Cue the Gondoliers: Henry Ives Cobb's lavish Venetian Gothic Palace revisits 1893 grandeur

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“The Chicago Athletic Club stands on the lake front a rival in grace and symmetry to the great palace of the Doges on St. Mark's Square, Venice, and loses nothing by the comparison.”

So said an account in 1898's Outing magazine, which described the ten-story, 1893 Venetian-Gothic styled building, designed by Henry Ives Cobb, as one the major attractions of the city, with its 2,000 members “comprising the best class of people.”

And so it remained for over a century, until declining membership resulted in the club's closing in 2007.  After the requisite period of failed deals, the property was purchased for $13 million in 2012 by AJ Capital Partners LLC  and Geolo and Agman. which have committed over $60 million to convert the clubhouse into a four-star (+!)hotel, appealing to the same best - or most monied - class of people that powered the CAC's initial creation.

Outing described the splendor of the building in detail . . .

The interior is magnificent and costly, every atom of material and every article of equipment being placed with a thought to defy the ravages of time and use.  The entrance and main lobby are studies in marble and mosaic, relieved by massive mahogany furniture standing sentinel-like at posts of duty . . . A broad stairway starts with a graceful curve and leads along a side-wall of the purest slabs of monolithic marble, transcending a ceiling of pure white stucco, divided into panel formations, which

completes an entrance view of exceptional beauty.

 The 6,400 square-foot, 9th floor dining room wast “as beautiful a dining salon as one would find in a long journey.  Finished in quartered oak, with the finest of which the buildings were extremely lavish . . . and overhanging all a stucco ceiling, with hundreds of drooping tips, studded with incandescents, giving the room at night a brilliant and cheerful appearance.”

Did I mention there are 15 working fireplaces?

The original 1893 building was eventually expanded along the back to a Richard Schmidt designed addition completed in 1907, with floors added in 1926.  As part of the current rehab by Hartshorne Plunkard, with interiors by Roman and Williams, decades of alternations are being removed to reveal the original design underneath.  We received pictures of some of those uncovered elements from Eric Nordstrom of Urban Remains. He assures me their salvaging is confined to old furniture and later alternations, and that many of the original spaces are being meticulously reconstructed. 

Actually, much of the original design has survived largely intact and entirely striking, as you can see in these photosets from AJ Capital Partners LLC, the Hotel Chatter website, and some Landmarks Illinois interior shots by Rolf Achilles. 

We should see how it all turns out in the fall of 2014, when the new, still unnamed hotel is scheduled to open its doors.

Why Must the Cancer Survivors Garden Go Begging?

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The Tribune's Mary Schmich had a great article recently on the Chicago Cancer Survivor's Garden, the lovely 2-and-a-half acre setting east of Daley Bicentennial Plaza created in 1996 with a million dollar gift from cancer survivor Richard A. Bloch, co-founder of H&R Block.  The garden's signature visual element is a slice of Chicago history, the stately columns . . .

that are remnants of Henry Ives Cobb's 1905 domed Federal Courthouse, demolished to make way for the Mies van der Rohe designed Federal Center.

Now, the Cancer Survivor's Garden is facing an uncertain future.  A private donation that has funded the garden's upkeep has run dry, and as Schmich quotes Bob O'Neill, "Who's going to pay?  That's the issue."

And he almost had me convinced. According to Schmich, "For top-notch planting, repair and maintenance, the summer tab alone is $60,000."  Let's get a committee together.  Put up a Facebook page.  Get the fund-raising going. 

Until I started to do some research on the web.  I soon found dozens of pages testifying to the fact that the garden appears to be a very popular place for weddings.  Looking at the pictures, you can understand why.  Then I stumbled across the Chicago Park District's Information and Rates brochure.  It tells me the garden occupies over 13,000 square feet, including all the landscaped areas, and that it can accommodate up 1,400 people, if you don't mind a little a crowding.

And then I came across this:

So, at $3,150 per, how much does the Park District rake in each year from event rentals?   Tell me again, why is there no money to maintain the garden?

Sackcloth and ashes, of course, is the order of the day.  We don't have money to maintain the garden.  We don't have money for the Cultural Center.  We don't have money  for this and for that.  Tough times.  So sorry.

Except, of course, when Mayor Rahm Emanuel snaps his fingers, and shakes down corporations for over $37 million to cover the costs of the NATO summit.  The money flows like water.

". . . the summer tab alone is $60,000."

And it's about to become a gusher.  In 2009, the Ricketts family came up with $845 million to buy the Chicago Cubs.  This year, they're finding, with no apparent strain, well over $125 million to pay their players to uphold a century-old tradition of not winning a World Series and being a pretty sure thing to finish the season in full retreat from the .500 mark.

The Ricketts have money to burn, but they'd rather burn ours, and now the news is that Emanuel is close to agreement on how best to shovel not just tens, but possibly hundreds of millions of dollars of public funds to the Ricketts so they can remodel Wrigley Field.  The technique - the diversion of amusement tax revenues or some other updated TIF scam - has yet to be revealed, but the result is already clear:  another massive slush fund benefiting the super rich and the super powerful, paid for by sapping general revenues that support the staple functions of the city.

". . . the summer tab alone is $60,000." 

To summarize: we must all reach into our pockets and pay again to keep a small gem like the Cancer Survivors Garden which is probably already paying for itself.  So we can subsidize Wrigley Field, so the Ricketts can keep enough loose change in their pockets to pay Alfonso Soriano $17 million a year.

And so it goes in Chicago, the city of sheep.

Do you think we could trade Soriano to the Yankees for a garden, several curators, a battalion of arts teachers,  restored library hours, and a mayor to be named later?

Spectatorium (Pocket Guide to Hell), Global Cities, the Reopening of Mies' Villa Tugendhat - still more events for January

Still more new items for  the January 2012 Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events

We've got two new exhibitions opening this Friday at the Gallery 400 at UIC.   

Global Cities  Model Worlds "explores the spatial and social impacts of 'mega events' such as the Olympics and Word's Fairs, and the means by which their host metropolises work to secure their position as "global cities."

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The World Finder: Pocket Guide to Hell, explores the story of Steele MacKaye and his plan to build the "Spectatorium" at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, a massive display of the spittoon-ridden era's compulsion for spitting.  No, wait.  That was the Expectoratorium.  The Spectatorium, in contrast, was to be "the world's largest theater," hosting an epic depicting Columbus' voyage to America in four Wagnerian acts, complete with an ocean with real water and a cast of thousands.  I'm hearing it didn't go exactly as planned.

There's an opening reception for both shows, which run through March 3rd, this Friday, January 20th from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m.

Another addition, Celebration of the Reopening of the Villa Tugendhat: Mies Here and There, is an all-day symposium on Mies van der Rohe's famous house .  It takes place this Saturday, January 21st,  in the auditorium of the Rem Koolhaas-designed Campus Center at IIT.  The free event will include talks from architect Iveta Cerna and Chairman Ivo Hammer of the Tugendhat House International Committee, as well as from Dirk Lohan and Professor Petr Pelcak of the School of Architecture, Brno University of Technology.  Tugendhat is also the focus of two other programs this Thursday, the 19th, with Pelcak lecturing on The Architecture of Brono Functionalism, 1919-1939 at noon at AIA Chicago,  and Hammer and Cerna talking on Mies Here and There - Restoration of the Villa Tugendhat, Czech Republic, at the Chicago Architecture Foundation at 6:00 p.m.

Also on Saturday the 21st, there's the Future City 2012 Chicago Regional Finals at Student Center East, UIC.  On Thursday,  the 19th,  Edward W. Wolner discusses his excellent new book, Henry Ives Cobb's Chicago, for Landmarks Illinois at the Cultural Center at 12:15, and Tom Beeby talks on Connecting with the Past: The Harold Washington Memorial Library Center, for ICA&A Chicago-Midwest at the Driehaus Museum/Nickerson Mansion at 6:00 p.m.

Check it out.  There are still nearly three dozen great programs to come on the January 2012 Chicago Calendar of Architectural Events

Tigerman, Goldberg, Botta, Cobb, Simonds, Jahn, Sobek, Pecha Kucha 19, and a billion more - it's the September calendar!

 So what's the deal about Labor Day that turns on the chill of Fall as if by switch? I don't like the end of summer, but I'm consoled by the fact that the pace of the September Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events has exploded like a Coke bottle full of Mentos, with over seventy great items and counting.

And not even in that tally, there's the long-awaiting blockbuster exhibition at the Art Institute, Bertrand Goldberg: Architecture of Invention, plus a companion show, Inside Marina City: A Project by Iker Gil and E.G. Larsson, while the ArchiTech Gallery chimes in with Architectural drawing: from Wright to Goldberg. And then, mid-month, Chicago gets another new museum building with the opening of Depaul Art Museum's new home on Fullerton.

This week starts out with a bang with edition 19 of Pecha Kucha, at Martyr's, on Tuesday the 6th, while over at the Gene Siskel, a new series Designs for Living: The Apartment Genre, kicks off with a last showing of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, perhaps the most perverse study of the dynamics of life, exhibited and observed, in the adjacent compartmentalized boxes of a big city.

On Thursday the 8th, Patrick Blanc talks about Vertical Gardens at the Alliance Francise, while on Friday the 9th at the of U of C Law School, Stanley Tigerman kicks off the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust's new series, Thinking into the  Future: The Robie House Series on Architecture, Design and Ideas.

On Wednesday, the 14th, Robin Rhodes lectures on Transition and Transformation in Greek Architecture at the Driehaus Museum, aka the Nickerson Mansion, while on Friday, the 15th, Rolf Achilles talks about Art Nouveau Book Art Design at the Second Presbyterian Church.  The School of Architecture at IIT jump starts its fall lecture series on Friday, September 16th with a superstar constellation of Werner Sobek, Manfred Hegger, and Helmut Jahn lecturing on High-Rises for the Future: Sustainability, Architecture and Engineering Perspectives.  Also at IIT, Dan Rockhill talks about his current work on September 28th, and Barbara Geiger talks about her new book on Landscape Gardener O.C. Simonds on Thursday, the 21st.  Elsewhere on the new book front, Edward Wolner discusses and signs copies of his new work, Henry Ives Cobb's Chicago, at the Glessner House Museum on Tuesday, the 20th.

Want more?  How about a three-day symposium, Seaside at 30: Lessons from the First New Urbanist Community, starting on Thursday the 29th at the School of Architecture at Notre Dame, with such luminaries as Léon Krier, Andrés Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. (will there be a surprise appearance by Jim Carey?) On Wednesday, the 28th, there's an all-day symposium on the 175th anniversary of Clarke House, and a two-day Great Cities/Ordinary Lives conference at UIC on the 16th and 17th.

Preservation Chicago's fall fundraiser?  AIA Chicago tours of Zoka Zola's Studio and the Lincoln Park Nature Boardwalk, and a discussion by Sheri L. Carter of the use of terra cotta at Mario Botta's Bechtler Museum? Geoffrey Baer? Dale Greenwood Green on Historic African-American Religious Architecture at Quinn Chapel AME Church?  A preview at CAF of it's extraordinary October event: openhousechicago: Chicago's Hidden Gems?  I could go on and on, but rather than reading about it twice, check out the nearly 80 items on the September Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Death in Venice: Who was Geo. H. Macomber and what's he's doing on the Chicago Athletic Club?

Once a playground of the city's elite, the Chicago Athletic Club had fallen on hard times by the time it announced it was shopping around its landmark building at 12 S. Michigan and an annex on Madison that had been added in more flush times.  Last year, the property was forced into foreclosure as a project to convert it into a hotel collapsed.

Today, the building is a faded curiosity on the Michigan Avenue streetwall, but in 1898, it was described as "a rival in grace and symmetry to the great Palace of the Doges on St. Mark's Square, Venice, and loses nothing by the comparison . . . The interior is magnificent and costly, every atom of material and every article of the equipment being placed with a thought to defy the ravages of time . . . "

 The 6,000 square-foot dining room was finished in "quarter oak . . . and overhanging all a stucco ceiling, with hundred's of drooping tips, studded with incandescents . . ."

 

Att the time of its construction, the ten-story-high Club, designed by architect Henry Ives Cobb in a style that could said to be Ruskinesque Venetian, qualified as a an outstanding example of the new, fireproof steel-frame skyscraper.  Unfortunately, according to contemporary report, "the full efficiency of this fire-resisting groundwork was largely nullified by introducing large quantities of combustible materials . . ."  On Halloween night, 1892, a fire broke out in the two-storied, oak-paneled gymnasium on the 4th floor.  "The ceiling being attached to one-inch nailing strips, which were so fastened to the terra-cotta arch blocks as to leave spaces between the floor arches the paneling, in which air currents and flame could freely circulate."

The flames burned through the oak paneling, burned up the wood strips that had inserted into the terra-cotta panels that were supposed provide structural fireproofing, causing the tiles to fall and exposing the steel columns to flame.  The wood with which the club was lavishly appointed throughout became the pathway carrying fire to the upper floors.  The pressure of water from the fire hoses was enough to knock off more of the terra cotta protection.  Still, all but two columns on the eight floor resisted deflection from the heat of the flames.  The tab for the damages was a then astronomical $200,000.  In the end, the building would cost $600,000 but it was still opened in July of 1893, in time for the World's Columbian Exposition.

It was 1891, however, the year construction began, that was carved into the building's facade: Anno Domani MDCCCXCI.  Not far below, in small lettering invisible from the street, there's another inscription:

Who was Geo. H. Macomber, and why did he deserve this honor?  In 1902, he was listed as Second Vice President, George H. Macomber, George A. Fuller Company, a major construction contractor out of NewYork, which had its Chicago offices in the Marquette Building.  Perhaps he supervised the Club's construction.

The faded grandeur of the Club's facade is like the a dust, the sole surviving residue of the energy that once surged throughout this building, as Chicago's power elite gathered to dream, to plan,  to cut deals and an occasional throat, to conspire over the city's future and their personal ambitions, or maybe just get a rubdown and fall asleep, brandy and cigar in hand, in a club chair. 

The husk is all that's left.  The husk, and a small, hidden tribute to a forgotten man once of great importance.

Cobbgate Scandal: U of C Biological Laboratories reluctantly puts failed experiments on permanent display

Some of the residents of the gate for the Hull Biological Laboratories, which Henry Ives Cobb donated to the University of Chicago shortly before he was dumped as campus architect. (click on the photos for a larger view)

The specimen depicted in the top photograph above shows the results of early attempts to use seaweed protoplasm to secure dental implants.

The middle photograph is a memento of a three-year program, initiated by students, to fully diagram molecular transmutations and the potential for replication arising out of French kissing, abruptly terminated by the administration after it was discovered that the instructor was not, as claimed, Dr. François P. McCarthy of the Sorbonne, but Fifi Dessay of the Trocadero Theater on south State Street.

The bottom photograph is a specimen from still another experiment studying the breakdown of complex organisms into prokaryotes through the cryogenic freezing of faculty members at the exact moment they learned they had been denied tenure.

And as for Henry Ives Cobb? In total dejection after his firing, the architect grew violent, and was discovered by police using a large kitchen knife to chop neighborhood chickens into little pieces. As his anger grew, his list of his victims expanded: pork bellies, tomatoes, eggs, avocado - several types of lettuce - until he inadvertently created the salad that would secure him a greater, more enduring fame than he would ever enjoy as an architect.