Landmarks Commission's Eloquent Requiem to the Building it's About to Destroy

from the Landmarks Commission report

When I write about the Commission on Chicago Landmarks, I often make a clear distinction between the two parts, only one of which is useless, that make up this entity.

The first is the staff of the Commission, an incredibly dedicated group of knowledgeable professionals, whose work can be seen in the  Reports for Proposed/Designated Chicago Landmarks, which combines highly readable narratives with amazing scholarship in documenting each building proposed for landmark designation.  It is the job of the staff to preserve Chicago's architectural treasures.

The second is the actual Commission on Chicago Landmarks, a body appointed by the Mayor to vote on proposed designations and send them on to the City Council.  As much as it may appear otherwise, it is not the job of to preserve Chicago's architectural heritage.  The job of this body is to make sure landmarking never gets in the way of the whims of connected developers.  It is a job they do well, as illustrated in the case of the Farwell Building.  When the Commission, in an unprecedented show of backbone,  voted not to approve a cynical destruction of that designated landmark, Chairman David Mosena, a former chief of staff to Mayor Richard M. Daley, simply called a second meeting to reverse the vote.

from the Landmarks Commission report

The real function of the members of the Landmarks Commission will be on display again Thursday, when they will be called upon to ignore the evidence, abrogate their responsibility, and vote to destroy Bertrand Goldberg's iconic Prentice Hospital.  Right after they vote to save it.

The Commission staff has created a report thoroughly documenting how Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital qualifies for landmark designation.  To become a landmark, a building has to meet at least two of seven criteria.  Prentice meets four: historical value, "exemplary architecture", significant architect, and unique visual feature.  Once again, the report is great scholarship, including a biography of Goldberg, a history of hospital architecture and of the use of concrete in architecture, a detailed analysis of the building, its importance and its construction technique, and a fascinating account of Goldberg's pathbreaking use of computer-aided-design in creating the building.  It's a compelling, informative work, generously illustrated with photos and drawings, including those you see on this post.  Download the report here. 

from the Landmarks Commission report

Usually such a report is added to page of reports we've linked above.  As of this writing, the Prentice Report is not on that page.  It is available only at the end of the November agenda, which I have never seen done before.  It also concludes with a section stating the building 's concrete will - duh- probably require restoration work sometime in the future.  I don't recall ever seeing anything like this in a report before.  It's got the Department of Development's fingerprints all over it, and seems to be just another part of their script. 

from the Landmarks Commission report

In fact, the agenda and its attachments actually lay out the amazing farce that has been carefully scripted by the Emanuel administration.  The draft resolution decreeing Prentice's destruction already assumes that the Commission members will follow this script and vote in favor of landmark designation only minutes before . . . 

WHEREAS, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks (“Commission”) voted to approve a “preliminary landmark recommendation” for the (Former) Prentice Women’s Hospital Building (the “Building”) on November 1, 2012; and  . . .

It also assumes that the Commission will then accept a report by Housing and Economic Development Commissioner Andrew J.  Mooney  that looks like it was written by Northwestern, itself. Probably it was.  It regurgitates almost verbatim Northwestern's arguments that the adjacent two-block vacant lot is off-limits as an alternative, and that Northwestern's state-of-art medical lab can only be built if Goldberg's masterwork is destroyed.

Northwestern is about to surround that two-block vacant lot, which has already been gravel-surfaced and chain-linked for over three years, with a perimeter of flowers.  That is their highest use for the site at the present time, with a vague reference to new construction sometime in the next "several years."  You'd think that Northwestern, with some of the most brilliant minds in the world, could figure out how to make a plan that would integrate the new research lab into the construction on that two-block vacant lot, where it could link to the Lurie Center just across the street, just like a new facility built on the Prentice site.  But I suppose the Department of Development thought such a suggestion would be impolite.  Instead, they're recommending that Prentice be destroyed, to create still another vacant lot, so the two-block square vacant lot across the street won't feel so lonely.

The script's final lines for the members of Landmarks Commission?

Section 3.  The Commission hereby accepts and approves the Department of Housing and Economic Development report recommendation and rescinds its “preliminary landmark recommendation” for the Building.

From unprotected, to a landmark, to a corpse - all in about an hour.  The cynical audacity is breathtaking.  To general public, the Landmarks Commissioners are distinguished citizens, charged with protecting the precious architectural heritage that has made Chicago known throughout the world.  To Andrew Mooney, they're monkeys on a stick, expected to dance to the tune of the guy who brung 'em.

from the Landmarks Commission report

An open letter to Mayor Emanuel on Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital - a few truths versus one Big Lie

Dear Mr. Mayor:

I know it's probably down a bit on your crisis-du-jour list, but the issue of possible landmark designation for Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital appears to be coming to a head.  Word on the street is that the fix is in and Prentice is toast. 

This is no time for modesty.  The decision, ultimately, is entirely yours, and before your thumb proclaims final public judgement, I wanted to make one last pitch.

Some things about the debate are incontrovertible.  

• Northwestern University and Northwestern Hospital are both world-class institutions.
• Northwestern University wants to build an ambitious new Research Lab
• This project will employ thousands, and pump hundreds of millions of dollars into Chicago's economy
• The work done in this Research Lab has the potential of finding cures and treatments that will create better medical outcomes and save lives.

One key thing however, is quite controvertible: one astounding lie that Northwestern is working overtime  to couple with the truths listed above:

• There is a magic patch of land in Chicago.  It is magic because, although there are two vacant blocks directly across the street, and other opportunities across the large number of properties controlled by Northwestern, this patch of land is the only place in Streeterville, Chicago, or the universe on which Northwestern's Research Lab can be built.  It just so happens that this  patch of land is the site of Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital.  Northwestern would have us believe that if they are not allowed to circumvent legal process and destroy this landmark-quality structure, that new Research Lab, its thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in investment will vanish into thin air, never to be seen again.  And, if we are to believe Northwestern's more insidious intimations, many will die from cures never to be discovered.

The claims about this magic patch of land are so outrageously dishonest that any objective analysis would dismiss them without a second thought.  Except that Northwestern has committed millions to an increasingly desperate and meretricious campaign to influence public opinion and provide cover to its actions.  For this campaign, they have turned to a firm called Purple Strategies.

As someone who knows his way around Washington, Mr. Mayor, you know this kind of firm well -   beltway lobbyists that offer one-stop shopping.  They have Republicans.  They have Democrats.  They can argue one way, or they can argue other.  It just depends on who cuts the check.  Whatever you want to be true, no matter the reality, they will, for a price, create the appearance of it being true, through such tools of the trade as biased polls, astroturf support and misleading ads.   Key clients are Big Oil, Big Pharma, and Big Chemical.  According to The Nation, while Purple Strategies' staff may be cross-party, its activities are not.  Purple Strategies has received over $43 million to help Republican candidates foster the impression that Barack Obama is not the President who stopped America from falling into another Great Depression, who killed Bin Laden, and created the health care reform that had eluded all his predecessors, but a feckless, corrupt bumbler who hates America and wants to turn it into a socialist, Muslim state.  If you liked the kind of poison Joe Ricketts wants to bankroll, Mr. Mayor, you'll love what Purple Strategies has come up with for Northwestern.

Northwestern has come up with a handful of architects who support destroying Prentice. No need to demonize; they're good people.  But the Save Prentice Coalition  has come up with a coalition of many of the most distinguished architects, not just in Chicago, but throughout the world, all of whom are urging you to save Prentice.

And if you're tempted to dismiss their opinion because they've got no skin in the game, I would ask you to consider what these architects have created for Chicago . . .

Jeanne Gang:

Frank Gehry:

 

John Ronan:

Renzo Piano:

Krueck and Sexton:

Tod Williams and Billie Tsien:

.  .  . and compare it to what we've gotten from Northwestern:

 

 

From this physical evidence, I would leave it it to you, Mr. Mayor, as to whose judgement on matters of architectural quality are the more reliable.

I respect the judgement of people like Jeanne Gang and John Ronan, David Woodhouse and Jack Hartray, and their colleages, because, unlike Northwestern,  they have a proven track record of serving their clients while adding to the cultural capital of the city.  Northwestern knows only how to destroy and replace, with the kind of faceless mediocrity that sucks all the air out of the very idea of inviting, liveable urban space.

As someone who knows how the game is played, I'm sure you were amused by the press release where Northwestern promised they would do it right this time and hold an architectural competition  if they're allowed to destroy Prentice.  What - if they can't, they'll put up another piece of crap just for spite? And I'm sure you noticed that in the very next sentence, they took away what they had just given, proclaiming they wouldn't in any way be bound by the results of that competition.  But they promised to involve a Chicago architect no matter what.  Well, they've already had Chicago architects involved in most of their buildings, and the results are not reassuring.

I'm sure you've walked the streets of the Northwestern campus.  They're a depressing place, one anonymous building after another, often with dead-windowed walls facing the sidewalks.  It's a good thing most people being rushed to Northwestern are looking up at the ambulance ceiling, because the view of the unrelenting drabness out their window might convince them life wasn't really worth living, after all.

Along with the old Furniture Mart, Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital is the only architecturally distinctive marker in the Northwestern hospital district.   And those markers are essential. 

Marina City, the Wrigley Building, Sears (oops) Willis Tower, the Chicago Theater, Aqua, BP Bridge and Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, and many more like them.  These are the buildings that form the face of the Chicago - in newspapers, magazines, films, videos, books, on the internet, in vacation snapshots - all across the globe.  Out of necessity, there's seems always to be a new slogan for Chicago - "The City That Works", "Second to None".  They come and they go, but the images of Chicago make them almost superfluous.  The great buildings of Chicago are the pictures worth a thousand words.  They're the thing that builds and sustains the brand of Chicago throughout the world.  And Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital is a key component of that brand.


I understand politics.  (I once ran against Tony Laurino for alderman in the 39th, and I got more votes than any opponent he ever had.  [He still crushed me like a bug.  And then, to top if off, he mapped all the precincts I carried out of his ward.])  But it's wrong for Northwestern to hijack the legal process carefully put in place to consider landmark designations, simply because they are powerful and connected.  If I were Joe Schmo who wasn't happy about my house being in a proposed landmark district, I wouldn't be able to get the Landmarks Commission to yank consideration of that proposal from the Commission's agenda.  But that's exactly what Northwestern did, and they've kept it off, month after month for over a year and a half, to buy Northwestern more time to mount a P.R. offensive to counter the grass-roots campaign to save Prentice.

We are told this was to allow "talks" about Prentice to continue, but it's unclear how many and what kind of "talks" have actually taken place.  I know it's perceived to be the "Chicago Way", but frankly, it is disturbing that when you were quoted about ongoing talks on Prentice at a recent press conference, the only participants named were Northwestern and those already on record as opposing designation.  Bonnie McDonald of Landmarks Illinois has stated neither she or any other advocates have been invited to these closed-door meetings. 

You know the story of the Eiffel Tower.  How it was built as a temporary structure for the 1889 World Fair.   How a lot of the best people considered it a blot and an eyesore - just like Prentice - and relished the idea of it's being demolished at the end of its original 20-year permit.  It survived by the skin of its teeth, but could anyone today imagine Paris without it?  Paris is at the top of world-class cities because it doesn't trash its history.  When the Gare d'Orsay was no longer needed as a railroad depot, it wasn't wantonly destroyed. It was saved and renovated into one of the city's great museums, the Musee d'Orsay.

Prentice isn't quite as prominent as the Eiffel Tower, but the dynamic is the same, with the additional overlay of a great Chicago institution willing to blackmail an entire city to bend it to its will.  Allowing Northwestern to destroy Prentice is not good politics, and it's not good urban planning.

The explanations of why Prentice Hospital is a major work of architecture have been made many times, and very eloquently.  I'm sure you've read them, so I won't repeat them here.  Landmarks Illinois has already documented a number of ways Prentice could be effectively reused.  Drawing upon the expertise of Chicago's real estate community, a viable plan could easily be found. Northwestern is crammed to the gills with brilliant people, and it will have no problem finding an alternative path if Prentice gets the landmark designation it deserves.

The choice is between short-term expediency and long term vision.  Northwestern will always be able to take care of itself.  Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital, and Chicago's architectural legacy, which lack a $7 billion endowment, need a little help right now.  They need someone to run the kind of interference that keeps Chicago from becoming known as the city that lets its world-class riches slip through its fingers. 

Sincerely,

Lynn Becker

Northwestern, Grow Up: Refuting Northwestern's desperate PR campaign to Destroy Prentice.

click images for larger view

Northwestern - the hospital and university - is getting desperate. Faced with growing international opposition from architects, historians and activists to Northwestern's plan to demolish Bertrand Goldberg's iconic Prentice Hospital building, they're mounting a full-press PR effort whose basic tenets are so transparently absurd that they stand only to make Northwestern look brazenly cynical and ridiculous at the same time.

And so we have the op-ed in Crain's Chicago Business by Dean of the Feinberg School of Medicine Eric Neilson in which he contends with what looks to be a straight face that thousands of jobs, hundreds of millions of dollars - no make it $1.5 billion - will all vanish into thin air, and, apparently, thousands will die, if Northwestern isn't allowed to destroy Prentice.    It's like tax cuts for rich in Republican politics.  Demolishing Prentice has become the answer to every problem, the fulcrum on which the entire future of the Northwestern campus rests in the balance between a glorious future and complete disintegration.

This isn't an argument; it's a tantrum.  It's pretty much on the level of threatening to hold your breath until you die unless you get more bubble gum -and then won't you all be sorry.

And then, of course, there's the Chicago Tribune.  On August 12th, with its Pulitzer Prize winning architecture critic Blair Kamin safely packed away to a Nieman fellowing at Harvard, the Trib ran an editorial under the typically pompous headline, Let Northwestern build, shilling for the destruction of the building Kamin has called a "boldly sculptural, brilliantly engineered high-rise"

Chicago Tribune urban planning at work
Hedrich Blessing photography, courtesy the Chuckman Collection

It was full of the usual half-truths and evasions, which is what you expect from those wonderful people who gave you McCormick Place on what should of remained open lakefront.  It was the Tribune we have to thank for what was essentially a vanity project of the paper's isolationist, red-baiting, labor-hating editor Robert R. McCormick, who dispatched political reporter George Tagge to Springfield to lobby legislators to rubber-stamp the project.  Although the original eyesore mercifully burned down in the 1960's, it's much better successor by Gene Summers still crowds what today would have been open lakefront, for all the people.

Thanks, Chicago Tribune.  Please don't hold it against us if we don't have much use for your new "gift" of destroying Prentice.

Northwestern would like you to not notice the letter to Mayor Emanuel supporting saving Prentice from 60 major architects from all across the world.  Frank Gehry?  Jeanne Gang? Who are they?  What trees to they plant?  What bankers do they have on retainer?

Enter Paul Beitler.  He isn't some building-hugging goo-goo, but one of Chicago's successful developers.  In a conversation with Crain Chicago's's Business Shia Kapos, he says, in Kapos' words, that "he's had enough of the 'out with the old' mentality."  Beitler calls Northwestern's bluff. "There are a lot of things in nature that don't fit, but we find ways to work around them and with them.  This building is so unusual that regardless of the its designer it deserves to stand the test of time. If allowed to remain it will be the only building that stands out from the blocks of architectural mediocrity . . . "  You can't kid a kidder, and Beitler isn't buying Northwestern's protests that they have alternative to destroying Prentice.  He's been in the business and done enough deals to know that's pure B.S.

Today, the Save Prentice Coalition issued an eloquent refutation of Northwestern's arguments.  Read the full text after the break.

Speaking from someone who saw its excellence first-hand when I was in the emergency room a couple weeks ago, Northwestern Hospital is one of Chicago's great institutions.  Why is it dealing with the issue of Prentice like the really bad doctor who patronizes his patients with baby talk?

Northwestern, grow up.  

Stop insulting our intelligence with your puerile arguments and false alternatives.   Prentice doesn't work for you?  Fine.  There are a lot of developers for whom it would work out just fine.  There are other places to build your state-of-the-art laboratory.  You already have a lot bridges.  Make more, longer if you have to.  As Paul Beitler says, Prentice is the only distinctive building in a sea of architectural mediocrity that demeans your brand.  Don't destroy it.  Use it in building that brand.  There are a lot of people who want to help.  Let them.

Don't be deluded in thinking that once you destroy Prentice, it will be forgotten.  As the legacy of Bertrand Goldberg's work grows in time - and it will - Northwestern, whatever else its achievements, will be forever known that as the vandal that destroyed a key piece of Chicago's cultural legacy.

You're better than that.  You're all about healing, and healing is about a lot more than what goes on in surgery.  Your campus is a forbidding, unwelcoming physical presence.   It misrepresents you as a mere repository of great corporate power.

Make your campus human scaled. Heal it, as you continue to build.  Start by agreeing to find an alternative that saves Prentice, perhaps the only place on campus where the soaring grace truly expresses the aspirations of your mission.   With just a portion of the same brilliant thinking you bring to the practice and teaching of medicine, you can find a solution to saving Prentice that will let you do everything you want, while making you a true hero in the definition of Chicago's character, past, present and future.


Read the Save Prentice press release after the break.

Calling every one of you who cares about Chicago Architecture: As Demolition looms, battle to save Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital ramps up and needs your support

At a SOAR public forum last week,  Northwestern's representative made clear that the only use they intend to consider for Bertrand Goldberg's iconic Prentice Hospital is as a pile of rubble.   As the 60-day moratorium negotiated by 42nd ward Brendan Reilly is set to expire, the battle to save the building ramps up.  Blair Kamin has slammed the Commission on Chicago Landmarks as MIA on the most contentious - and critical - landmark battles, something we've been writing about for years, and will write about again next week.

Now, the Save Prentice Coalition has launched a petition drive to demonstrate support for saving the hospital.  Check out the petition and sign here.   The petition urges Ald.Reilly to move forward with designating Prentice as an official Chicago landmark, something the Landmarks Commission hasn't listed a finger to do.  Reilly's ward office can also be reached via phone (312.642.4242) or email.  

And finally, there's the June 6th Bowling for Prentice benefit at 10 Pin, in another unprotected Bertrand Goldberg landmark,  Marina City.  5:30 to 8:00 p.m.

$35 for Adults, includes 2 hours of bowling, shoe rental, gourmet pizza buffet and soft drinks. A cash bar will be available. Proceeds will support the Save Prentice advocacy campaign.

Like the Adler and Sullivan's Garrick Theater and Chicago Stock Exchange buildings, this is one of the most critical preservation battles in the city's history.  To avoid the same disastrous result as those battles - to Chicago, it's architectural legacy, and the character of the city - this is the time to step up. Do a little bowling, a little shouting.  Sign the petition, and urge others to do so, as well.  Make your voice heard against those who would destroy our history just because they can.

Landmarks Illinois releases convincing reuse report for Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital

click images for larger view.

Northwestern University is hell-bent on destroying an essential piece of Chicago architecture,  Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital, saying  they've investigated re-use options and determined that there is no other choice.

Bunk. The Chicago Tribune editorial board may have swallowed those empty claims whole, but most Chicagoan's are not so gullible.  Now, Landmarks Illinois has now called Northwestern's bluff with a stunning report, A New Use for a Modern Landmark: A Reuse Study for the Former Prentice Women's Hospital.  It's a great and compelling read, and you can - and should - download it here.

It's a fact-packed, eloquently illustrated and thoroughly researched study of the structure, beginning with a list of testimonials on the building's importance from everyone from Helmut Jahn, Jeanne Gang, and Blair Kamin, to The New Yorker's architecture critic Paul Goldberger.  The building includes 340,000 square-feet of space, with 17,000 square feet of open plan space on each of the seven floors in the iconic cloverleaf tower.

That open plan makes the building especially suitable for re-use, and the report comes up with three possibilities, as a Research Lab Tower that could accommodate over 800 researchers, an office tower accommodating up to 2,000 workers in the kind of "open office" plan that's becoming increasingly prevalent in workplace design, or as a residential tower with over 100 residences for medical staff or student housing.

That third option was actually presented a while back by Northwestern PhD student "Nick" in a comment to one of my earlier posts on the battle of save Prentice . . .

Prentice is situated right in the middle of the medical, business, and law schools (directly connected via tunnel or bridge to the medical campus) and would be an ideal location. We also desperately need a student union and community space to promote interaction, which is currently non-existent within and between programs. I would be very surprised if Prentice would require extensive work to convert into a welcoming, functional student center, which would have the added bonus of keeping with Goldberg's original spirit and vision.

Landmarks Illinois reports that reusing Prentice would be, on average, over 40% cheaper than recreating the space in a replacement structure. Just as importantly, it would prevent the creation of another 23,700 tons of construction waste, one of the primary contributors to the nation's landfills.  As has been proven time and again, the greenist building is usually the one that's already built.

You can debate the particulars of the Landmarks Illinois report, but it makes the primary message crystal clear:  Northwestern's claims that Prentice Hospital is some sort of unsalvageable white elephant are without foundation.  Not only is Prentice Hospital a central and irreplaceable part of Chicago's architectural legacy, Bertrand Goldberg designed it such a way that it can remain a valuable, productive piece of real estate for many decades to come.

Download this eye-opening report here.