons hired architects C.W. and George L. Rapp to design their new home. The building would not only provide lodge space for the fraternal order with a 1,500 seat, vaulted ceiling, meeting room on the top floor, but include commercial office space for rent, and room for a large theater. The decorative elements would be inspired by the architecture of the East, which was a popular theme for many Masonic buildings in the 1920s, and span an area extending from the Middle East, to India, and on to southern China. The elaborately embellished and colorful ground-floor restaurant was dubbed "The Signapore," and the theater, Balaban & Katz's "Oriental."

[Ford Center for the Performing Arts, Oriental Theatre (1998) Daniel P. Coffey and Associates, Ltd., architects /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

Over the next 60 years the lights along Randolph Street's Rialto grew dimmer and dimmer. By 1980 the teeming crowds around the Oriental of the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s had been replaced by a more unsavory group of Chicago gang members. On December 8, 1980 a group of undercover police officers arrested 75 rival gang members who had gathered at the Oriental to work out their south side vs. west side differences. Violence had escalated in the weeks before, when a gang member was shot by a an opposing affiliated member on the sidewalk in front of the theater. Then on December 10th, the building's owner said that the theater would closing. The grand two-story lobby was converted into an electronics store, and the auditorium sat forlorn and shuttered for the next 16 years.

In 1996, investors purchased the building with the help of the city of Chicago. And the architects at Daniel P. Coffey and Associates, along with the craftspeople at Conrad Schmitt Studios, oversaw the restoration of the theater, returning it back to all of its stunningly, magnificent, oriental glory.

See a few neighboring buildings at: Rathskeller on the Rialto, Building Boom, and Strikingly Typed, and a selection of 1920s-era Masonically inclined construction projects at: They Just Don't Build 'Em Like This Anymore - Pt.II, and Bloomingdale's at Home in Medinah Temple.

George A. Weiss House

designslinger — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 08:00:00 GMT

[George A. Weiss House (1886) Harald M. Hansen, architect /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

1886 was a good year for George Weiss. His beer and malting business was raking in the dough which provided him with the cash to buy a city lot in an emerging Chicago neighborhood, soon to be known as the Gold Coast. Weiss' architect Harald M. Hansen designed a home for the brewer that stood-out in a community of stand-out architecture, with its pink-blushed Georgia stone and crocket-lined roof.

[George A. Weiss House, 1428 N. State Parkway, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

Just three years before construction on the house began, Weiss had made another major purchase. The George A. Weiss Malting and Elevating Company acquired a large piece of property on Ashland Avenue on the city's near west side, where George built a large new malt house and elevator. His business and holdings grew, and the plant became the largest of its kind, in what was then considered the western United States. By 1889, the Weiss company was doing so well that George expanded into the production of beer and opened the American Brewing Company on the Ashland property. Then in 1896 he secured $800,000 in financing through bond-backed loans from the National Bank of Illinois where George Schneider, the bank's president, just happened to be George Weiss' father-in-law. All the capital stock of the Weiss company was then placed in George's hands as sole trustee. Unfortunately he used the cash infusion to speculate in other business ventures, where investments were kept in his name if they were successful, but transferred to the company if they were not.

[George A. Weiss House, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

1896 was also not a great year for Chicago's beer makers. A beer war was going on between the competing interests of Chicago brewers and their nearby competitors in Milwaukee and St. Louis. Although lots of beer was being consumed, prices kept dropping in a shake-out maneuver to see which of the large brewers would be able to take the heat and remain standing in the kitchen. George was caught up in the battle to survive, and everything started falling apart when he couldn't keep up with the payments on the $800,000. Because the loan was so large, it pushed the bank into insolvency, leaving bond holders empty handed and mad as hell, landing George in court. On February 28, 1899 a judge put the American Brewery and George A. Weiss Malting and Elevating Company into receivership, and George began liquidating personal assets to cover the losses. That September he sold the summer estate he had built in Lake Geneva in 1893 to fellow Chicago brewer Edward Uihlein, and by mid-1900, the pink marble, many crocketed house on State Parkway was no longer in the hands of George A. Weiss.

See the Weiss' next door neighbor at: Charles K. Miller House.

Friday Snippets 4.27.12

designslinger — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 08:00:00 GMT

[Augusta (ca. 1910) /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

Art gang. [Gapers Block]

Wright gone. [LA Curbed]

Design edition. [Architectural Digest]

Pier less. [Design Observer]

New Nouvel. [Connexion]

Art rules. [NY Magazine]

Closing... ?. [Guardian]

See you Monday!

Elm Tower, Chicago

designslinger — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 08:00:00 GMT

[Elm Tower (2002) A Epstein & Sons International, Inc., architects /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

Although the architects at A. Epstein & Sons seem to have looked to the historic Art Deco and Art Moderne periods (with a splash of Gothic something or other thrown-in) for some sort of inspiration in the design of the exterior of the tower at the corner of Elm and Dearborn Streets, the structures that were torn down to make way for the 20-story condo building had a much larger impact on the area's modern history.

[The Elm Tower, 1155 N. Dearborn Street, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

The story begins with that big fire in 1871 that destroyed much of the city, including this near north side neighborhood. By 1874, large single family homes and 4-story rowhouses started filling-in city lots left empty and forlorn in the fire's wake. The site where the Elm Tower now stands once contained a group of these immediate post-fire, Italianate-style row house residences, which were located in the middle of the short block on North Dearborn Street. In 1886, a map of the area shows that the corner lot at Elm Street was still vacant, though by 1906 a three-sectioned row house was standing on the corner, with their front doors facing Elm.

[Elm Tower, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

This was the group of buildings still standing when development plans were announced for Elm Tower in late 1999. The following April, the Chicago Tribune reported that a local neighborhood group was fighting the demolition of the row houses in an effort to save some of Chicago's earliest post-fire residential construction which was slowly disappearing from the city's streets. The Washington Square Association hoped to save the houses, especially when they discovered that the corner, three-family brownstone had once been the mansion of real estate developer Albert L. Coe, designed and built by architects Treat & Foltz in 1888. The Tribune article stated that Coe had planned the rebuilding of Chicago in the house, although by 1888 the 56-year-old Coe and his business partner A.B. Mead had already spent a good deal of time and money rebuilding swatches of Chicago's post-fire real estate. But he must not have stayed in the house for very long. By 1891, the exclusive Chicago Blue Book listed Mr. Coe's address at the Ontario Flats, one of the city's first, elite apartment blocks, and at the time of his death in 1901, he was residing on posh Bellevue Avenue just off Lake Shore Shore.

Although the Association couldn't save these buildings, it did spur the city to expand the existing Washington Square Historic District in 2002 to include a group of buildings along Dearborn that had survived the extensive redevelopment and destruction of Chicago's past.

See some of the Dearborn Street survivors at: Dinner Is Served, Refuse Salon, Last Row Standing, Scottish Rite Cathedral, Chicago, The Newberry Library; and some of the new construction at: 30 West Oak Street and Ogden International School of Chicago.

McCormick Building

designslinger — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 08:00:00 GMT

[McCormick Building (1910/1912) Holabird & Roche, architects /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

McCormick. It's a name that's familiar to generations of Chicagoans, and because of the vast halls of McCormick Place, to millions of visiting conventioneers. The McCormicks were rich, powerful and provided the city with a number of buildings that bore their name over the years, including the 20-story brick block at the corner of Van Buren Street and Michigan Avenue. Built in two phases, the building housed the offices of one branch of a McCormick family fortune, a trust set up by Leander McCormick in the 1890s, which grew in size and provided his heirs with a steady and generous stream of income for decades.

[McCormick Building, 330-332 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

The McCormick name had been attached to a number of other buildings around town before Leander's son Robert Hall McCormick decided to build another familial titled structure. He hired the prominent Chicago architectural firm of Holabird & Roche, who had designed a cluster of buildings for the McCormicks on Michigan Avenue near Monroe Street in 1890. Today those three, historically significant structures, known as the Gage Group, were originally called the McCormick Buildings. A little further south down Michigan at Van Buren, stood the 1880s-era Victoria Hotel which had started life as the Beaurivage Bachelor Apartments, one of the city's earliest and chicest apartment hotels for sophisticated gentlemen. R. Hall bought the old hotel and tore it down in 1909 to make way for his latest real estate investment. The design was atypical for an architectural firm that had helped create the now famous Chicago School, with its broad wide window openings filling the open spaces of the underlying structural steel frame, but it worked perfectly for McCormick. So much so that the architects were called back in 1911 to design an addition to the recently completed structure, when McCormick got hold of the property just to the north of his building and constructed a seamless extension that doubled the size of the original.

[McCormick Building, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

Robert Hall McCormick, Jr. took over the reigns of his father's and grandfather's real estate empire in 1917 and continued to oversee the trust from the family offices at the top of the building. Robert, Jr. liked the building so much that he lived in a penthouse suite on the 20th floor where he introduced his third wife to Chicago society in 1945. Before his death in 1963, McCormick, Jr. invested in an apartment building venture that involved developer Herb Greenwald and architect Mies van der Rohe. McCormick was so enamored with Mies' open floor plans and glass to ceiling windows that he moved from his Michigan Avenue penthouse and into an apartment with a stellar lake view at 860-880 Lake Shore Drive.

Today there are people living in the top 6 floors of the building Robert, Jr. once called home. And even though a family member hasn't had a financial interest in the building for decades, it's still called The McCormick.

See the building's neighbors at: Karpen Building, Chicago; Metropolitan Tower/Straus Building; and a little further up the street at: Filling In the Holes.

Friday Snippets 4.20.12

designslinger — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 08:00:00 GMT

[Spring tulips with Nickerson & Murphy /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

Palatial decay. [Chicago Reader]

Twisted tower. [Bustler]

Cultural death. [Artinfo]

Booked. [BBC]

Crystalized. [Wallpaper]

Remixed. [National Geographic]

Spring has sprung. See you Monday!

Horatio N. May House

designslinger — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 08:00:00 GMT

[Horatio N. May House (1891) Joseph L. Silsbee, architect /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

Architect Joseph Lyman Silsbee was a busy man in 1890. Residential commissions were piling in, and he and his team were hard at work on a few projects for the big World's Columbian Exposition which was going to open in Chicago in a couple of years. The year before, his client Jenkin Lloyd Jone's nephew Frank Wright, whom Silsbee had brought to Chicago and into his office from the young man's Wisconsin home, had left the firm for the much larger offices of Adler & Sullivan. But that was several years before Frank Wright became the Frank Lloyd Wright we know today.

[Horatio N. May House, 1443 N. Astor Street, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

One residential commission on Silsbee's drafting table at the time was the home of Horatio and Anna May. May had made a lot of money in the wholesale grocery business as well as by investing his ever growing income in real estate. He purchased a large double lot on a sparsely populated but expanding Astor Street in the late 1880s and decided to build a house on one of them at No. 147 Astor. He hired J.L. Silsbee as his architect.

[Horatio & Anna May House /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

While overseeing work on the May house and the designs on a couple of buildings for the World's Fair, Silsbee was also busy working with engineer Max E. Schmidt on what would become one of the Fair's more popular and well traveled attractions, the Movable Sidewalk. Looping its way through the Fair grounds, the "Multiple Dispatch Railway of Endless Moving Platforms" was made-up of a stationary platform which you stepped from and on to a very slowly moving platform. Then it was just an easy step over to a faster moving platform where you could sit on a canopied covered bench until you were ready to disembark at your destination. Never traveling much faster than 3 miles per hour, the conveyance moved approximately 40,000 people an hour through the acres of Fair grounds. It was so popular that in November, 1893 a consortium of businessmen proposed building an elevated movable sidewalk in the downtown commercial district to accompany the new elevated loop railroad. The elevated railroad got built, but not the walkway.

Anna May was also quite the innovative thinker and planner. She lived north of the river in her secluded community and all of her shopping was done south of the river in the central retail district. The bridges crossing the river were ugly and crowded and Anna had an idea that there was a better way to traverse the dividing waterway by building a boulevard that would travel under the river bed. Chicago Mayor DeWitt Cregier had proposed building an expansive bridge at a wide point in the river connecting Michigan Avenue with the north side at a cost of $5,000,000. Anna believed the bridge idea was old school and proposed constructing a 50-foot-wide, 3,200-foot-long, slowly-receding, road and pedestrian boulevard tunnel just east of today's Rush Street, that would burrow under the river and rise again on Michigan Avenue at Randolph Street. She hired Silsbee to work with her on the plan which included Corinthian-capped columns supports, white glazed tile walls and electric lighting, all coming in at a much less costly $1,500,000. Thirty years later the Michigan Avenue Bridge connected the two sides, while Mrs. May's tunnel scheme never saw a shovel put to ground.

When her husband died suddenly in 1898, Anna May hired Silsbee to design the May Chapel in Rosehill Cemetery, the end point of an interesting architectural relationship.

See where Frank Lloyd Wright got to know Joseph Lyman Silsbee at: The Chapel.

105 W. Madison Building, Chicago

designslinger — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 08:00:00 GMT

[105 W. Madison Building (1928) D.H. Burnham & Co., architects /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

The monumental architect Daniel Burnham died in 1912, but his namesake firm lived on in a couple of interpretive iterations over the next few years. First as Graham, Burnham & Co. when lead designer Ernest Graham partnered with Burnham's two sons, Hubert and Daniel, Jr. Then back to D.H. Burnham & Co. when Graham went off on his own to carry on in the grand classical Burnham tradition, while the Burnham boys continued to embrace their father's classical style and going back to using the name of the firm at the time of their father's death. In 1928 Hubert and Daniel, Jr. completed construction on a rather nondescript building in Chicago's central business district, but it was notable for the company because it was a break from the past.

[105 W. Madison Building, 105 W. Madison Street, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

Although Burnham père had made his reputation as a grand master of classical Greco-Roman Revialist styles, by the late 1920s his sons left the Corinthian-capped columns behind, and began to embrace the linear forms and contemporary geometry of Art Deco. While the Madison-Clark Building wasn't heralded as groundbreaking, nor did it receive much notice in the professional journals of the day, the building was a precursor of great things to come.

[Chicago Real Estate Board Building /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

A few months after construction was underway, Hubert & Daniel Burnham, changed the name of the company to Burnham Brothers, simpler, more accurate, and perhaps a sign of the changing times and styles. In 1942 the building got a new name, the Chicago Real Estate Board Building, a title the tower held on to until 1970 when the Board vacated after a rent increase. By then the brothers long association with architecture had come to an end. Hubert left Chicago in 1955 when he retired as a partner in the firm of Burnham Bros. & Hammond and moved to La Jolla, CA., where he died in 1968. Daniel, Jr. on the other hand remained active in the firm until his death in a car accident in 1961. And soon after the completion of the Madison-Clark experiment, Burnham Bros. designed and built one of Chicago's surviving Art Deco treasures, the Carbide & Carbon Building on Michigan Avenue, completed in 1930, which became one of the last buildings built in downtown Chicago - a construction drought that lasted for the next 25 years.

See more at: Carbide & Carbon.

Friday Snippets 4.13.12

designslinger — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 08:00:00 GMT

[NO PARKING IN ALLEY /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

Titanic. [Architizer]

København. [Archinect]

Malled. [Bustler]

Skinned. [Architectural Record]

Woodworked. [Wallpaper]

Hirsted. [Guardian]

Friday the 13th. Hm. See you Monday - safe and sound.

451 W. Wrightwood, Chicago

designslinger — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 08:00:00 GMT

[451 W. Wrightwood (1928) Raymond A. Gregori, architect /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

During the mid-to-late 1920s Chicago experienced a boom in tall apartment building construction. Focused primarily along the lake front and nearby neighborhoods, the city's relatively low-rise residential skyline was punctuated by these rising 12, to 15, to 20-story towers. Some were built with large, expensive, 9-room-and-up floor plans, while others provided 1, 2 or 3-room apartments at a more affordable price. But even the developers of these less expensive, smaller-quartered-units spent money on elaborate exterior decoration, providing their buildings with a visual umph that belied their more modest accommodations.

[451 W. Wrightwood Avenue, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

When builder and developer Ben Bogeaus purchased the large corner lot in the Lakeview neighborhood in 1927 where the Williams family mansion once stood, he called on architect Raymond A. Gregori to design two, multi-story apartment buildings. The two structures would share a common courtyard and both would offer smaller sized residential units, but the builder wanted each building to have something distinctive that would catch the eye of a passerby, or make a good first impression on a potential renter. Many developers thought that the spending a few extra dollars on an additional flourish or two would pay-off when it came time to market their investment. So a lot of architects around the city were dressing-up the exteriors of these rather bland brick towers with some sort of interpretative re-imagining of a past architectural era, and the more styles you threw in, the better. Gregori went wild with the tower at the corner of Wrightwood and Hampden Court, concocting a decorative scheme that seems to have been inspired by ancient Babylon, the Middle East, with a smattering of Italian Romanesque thrown in for good measure.

[Park Royale Apartments /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

The 14-story Park Royale Apartments would provide apartments of 1 to 4 rooms, starting at $40/month and peaking at $140/month. The Park Royale, unlike its sister building the Park Central next door, would provide hotel-like accommodations with furnished apartments, a concierge, and 24-hour switchboard and elevator service. Bogeaus' $2.5 million investment also included an elaborate, 65 X 100-foot long lobby with Florentine-style trimmings, along with a Wizard of Oz themed playroom in the tower penthouse for the youngsters. The building held on to its Park Royale name while going through several changes in ownership and management over the ensuing decades, but by 1983 the name had been changed to the less regal sounding Wrightwood Court. Today, while Gregori's Royale has held on to all of its extravagant decoration, it is now known simply as 451 W. Wrightwood.

See 451's ornate, across-the-street neighbor at: Built on Beer.

Anshe Emet Synagogue, Chicago

designslinger — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 08:00:00 GMT

[Anshe Emet Synagogue (1910) Alfred S. Alschuler, architect /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

1926 was a big year for Congregation Anshe Emes. Organized by a small group of men in the parlor of Louis Sax's near north side Chicago home in 1873, 53 years later the 1,000+ members of Anshe Emes were able to raise $325,000 in cash and purchase a 1,300-seat house of worship on North Pine Grove Avenue.

[Anshe Emes Synagogue, 627 W. Patterson Avenue, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

This was not the Conservative Jewish congregation's first move. That occurred in 1876 when the original members were able to raise enough funds to rent Phoenix Hall on Division Street for weekly services. By 1893, things were going well enough that the group was able to build their own synagogue around the corner on Sedgwick Street, but one more move had to happen before settling into their Pine Grove sanctuary. By 1914 the folks who worshipped at Anshe Emes were moving up and away from the old neighborhood and relocating further north. So that same year, the congregation purchased an empty lot on Gary Place (now Patterson) near Addison just off today's Broadway. The new building was not much larger than the Sedgwick property, but it did include a social hall and enough space for classrooms.

[Anshe Emet Synagogue, 3760 N. Pine Grove Avenue, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

Anshe Emes was not the first Jewish congregation to locate in the neighborhood. In 1910 architect Alfred Alschuler designed a large sanctuary and meeting hall building for the Reform congregation Temple Sholom, which was just around the corner and up the block from Anshe Emes. When Temple Sholom decided to move a few blocks over to Lake Shore Drive and build a new house of worship in the mid-1920s, the members of Anshe Emes decided to buy the soon-to-be-vacated building and move around the corner. It was in 1929, when Rabbi Solomon Goldman was formally installed as the spiritual leader of the synagogue that the "s" in emes was replaced by a "t", and Anshe Emes became Anshe Emet. In Hebrew, the word for truth is emet (אֱמֶת).

See more of Alschuler's congregational work at: Mt. Pisgah Missionary Baptist Church, Chicago; and K.A.M. Isaiah Israel; plus the "new" Temple Sholom.

Friday Snippets 4.6.12

designslinger — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 08:00:00 GMT

[Magen David (1930) Temple Sholom /Image & Artwork: designslinger]

Endangered. [Preservation Chicago]

Protected. [City of Chicago]

Renovated. [Bloomberg]

Unveiled. [Architect's Newspaper]

Installed. [Bustler]

The end. [End Piece]

That wraps up this week. See you Monday.