It's Personal: Two Macabre Dances, a Half Century Apart

Steppenwolf Theatre is in the midst of an extended run of "The Dance of Death", August Strindberg's astringent 1900 play about an aged/aging couple's abusive - if entertaining - relationship, trapped - or volunteered - within a bleak, combative marriage that seems to anticipate the landscapes of everything from Beckett to Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff, 

It's a vivid, superbly acted production, and it put me in mind the last time I encountered this play.  It was 1970, and the family had decided to make spring vacation trip to Washington, D.C.  On a day when my sister accompanied my dad on a trip to the Government Printing Office. GPO's Chicago operation, in the massive old Post Office with the Eisenhower Expressway running through it, was where my Dad spent pretty much his entire working life, printing what he called "The Synopsis" but was officially The Federal Register, thick daily volumes on cheap paper listing all federal government rules, notices and regulations

https://nationalacademy.emuseum.com/objects/10768/arena-stage

My mom chose instead to take in a matinee at the Arena Stage, and that seemed the better bet to me. Harry Weese was the architect, beating out 50 others, for the octagon Arena Stage, completed in 1961.  It was reportedly just the second theater-in-the-round ever built.  Arena Stage has a history of important productions, invlufinh The Great White Hope with James Earl Jones as boxer Jack Johnson, which made Arena Stage the first regional theater to have a production transfer to Broadway.

Credit: Archive of Affinities on tumbler

For a 17-year-old whose previous exposure to theatre, ourtesy of my grandmother, was watching from high up in the balcony the residents of River City running across the Schubert Theatre stage in frantic search for Harold Hill in the road production of The Music Man, with Forrest Tucker, it was a bit of a shock.

First, in this intimate space, the actors weren't a hundred feet away, but right in your face.  And these weren't the Iowa innocents of Meredith Wilson's classic, but a deliberately nasty bunch, a married couple in constant, acidulous battle.  It was theatre as car wreck - Strindberg's expert theatrics and often hilarious lines meant, no matter how appalling, even shocking, you couldn't look away. I didn't understand a lot of it, but the observed strains in my own parents' marriage made it weirdly resonant.

The combatants in this production,as a younger-than-his-role Edgar, was Rip Torn, the outstanding character actor whose memorable performances ranged from a Face in the Crowd to Men in Black and 30 Rock, and as his wife Alice, the luminous Viveca Lindfors, who had starred in a 1956 revival of Strindberg's play Miss Julie..  The pivotal role of Kurt, the long absent visitor that basically puts everything in motion, was played by Mitchell Ryan, the square-jawed actor who would go on to a long career in film and television.

The play was directed by Alfred Ryder, better known as a ubiquitous actor with over 100 credits on IMDB, who was The Arena Stage's longtime resident director.  Others in the cast were Julie Garfield, daughter of John, and Robert Walden, later Joe Rossi on Lou Grant, as the battling couple's children, and, as "Sentry", Richard Sanders, who would gain immortality as the nerdy, perpetually bandaged Les Nessman on WKRP in Cincinnati. The Arena Stage's PR guy was Alton Miller, who would go on to become Chicago Mayor Harold Washington's press secretary.  

The production was generously received, and so a transfer to Broadway was mounted.  The role of "Sentry" remained, but the kids were ditched. (Strindberg wrote a Dance I and a Dance II; adaptations draw from both.) Michael Strong (104 IMDB credits) took over the role of Kurt.  The revival opened at the Ritz Theatre April 28, 1971. The New York Times all-powerful theatre critic Clive Barnes judged it as needing "more style and less heat" and it closed after five performances.  Torn would return multiple times, but neither Lindfors nor Ryder would return to Broadway again.

The current Steppenwolf revival is grounded by Collette Pollard's spectacular set, which covers the edges of the stage in rocks to emulate the shore of the island where the action takes place.  The one-set living room is the well of an abandoned prison turned domicile, which is both a striking backdrop and an invidious, claustrophobic metaphor for self-incarceration within a viperous marriage.  

The 2014 version of Strindberg's masterpiece written by Conor McPherson is clear and true, blowing off the dust and making the dialogue fresh and immediate. Yasen Peyankov's direction keeps the elements of comedy, tragedy, and shock in suitably unstable balance.

Steppenwolf Theatre photo, Michael Brosilow

The performances - Cliff Chamberlain as eviscerated visitor Kurt, Steppenwolf veteran Jeff Perry as the Captain, and Law & Order's Kathryn Erbe' as Alice - are superlative, evoking laughs, dread, and terror in eloquent equal measure.  You won't find a better night in the theatre, and you have through March 22nd to see it.

Steppenwolf Theatre photo, Michael Brosilow

I think I understood at least a little more than I did back in 1970, almost ruefully aware of how time curdles, and early innocence more complicated than it seemed at the time.

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From the Arena Stage playbill, an interview with Mr. Strindberg

Windows? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Windows at the Garden Inn.

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This is where it all begins, on the north side of East Wacker, between Michigan and Wabash.  When Harry Weese's 17th Church of Christ Scientist was constructed in 1958, it left behind this 4,800-square-foot pit of back-alley grunge between the church and the 1929 Chicago Motor Club Building to the east.  And there it's stood, gathering dust ever since, for over half a century.  Too small, it seems, to gain any developer's notice.

Back in 2006, there was speculation that a developer was talking with 17th Church to sell their property so it could be combined with the empty lot to form a viably-sized parcel.  Thankfully, that didn't happen.  The pit endured.  Until now.

On Tuesday, Curbed Chicago, picking up on a discovery of construction documents made by the Skyscraper Page, unveiled a rendering of a new 27 story hotel to be shoehorned into the pit by Rhode Island hotel developer Magna Hospital Group, which had purchased the site for $5 million in 2012.

It's to be a Michigan Avenue outpost of the Hilton Garden Inn, and while that name may suggest a design evoking “rustic lodgings in a sylvan landscape”, the actual inspiration, judged by the Hilton Garden Inn in River North, seems more “multi-story detention facility.”

You could make the argument that the design for the new Hilton Garden Inn, by GREC Architects,  is a step up, but it would be something of a stretch.  This is a very Manhattan-like building, scrunched on a small site along a narrow street that's becoming something of a vertical canyon, even more if Sterling Bay replaces the four-story building at 300 North Michigan, just east of the Motor Club, with another tower.

Since it's being built flush to the Motor Club building, the Hilton Garden Inn's long east wall will not only be devoid of windows, but it will seal up all the windows on the Motor Club's west wall, making that property's announced development as still another hotel more problematic.

Strangely, the long western wall of the Garden Inn design, although completely exposed once it gets above the 17th Church next door, is also windowless.  It's a puzzler.  Are the developers anticipating that at some point 17th Church will no longer be able to resist temptation, and will sell off the building for the construction of still another high-rise?

Skyscraper Page actually found a link to the detailed construction documents on the W.E. O'Neil website.  It's pretty interesting reading if you're into such things, including the specs for all the furnishings - everything from chairs and chandeliers to faux lemons.

If only the specs for the design of the building had such rigorous expectations.


Read more:

Revival Meeting at the Church of Weese



Has the Chicago Motor Club Finally Found a Future?

Commission on Chicago Landmarks Official Designation Report: fantastic overview of the Chicago Motor Club's history, the history of the building and much more - richly illustrated.

Inside the Chicago Motor Club (from 2011)

Things Change:  The Pulled Window Shades of London Guarantee

It's SteelDay - take a Staggered Truss to Lunch! Plus Jens Jensen, Harry Weese, Graceland and BIG - the October calendar continues to swell

353 North Clark under construction (click images for larger view)

Friday October 4th is this year's SteelDay, the American Institute of Steel Construction's annual celebration of all things carbo-ferrous.  In Chicago, it's being observed with a Shop Model Review and Approval and tour of Northwestern's new Outpatient Care Pavilion.  And then at 4:00, Charlie Carter talks about The Life of the K Factor at the Pritzker Military Library in the Monroe Building.

The Godfrey Hotel, a/k/a Duke Miglin, a/k/a Staybridge

Yep, we're still loading up the October Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events with still more items. 

Time-Life Building

Did you know that Saturday the 5th is the 7th annual National Tour Day?  Me neither, but docomomo is observing it in Chicago with a walking tour (bring sensible shoes) of many of the most prominent works of architect Harry Weese, including 227 East Walton, the Time-Life, Swissotel and Seventeenth Church of Christ, Scientist.  I've never quite figured out if you can attend as a solitary guest, or you have to be a guest of a docomomo member, but we've got a link on the calendar so you can check it out for yourself.

On Monday the 7th at the Wicker Park Field House, William Tishler discusses his new book, Jens Jensen: Writing Inspired by Nature.  On Saturday the 12th, Design Evanston is offering a tour of Graceland Cemetery by Craig Soncraft of Wolff Landscape - the firm that has been Graceland's landscape architects for over 20 years - including a discussion of the original design by Ossian Cole Simonds.  As part of this year's Open House Chicago, the Guild Literary Complex is featuring Applied Words: Re-Built with Sandra Seaton, Saturday the 19th at the original Sears Tower on Homan.  On Tuesday the 22nd, BIG's Kai-Uwe Bergmann will delivering the keynote for the Association of Licensed Architects 15th Annual Architecture Conference and Product Show, at the Drury Lane Conference Center in Oak Brook.

And this is just the new stuff.  Seriously, there's so much going on, I'm just going to go lie down.  You, dear reader, are no doubt made of sterner stuff, so check out all 60+ great events still to come on the October Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Hanging Chads in Harry Weese's Punchcard Prison

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Time decomposes dreams.

It's been over 35 years since architect Harry Weese's triangular, 27th-story Metropolitan Correctional Center was completed, and it's hard to imagine Chicago's south Loop skyline without its distinctive presence.  Journalist Dan Weissmann has just taken another look at Chicago's Jailhouse Skyscraper for Roman Mars' 99% Invisible website, with this audio report of the structure then and now.

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One of the interview subjects is architect Jack Hartray, who was project manager on what was then called the Campbell Correctional Center.  "The mayor didn't want this building in the Loop," recalls Hartray, "so there was a lawsuit.  I think it took them about 12 minutes to get the thing kicked out of court.  It was impossible to find a judge who wasn't in favor of building the building."

Hartray has fond memories of the quality of the design, "Harry sort of viewed this from the standpoint of accommodations on sailboats.  The furniture was all built in, so you could really do pretty nice furniture . . . It's not a bad place to stay.  We were doing a hotel at the time, and this was better than the hotel."

The concrete tower functioned  less as a long term retention facility than as a holding pen for suspects going on trial at the nearby Federal Courthouse designed by Mies van der Rohe.  Since none of the residents were yet convicted, a way was sought to avoid the brutal nature of most jails.  According to Kathleen Murphy Skolnick, co-author with Robert Bruegmann - who's also interviewed in Weissmann's report -of the new book, The Architecture of Harry Weese,

Each 7 x 10 foot room contained a single platform bed with drawers for storage underneath, a desk, shelves, and a chair . . . Carpeting eliminated the need for acoustic treatment. . . The butcher-block furniture chosen for both the individual rooms and the common areas created a residential quality and was easy to clean and hard to destroy.  A bright red, white, and blue color scheme replaced the drab gray and sterile white so frequently found in the conventional correctional facilities.

The building's facades are animated by a series of slits, actually floor-to-ceiling windows, beveled to bring the the maximum light, but just five inches wide to come in below federal guidelines where bars would begin to be required.

 While Weissman was unable to gain entry to the interior of the building for his report, he did interview someone who visits it regularly, prison reformer Phil Carrigan, "Show me the hotel," he says, after hearing Hartray's remembrances.  Carrigan says today's detainees would be "aghast" at such rosy descriptions, given the facility's current condition. "MCC is not a spa", he says. "It's very drab, gunmetal gray."  Those carefully designed furnishings?  "They're gone.  The bunks are steel, two-tiered structures - no wood."  The floor-to-ceiling glass slits?  "The windows are generally frosted.  Doesn't allow for sunlight to come in. The place is old.  It's definitely undergone some changes.  None of them have been for beautification."

Weissman has come up with a great portrait of good intentions curdled by time.  Listen to it here.

Revival Meeting at the Church of Weese

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Tuesday night, there was a bit of a revival meeting at the Seventeenth Church of Christ, Scientist.  At the pulpit, the Right Rev. Bob Bruegmann, co-author of the superb new book, The Architecture of Harry Weese, discussing the life and work of the great architect, planner and iconoclast who died at 83 in 1998, designer of  the very auditorium in which the roughly 600 acolytes now happily congregated.

Bruegmann was introduced by Ben Weese, Harry's youngest brother, and a distinguished Chicago architect both in his long collaboration with Harry, and with his own firm.

The Architecture's co-author Kathleen Murphy Skolnick provided an overview of the Church, and the two authors signed copies of their books after the lecture.

Even if you knew the story, there was something bracing in again making the acquaintance of Weese's iconic buildings, his fervent crusades - from saving the Auditorium, to creating Printer's Row, one of the first beachheads in the back-to-the-city movement - and the vivid trajectory of a life epic, antic, tragic, impassioned and inspired, portrayed in a succession of striking images projected on the back wall of the handsome, modernist sanctuary that has no pews, only plush seating that would be the envy of a Broadway theatre.

The benediction came during the Q&A session after the lecture, when a member of the audience suggested that all the architects in attendance who had at one time or another worked for Harry Weese stand up.  It felt like half the audience rose.  And even if the photograph below would indicate the percentage was perhaps slightly less,  it still proved in moving fashion that the famous inscription  memorializing Christopher Wren holds true not only for buildings, but for the lives a person touches: Si monumentum requiris circumspice.

I've previously discussed The Stormy Life and Magical Architecture of Harry Weese here, and Weese's wonderful River Cottages here.  I bought my copy of the Bruegmann/Skolnick book at the Chicago Architecture Foundation's fine bookshop, whose website, inexplicably,  does not have it among the paltry eight titles listed.  If you need to order on-line, I'd recommend you get it from William Stout Architectural Books.  The Architecture of Harry Weese is an invaluable book that anyone who loves architecture will want to add to their library.

The stormy life and magical architecture of Harry Weese

The July issue of Chicago Magazine includes a splendid article by Robert Sharoff, On the Life and Work of Chicago Architect Harry Weese,  chronicling the spectacular career and tragic final years of one of the city's most essential designers.  Weese's personality comes off as part Kahn, part Wright, part Le Corbu, with a bit of Richard Corey thrown in for good message.  It's a great read.  (And the July issue is well worth picking up, not just for the Sharoff, but for a survey of the city's best pizza, and Graham Meyer's list of the Chicago's 40 top contributions to the English language, which include pipe dream, yuppie, cafeteria and doo-wop.  Apparently, we have Saul Bellow to thank for ass wipe and yuck it up.  Who knew?)

Since his death twelve years ago, Weese has been in something of an

eclipse, an eclipse that now, thankfully,  appears be lifting.  One of the most exciting things in Sharoff's masterly piece is the discovery that a new monograph, The Architecture of Harry Weese, is to be published this September by W.W. Norton.  What makes the book
even more eagerly anticipated is that it's by UIC's Robert Bruegmann, the same author who's already given us one of the more

indispensable volumes on Chicago architecture, The Architects and the City: Holabird & Roche  of Chicago, 1880-1918.

Weese was a giant in Chicago history whose contributions went beyond his buildings, to an impassioned activism that kept Inland Architect alive for years,  and that was instrumental in saving and restoring the irreplaceable Auditorium Theater at a time when Skidmore, Owings and Merrill was recommending demolishing it and building a replacement in the shell.  It was Harry Weese, looking down from an airplane at the abandoned hulk of the 21-story Transportation Building, who was inspired to partner with Larry Booth in 1981 to rehab that structure into 200+ housing units.  With the last decade's huge building boom inventing new life for neighborhoods and industrial directs all around the periphery of the Loop that had grown menancingly derelict, that kind of development now seems a commonplace.  But it was Weese's work in Printers Row that was the mother of them all.

Weese's architecture is also a source of underappreciated wonder. Weese was sui generis.  Looking at the body of his work, you'd be hard pressed to pigeon-hole him into any given school.  There's isn't a lock-jaw style stringing the buildings together.  The only constants were a sense of exploration and invention, and the essential fact that Harry Weese was a damn good architect  His superb buildings  have become anchor points carrying forward the evolution of Chicago's rich architectural fabric,  expressing the spirit of their time with an eloquence and grace that, even today, feels bracing and fresh.

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