Ronald Reagan Wrecked

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The great Lee Bey is reporting today that the University of Chicago is currently demolishing the apartment building where Ronald Reagan lived as a small boy.  DNAinfo.com Chicago,  which also has some nice photos, is saying the University promises to put up a plaque.

The structure was already cast in the deep shadows of Rafael Viñoly's hulking new Center for Care and Discovery (translation: it's a really big hospital).  When I wrote about this last December, it was less about history and more about the way that the U of C is super-densifying its campus at the expense of any sense of community or human scale.

Read: Say Goodbye to Ronald Reagan's Apartment: The Supply-Chaining of Hyde Park

Color Jam's Stockholder, Arquitectonica's Spear, Bey, Anthony Wood, Archi-Treasures' Jewels - its the July Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events

So now it begins.  The holiday week is over and the July Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events is ramping up to warp speed.

While some organizations take the summer month off, others are taking their place.  With their new exhibition, Skyscraper: Art and Architecture Against Gravity, the Museum of Contemporary is offering a full roster of events, beginning this Tuesday with Color Jam's artist Jessica Stockholder in conversation with MCA curator Michael Darling.   This Friday, July 13th, Joanna Szupinska offers a curator's tour of the exhibition, and on Saturday Lee Bey offers his own perspective in a Skyscraper Gallery Talk, with Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat Executive Director Anthony Wood offering his own take on Saturday the 28th.. On Wednesday the 18th, Laurinda Spear of Arquitectonica stops by for a conversation with Margarita Blanco and Marisa Fort.

Elsewhere this week, on Thursday APA Chicago holds one of its event in its Daniel Burnham Forum on Big Ideas: The Next 50: Planning, Architecture and Landscape Architecture.

On Wednesday the 18th, Archi-treasures offers up its annual Jewels in July benefit at the DIRTT Green Learning Center, while on Wednesday the 25th,  APA Chicago offers up the mayors of Chicago, Gary and Milwaukee for its annual luncheon on the topic of The Cities That Work.  Saturday, the 28th, the Chicago Art Deco Society holds a benefit to support the Chicago Art Deco Survey at the elegant ballroom of the historic Art Deco Powhatan Apartments.

The bad news is that July 19th Pecha Kucha Less is More at the Society of Architectural Historians home turf, the Charnley-Perskey House, is already sold out.  The good news is that if you haven't already bought a ticket, you won't have to suffer through my presentation.

But wait!  There's much, much more!   Check out the over three dozen events still to come on the July Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

so much for that idea . . . Shepherd's Temple/Anshe Kanesses coming down

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Lee Bey is reporting the current owners have decided to give up the fight to save the century-old building from demolition.  So, stop by in a week or so and see another monument of Chicago history be ground into dust.

Our original reports here and here.

History Discarded, History Preserved - the different fate of two Chicago churches associated with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

In the 1960's, Chicago was one of the major battlegrounds in the struggle for civil rights led by Martin Luther King, Jr.  He preached at churches throughout the city, including St. Sabina and Mount Pisgah.  In 1966, Dr. King came to Chicago to organize against the discriminatory housing policies of the administration of Mayor Richard J. Daley.  He moved into an apartment in a three-flat at 1550 South Hamlin, in the city's Lawndale neighborhood, to dramatize the issue.

 Only a few blocks away was the Friendship Baptist Church, which had moved into their new home at 3411 West Douglas Boulevard, the former Anshe Kenesseth Israel synagogue designed in 1913 by the architectural firm of Aroner and Somers.  It was one of the few churches to welcome Dr. King.  Most black ministers had willingly aligned themselves with Daley's all-powerful political machine.  According to the  book, Black Churches and Local Politics, "With the silent opposition of Daley-backed ministers and the sanctions that Daley had at his disposal to punish activist clergy, church-based resources were ineffective in mobilizing Chicago blacks. " The book quotes one of those ministers who dared to defy Daley, Reverend Clay Evans of the Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church, "Many ministers who were with us had to back off because they didn't want their buildings to be condemned or given citations for electrical work, faulty plumbing, or fire code violations."  Reverend Dr. Shelvin Jerome Hall, the long-time pastor of New Friendship Baptist, was one of the few who stood up to power, opening up his church to King.

The three-flat where Dr. King lived was damaged in the riots that followed his 1968 assassination and were demolished.  For decades the site remained a vacant lot, but last spring, new housing was finally built there, designed by Johnson and Lee Architects.  In 1983, Friendship Baptist moved to a new church they had constructed for themselves at 5200 West Jackson, beginning a long period of decline for the Douglas Park building,

Just in time for Christmas, the City of Chicago's Department of Buildings declared the historic structure on Douglas Boulevard - vacant and deteriorating for several years - "in imminent danger of collapse" and the Law Department has issued an emergency demolition order.  Activists have begun a petition drive to stay the demolition.  Last week, Lee Bey created this post about the church, with great photographs.  Preservation Chicago listed the building as one of its 2011 Seven Most Endangered, and you can find their report, from which the above pair of photographs was taken, here.

 Although Dr. King's experience there was contentious - at a famous meeting, he was challenged by the newly emerging Black Power militants - at Liberty Baptist Church, at 49th and South Boulevard, unlike Shepherd's Temple, has endured.  Unlike so many Afro-American churches, which found their homes in houses of worship abandoned by fleeing whites, this striking building, designed by architect William N. Alderman, with its own kind of distinctive modernism, was built specifically for the congregation.  Dedicated in 1956, it remains a handsome presence on what has now been renamed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Drive, and down through the decades it has been central to the civil rights struggle in Chicago.

You you can read all about it in this article from last January, Modern Struggles, Modern Design, Dr. King and the story of Liberty Baptist Church. 

Housing after Katrina, Restoring St. John Cantius, Lee Bey judges Gingerbread - 3 Great New Events

ArchitectureChicago PLUS apologies to those of you who have been experiencing problems viewing our calendar in - if you'll excuse the expression - Internet Explorer.  We believe we've fixed the problem.  If not, let us know.

Just added to the December calendar:

On Friday, December 10th, to observe Human Rights Day,  marking the date in 1948 when the United Nations issued the first global Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the National Public Housing Museum will be sponsoring a screening at Roosevelt University of the documentary Coming Home: The Dry Storm, about the housing crisis in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

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On Monday the 13th at the Harold L. Washington Library, Brother Joshua Caswell SJC will present Restoring a Landmark: The Story of St. John Cantius  Church, the north side landmark designed in 1893-98 by architect Adolphus Druiding, covering the major interior and exterior restorations that have been undertaken beginning in the 1980's.

Then for a good time for a good cause - the restoration of Frank Lloyd Wright's iconic Unity Temple, on the evening of December 9th, the Unity Temple  Restoration Foundation will be offering up Edible Edifice: Reinterpreting the Classic Gingerbread House, at Room & Board, 55 E. Ohio.

Attendees will be enjoy hot cider, holiday trees from Bleeding Heart Bakery and live music, and be able to review the designer gingerbread houses entered into a competition to be judged by Bleeding Heart's Michelle and Vinny Garcia, Smith+Gill's Jeff Stafford and Michelle Dumont, and architecture critic and Chicago Central Area Committee Executive Director Lee Bey. 

Projects will be judged on six criteria: originality, use of materials, craftsmanship, site design, use of lighting, and that special "je ne sais quoi . . . The works will then be auctioned off to the highest bidders with proceeds benefiting that other convention-defying edifice, Unity Temple.

There are over two dozen events still to come this month.  Check out the complete December Calendar here.