Should the Republic Stand - Somewhere Else?

Remember when they first announced Millennium Park, when it was going to be topping over the unsightly Metra tracks with a gracious new greenspace?  And how then Cindy Pritzker got involved, John Bryan came in to raise the bucks, and Anish Kapoor, Jaume Plensa, and Frank Gehry were brought in to make Millennium Park the most spectacular urban park of the new century?

Could we revive just a little bit of that spirit for the Statue of the Republic, a diminished replica of Daniel Chester French's sculpture for the 1893 World's Columbia Exposition?  Sun-Times architecture critic Lee Bey reports it's in for a much-needed re-gilding, but why stop there?

Illustration courtesy World's Fair Chicago 1893

Originally, The Republic, 65-feet-tall, dominated the vista from the 1893 Fair's domed Administration Building across the Great Basic to an eastern terminus with a casino, harbor and pier extending 2,500 feet into Lake Michigan.  It was meant to symbolize national unity.  Remember that?

Like almost the entire rest of the Fair, the colossus was never built to last, constructed of plaster staff sprayed over a metal skeleton.  After the Fair's closing, The Republic stood watch over an increasingly bleak landscape as a series of fires destroyed its massive buildings.  The grand statue was allowed to decay, becoming stained, its gilding stolen and losing an arm, until in 1896 the South Park board secretly ordered one of their engineers to burn it down at break of day.

Illustration courtesy World's Fair Chicago 1893

Over two decades later, in 1915, the corporation that ran the Fair still had leftover funds in the bank and, closing out the books, $48,000 of that was donated to the B.F. Ferguson Fund, created to promote public sculpture in the city.  It was the fund's second commission, after Lorado Taft's The Fountain of the Great Lakes, which still stands in the Art Institute's south garden.

Funded by that bequest, a bronze replica of The Republic - at 24 feet, downsized to a third of the original's height - was cast from a surviving plaster maquette.  The pedestal was designed by architect Henry Bacon.  It was dedicated May 11, 1918, the 25th anniversary of the opening of the 1893 Fair.  Unlike the original, it was fully gilded, although time and wear since the last restoration in 1992 has made it look like it's developed a serious skin condition.

It's where it is because it was placed at the site of the 1893 Fair's Administration Building, but all vestiges of the significance of that location have long since been effaced.  Today, The Republic is marooned between a golf course and a marina, in an isolated part of Jackson Park that's essentially a traffic circle, cars rushing past on Hayes Drive, and visible only in a small, immediate vicinity.  With the Obama Presidential Center opening this summer, that's no longer good enough.

An argument can be made that it's pretty cool just to unexpectedly stumble upon The Republic on a walk through the park, but in both size and artistry, it's meant to be a marker, not an oversight.  It should be moved.

Where?  Where it's no longer half-hidden, but allowed to terminate the vista from the south of the east lagoon, along Wooded Island and the Osaka Garden, to the soon-to-be-re-opened south entrance of the Museum of Science and Industry, which, although substantially rebuilt, still has much of its original grandeur from 1893.  Such a relocation would emulate the way the original Republic anchored one end of the 1893 Fair's Grand Basin.  It could be placed on land, or on a small island constructed for the purpose in the lagoon itself.

Ideally, The Republic would be re-cast to its original height, but Chicago has apparently grown too small for such ambition.  We can't even fix the nearby, historic Clarence Darrow bridge, which has been allowed to sit closed and rotting since 2012, while empty promises of something soon being done go unfulfilled year after year.

Clarence Darrow Bridge, Burnham & Root, 1880

According to Lee Bey, the re-gilding has a price tag of a cool million.  Anything more ambitious may sound unattainable, until you consider Science and Industry secured a $10 million grant from the Driehaus Foundation to fund the re-opening of the south entrance facing Columbia Basin.  And would it be rude to mention the Obama Presidential Center is coming in around $850 million?

A repaired and re-opened Darrow Bridge and a recast, re-gilded, relocated Republic would complete the current renewal of Jackson Park.  Surely, somewhere, we still have enough civic pride left for that?

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When a Museum Devours its Own: The Mortal Threat to Adler & Sullivan's Stock Exchange Trading Room

Eric Allix Rogers photo, courtesy Preservation Chicago

Here's the thing.  Great art museums are both amazing treasures and amoral empires.  Just ask countries like Benin, or Jewish families whose ancestor's art was looted by the Nazis.

To paraphrase George Carlin, erecting massive calling-card buildings lets museums find more space to display their ever-expanding stash of stuff.  Perhaps more importantly, they're a great way to rope in mega-donors, who gain far more lasting notoriety from having their names on a new wing than they ever could from even the most grandiloquent mausoleum.

Sometimes, however, unchecked ambition can tempt these esthetic empires into releasing their inner Mr. Hyde.  This week, Preservation Chicago announced Adler & Sullivan's Stock Exchange Trading Room as one of their Seven Most Endangered places for 2026.  Only hours later, The Art Institute of Chicago confirmed to Chicago Sun-Times architecture critic Lee Bey that they were, indeed, contemplating ridding itself of the Trading Room to make way for their wet dream of another mega-wing.

Turns out Preservation Chicago learned of this possibility a year ago, and decided not to go public with the news on the chance the museum might, by way of extended contemplation, come to its senses and let a putrid idea die a natural death.  Instead, spurred by a $75 million gift last year to jump-start a new building program, it's apparently blossomed into an idée fixe.

Put simply, this is nuts.  Suicidally, reputation-killing nuts.

First, some background: Adler & Sullivan's 1894 Stock Exchange was one of the greatest structures of the First Chicago School.  Despite that, despite being fully rented, and being the subject of an intense preservation battle, it was cleared for demolition, destroyed in 1972, and replaced by 30 N. LaSalle, a glass tower whose only distinction was that, after opening, some of its windows started popping out and crashing to the ground.  Most recently, it was used to grow vegetables.

As the bulldozers begin to circle, renowned Chicago photographer and preservationist Richard Nickel became obsessed with the keeping the memory of the building's beauty alive by salvaging as much of its striking ornament as possible.  The Trading Room was a particular revelation.

"I think it is sort of like a holy room," Nickel is quoted as saving in Richard Cahan's moving biography, They All Fall Down. "The more you are in here the more you are in awe of it."

As recounted by Cahan, when the Trading Room's drop ceiling was removed, the original design was revealed for the first time since a Depression-era modernization . . .

... with the gold-leafed column capitals, leaded art glass, and carbon filiament lamps showing, the room looked like it had when it was first built.

"Why do we just save the pieces?  Why don't we save the whole room?" Nickel asked.

His young co-worker - and, on this project, his boss - John Vinci thought the idea was insane, but soon came around.  "I was sick and tired of saving bits and pieces."

image courtesy Eric J. Nordstrom

The task was Herculean.  A double-height room, 100 by 75 feet, richly ornamented.  Intricate, beautiful wall stenciling.  Gold-leaf capitals.  Hundreds of art glass skylights.  The often damaged originals were carefully removed; the entire room meticulously notated.

For Richard Nickel, the Stock Exchange building brought him to the point of despair and exhaustion.  Then it killed him.  Early in 1972, a portion of the Trading Room collapsed and crushed him, ending his life even as it secured his legend.

The restoration and reinstallation at the Art Institute was an equally rigorous task.  As team leader John Vinci told Betty J. Blum for an oral history ...

we had to recreate everything below the drop ceiling including the baseboard and wainscot.

Recreating the stencils was especially arduous, "52 distinct hues in muted tones of gold, green and yellow."

John Vinci photograph, courtesy Eric J. Nordstrom

John Vinci photograph, courtesy Eric J. Nordstrom

In another oral history with Blum, architect Walter Netsch, who designed the building that would house the Trading Room, recalled thinking, "Wouldn't it make a great trustees' room ... I received a very recriminatory comment from Mary Block saying, 'Walter do you realize there are so many colors in that room, what can I choose to wear?'" Eventually, said Netsch, "the Art Institute was happy because they have this money-making spot to rent and show off."

image courtesy Eric J. Nordstrom

An early champion of the project, Art Institute curator David Hanks, called the original Trading Room "a work of art as important as any work at the art museum."  In 1977 the restored room was unveiled to great acclaim.  Then New Yotk Times architecture critic Paul Goldberger judged it "one of the finest interiors created before the turn of the century,"

John Vinci photograph, courtesy Eric J. Nordstrom

Back in 1894, the shimmering beauty of the Trading Room was probably visible for only a few months before unruly use and an endless procession of insensitive retrofits trashed it.  Restored and recreated, its splendor has endured, largely pristine, for just short of fifty years. The Art Institute raises the prospect of demolishing and reconstructing the Trading Room - AGAIN!!! - at some player-to-be-named-later somewhere else. Puh-leeze. The original project cost $1.5 million, back when that was real money.  Who is this Daddy Warbucks waiting in the wings to repeat the process at today's prices?

If the Commission on Chicago Landmarks is to rescue their recently compromised status as an entity promiscuously designating mediocre buildings like 30 North LaSalle just so connected developers can fleece taxpayers for massive tax breaks, they need to landmark the Trading Room, the Stock Exchange arch, and, possibly, McKinlock Court.  They need to be the antidote detoxing the Edward Hyde-like impulses two-facing the outwardly respectable alter ego of the civic jewel known as the Art Institute of Chicago. 

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Ronald Reagan Wrecked

click images for larger view

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

click image for larger view

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.

click images for larger view

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.