Millennium Park Paperweight and Sketch Pad, red leafy border

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The skating rink at Millennium Park opens for its tenth season this Friday, November 19th.  It's claimed to attract 100,000 skaters a year, and it's free, with skate rentals for $10.00.  In related news, the John G. Shedd Aquarium has discontinued its skate rental program as certain unscrupulous renters were taking them out and getting them drunk.  (Thanks, as always, to our indefatigable correspondent Bob Johnson for the spectacular photo.)

Chicago Viaduct Scene: Hollywood on Hubbard

 

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Future of Grant Park Postponed, Nicholson's Aliens, Ghosts and Spirits invade, Lumenhaus to MP, Nickel archives to AIC

Apparently, the future is not yet here.  We received word today that an unveiling of the plans by Michael van Valkenburg and Associates for North Grant Park, aka Daley Bicentennial Plaza, aka Children's Museum battlefield, scheduled for this Wednesday the 17th has been cancelled.  "The team is not fully ready to present and other timing issues have arisen," wrote the Grant Park Advisory Council's Bob O'Neill, who said the session will be rescheduled at an unspecified date in the future.

Stepping into the void, the always provocative Ben Nicholson will be kicking off the Chicago Architectural Club's fall schedule with a talk on "aliens, ghosts and spirits" 7:00 p.m., at Archeworks, 625 N. Kingsbury, at Ontario.

Also on Wednesday,  Lumenhaus, Virginia Tech's entry to the DOE's 2009 Solar Decathlon competition comes to the north-south promenade of Millennium Park for a five day residency during this years Greenbuild Conference and Expo.

Inspired by the glass pavilion style Farnsworth house designed by Bauhaus architect Mies Van Der Rohe, Lumenhaus is a structure with open, flowing space that connects inside living with the outside world and is completely powered by the sun.  The north and south walls are all glass, maximizing the owner’s exposure to bright, natural daylight. The fully automated Eclipsis System, comprising independent sliding layers, permits a revolutionary design in a solar-powered house, while filtering light in beautiful, flowing patterns throughout the day.

The structure will be open 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. for tours.

The big news today:  as reported by the Trib's Blair Kamin, the Richard Nickel Committee has announced its archive of 15,000 items has been donated to the Art Institute of Chicago.  The news follows the recent publication of over 800 of those images in The Complete Architecture of Adler & Sullivan, a landmark catalog of all the firm's known work.

$9.9 million pays your Dewes, lets you get your Gründerzeit on

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When last I encounterd the 1896 Francis J. Dewes mansion at 503 West Wrightwood in 2007, the caryatids  bearing the ornate balcony above the entrance had been mummified in a protective plastic wrap, part of an exhaustive restoration by developer Fred Latsko, which included the cleaning and releading of the house's art glass by the Chris Botti studio.

Latsko took over the property via foreclosure about seven years ago, and combined the apartments into which it had split up into a single residence that he made his home.  One of Rod Blagojevich's last acts as governor was to erase Latsko's 1985 conviction for credit card theft, for which he had already received a pardon by then-governor James Thompson in 1985.  Latsko was behind a failed $15 million deal to acquire the Three Arts Club for conversion into condo's or a boutique hotel.  More recently, he bounced checks totaling $884,000 to City Hall covering development fees for the new Barney's store his firm built on Oak street. The checks were finally paid over two years later. Last month, the Irish bank that had financed the Barney's construction filed a  $93-million foreclosure suit.

Things do not appear to be going well for Latsko, who is reportedly also in the middle of divorce proceedings. In Sunday's edition, the Chicago Tribune has a story that Latsko is putting the almost 10,000-square-foot Dewes mansion up for sale.  Using a well-established marketing strategy, he's pricing it at $9.9 million. (See, if it were $10 million, you'd probably think it was expensive.)

The mansion was designed by architects Adolph Cudell and Arthur Hercz in what has been called the Gründerzeit style, which  became popular in Germany when unification and the victory over France in 1871 created an economic boom in which the expanded ranks of the wealthy aggrandized themselves with neo-renaissance and baroque architecture.  Although both on the National Register and a designated Chicago landmark, the AIA Guide refers to it as a confused "German confection" and Gene Shalit once sniffed, "this Dewes is a don't."

Francis J. Dewes, for whom the house was constructed in 1896, was born in Prussia in 1845, son of a brewer.  At 20, he emigrated to Chicago, where the massive German population made beer a big business.  He began as a bookkeeper at one brewer, and pushed himself up into positions of increasing responsibility.  Within just seventeen years he opened his own firm, F.J. Dewes Brewery, which eventually became the Standard Brewery company,

In 1909, as President of Standard Brewery, Dewes was found guilty of patent infringement  for using "infringing corks" not made by the manufacturer and creator of 1892 Crown Cork System of Bottling, "a system which has completely revolutionized the art of bottling," producing 2.5 billion corks in 1907 alone.  Co-defendant Max Greenberg . . .

carrying on business under the assumed name 'Spanish-American Cork Company' is . . . supplying imitation sealing devices . . . being exact counterfeits of the complaintant's . . . When called to his attention, Mr. Dewes gave assurance that it would stop; but further supplies of the infringing corks were soon after obtained and used. 

One profile of Dewes noted that "In the affairs of the German-American citizens of Chicago and the welfare of newcomers from the Fatherland he has always been conspicuous."  He funded the Dewes Lectureship in the History of German Civilization at the University of Chicago, as well as the statue of the German naturalist and geographer Alexander Von Humboldt found in the Chicago park named after him.

Dewes sold the house in 1921 to the Swedish Engineers Society, which kept it into the 1970's.  He died on December 21st, 1922. leaving behind an estate in excess of $1 million, which today would barely buy him a butler's pantry in his former abode.

Throwing Away the Headhouse: North & Clybourn Red Line Before and After Apple

We've written before about the reconstruction of the North & Clybourn stop on the CTA's Red Line, financed to a tune of nearly $4 million by Apple Computer to provide a more fitting backdrop to its shiny new store right next door.  It reminds me about the line in Lawrence of Arabia where Peter O'Toole is asked exactly what he found so attractive about the desert.  "It's clean," was his reply.

As described on the excellent Chicago-L.org website, the North & Clybourn station was designed in 1939 by Shaw, Naess and Murphy.  It is the only subway station in the system to have a headhouse. All the others have ticketing in below-ground mezzanines.

The redesign kept the building but largely threw away the design.  It's been Californiaized: dark textured brick getting flat, lighter replacements, windows, doors and lighting all redesigned.  The original building had character -it just needed to be cleaned up and restored.   The redesign is generic and banal.

Thanks to Landmarks Illinois, we've gotten some photo's of the original design in its later days, and we put them side to side with the new station, allowing you to make your own judgements.  Just remember to add a little imagination to see it in your mind as it was originally, not as the CTA had allowed it to decay.  And speculate what we might have had if Apple, instead of spending all that money replacing and throwing away the old brick, doors, and windows - repeat after me, the greenest building is the one that already exists - had used it instead to clean, repair and restore the original.  (All older photo's courtesy Landmarks Illinois.)

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According to Landmarks Illinois President James Peters . . .

There was no need to replace the brick or--even worse--the beautiful polished black granite panels that wrapped the base of the building and the eastern curved wall.

These materials were in fine shape, although dirty and in need of tuckpointing. This was purely a "make it look like any other 2010 commercial buff-colored brick box" cosmetic job.

Well before the work began, we tried desperately to redirect the project (and save money), but the die had been cast by the California designers for the project--and CTA was unwilling to cross them. Thus, a very unique Art Moderne (1943) station building gets banalized. And, in this era of "sustainability," a lot of great and beautiful building materials were tossed away, unnecessarily, in the process.

The CTA - and every other city agency - have recently announced that everything's now for sale to fill the gaping holes in all the budgets.  They will be aggressively pursuing naming rights for every city asset they can persuade some advertiser to put up the cash to brand.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing - I've already read someone suggest a UPS-sponsored Brown Line - but it's unlikely we'll find too many mores corporations as generous as Apple was at North & Clybourn.  For renovations to come, we need to balance the need for cash against preserving Chicago's unique character and keeping it from coming just another generic could-be-anywhere shopping mall.

Red

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Adler & Sullivan at Charnley House, The Fountainhead and John Lautner at the Block, Grant Park plans unveiled, Jarzombek, Woltz and more: new additions to the November calendar,

We've just added some big items to the November calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Tonight, Friday, Evanston's Block Museum screens King Vidor's The Fountainhead with Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal, part of their series, The American Architect in Focus, which will also include Infinite Space: The Architecture of John Lautner next Thursday, the 18th.

Tomorrow, Saturday, November 13th, at Sullivan and Wright's Charnley-Persky House on north Astor, John Vinci and Ward Miller will be signing copies of their spectacular, must-have book, The Complete Architecture of Adler & Sullivan.  Reserve ahead to make sure there's a copy for you to buy.

The other big event is this coming Wednesday, November 17th's unveiling of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates' concept plans for the Grant Park Renovation Project, which will include the presentation of a large-scale model and images.  I'm taking my mom to see The Lion King that night, so I wont be able to attend, but if any of you do, please let me know where the model's winding up and give me a report of your impressions.

Monday, the 15th, MIT's Mark Jarzombek lectures at the School of Architecture at UIC, and back on Wednesday the 17th, it's another logjam night, with not only Grant Park Renovation, but  ULI Chicago offering up a panel on Real Estate Forecast 2011 at the Hyatt Regency.  That same evening, AIA Chicago and the Consulate General of Sweden Chicago will be presenting two panels on From Brownfield to Urban Oasis, talking about post-industrial plans for Chicago's South Works site.  The panels will include SOM's Phil Enquist, the Chicago Department of Environment's Dave Graham, Gunnar Söderholm, Head of the Environment in the City of Stockholm, and a host of others from both the U.S. and Sweden.

Then on Friday, the 19th, the Harry Chaddick Institute of DePaul will be presenting a panel, Reinventing Community: Branding, Rebranding and Economic Development, moderated by Urbanophile's Aaron Renn, with a keynote by Claudia Sieb giving a national perspective on branding, and Carl Wohlt offering up "cutting edge techniques being used to brand local communities."

I don't think it's really what Renn, Sieb and Wohlt have in mind, but lately in Chicago, branding seems most lately to have devolved into trying to sell off naming rights for everything from L stops to fire hydrants to anyone willing to kick a few bucks into our depleted civic coffers.  Can we get alderman to pay for their own salaries by having GoldenPalace.com tattooed on their own foreheads?  Can we train our pigeons to choreograph themselves in Busby Berkeley-like formations to promote Birdbgone?  And really, why have we let them call it the Viagra Triangle all these years without shaking down Pfizer for some really big bucks?  But I digress.

On Monday, November 22nd, landscape architect Thomas L. Woltz will be lecturing at Crown Hall, IIT. And Wednesday through Friday, the 17th through 19th, the Greenbuild 2010 International Conference and Expo will be taking over McCormick Place

There are over two dozen great events still to come in November.  Get the details on all of them here.

Eye Surgery proves Terminal

Eye, we hardly knew ya.

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It seems like just yesterday that Tony Tasset's 30-foot-high Eye came to State Street to start creeping us out.  Over the summer, Eye became an almost soothing presence.

We grew accustomed to, even expecting of, his protective gaze over our shoulder as we sat reading in Pritzker Park and he scanned and transmitted all our personal information to a server farm somewhere in Virginia. 

And then, yesterday, this . . .

When you say you've got something in your eye, it doesn't usually mean a construction winch or a swarm of workmen tearing it apart.  Like the Furies shredding Dionysus, just more methodical and workman-like.

We knew this day was coming - the sculpture actually was supposed to be gone at the end of October - but there was still a bit of anti-climax in the way the slicing open of Eye yielded, not a Bunuel/Dali-esque rush of viscous ooze sliming its way down State Street, but a simple steel structure looking a bit like a hat rack . . .

. . . with the inverted bottom dome of the Eye an igloo . . .

. . . and the individual panels, slices of bloodshot raw bacon . . .

 All the while, area pigeons gazed down disdainfully at the destruction of the bright orb they had also grown to love . . . to poop on.

If it's any consolation, if you happened to be a giant red Chinese Windy City Dinosaur in Millennium Park . . .

. . .  Wednesday also turned out to be a pretty sucky day . . .

Reid Murdoch Tower gets Whirlpool Tattoo

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The Whirlpool Corporation has opened a new 30,000 square-foot "flagship brand and product experience center" i.e., "showroom" in non PRspeak, in Chicago's 1914 Reid Murdoch building, designed by architect George Nimmons.

The eco-focused facility was built at this Chicago historic landmark building using locally-sourced construction materials; materials made from recycled, renewable and/or recyclable content; low-flow plumbing fixtures; and low VOC coatings. Even the construction waste was carefully recycled throughout the project. The location uses extensive day lighting, and includes a large outdoor space with an herb garden providing fresh ingredients for cooking demonstrations and events.

The facility includes "working kitchens, laundry rooms, garages and outdoor entertaining areas", as well as a memorial to the victims of the company's ill-fated 1930's Bidet-o-matic.

Whirlpool  is launching a year-long celebration of the upcoming 100th anniversary of the company's November, 2011 founding with the introduction of the first electric wringer washing machine.  Part of the celebration was a design competition for a logo, which received 40 entries from more than a dozen international design firms and ad agencies.  10,000 Whirlpool employees selected this:

For this they needed a competition?

Chicago Streetscene: Absolut Bus Shelter, HOB edition

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Chicago Streetscene: Whitening Strips DO Work

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Robots take over - from diapers.com to Helmut Jahn's Mansueto at the U of C

October 7, 2010 - Business Week cover story:  What Amazon Fears Most: Diapers - a story on how roving,  merchandise-picking robots have let diapers.com drive down costs and beat Amazon at its own game.

And if Amazon wanted a diaper war, an all-out price and delivery-time smackdown? "I would like that," said Bharara. "I would definitely take that challenge."

November 5, 2010 - Business Insider - Amazon Nukes Diapers.com in Price War on how Amazon is selling diapers below cost to counter diapers.com. (Microsoft vs. Netscape, anyone?)
November 6, 2010 - Amazon to Acquire Diapers.com for $540 million - ah, the joys of predatory capitalism. 

Diapers.com major weapon was a Mobile Fulfillment System (MFS) from Kiva Systems. hundreds of intelligent, bright orange moving platforms that grab pallets of product and bring them to human pickers fulfilling customer orders.

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The University of Chicago's new Mansueto Library, designed by Helmut Jahn and currently under construction with a Fall, 2011 completion date, is going a similar route, having hiring Milwaukee's HK Systems to deploy an Automated Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS) to create a state-of-the-art Automated Library System (ALS).

 The soaring cranes you see here under wraps will automatically retrieve requests from the 3,500,000 volumes kept in a forest of soaring, untouched-by-human-hands stacks filling the huge, 50 foot deep bunker beneath the reading room under Jahn and Werner Sobek's massive glass dome shaped like the world's largest contact lens.

 You can view a slow-loading video of how it works here.

The Library of Congress is denying reports that it is responding by developing an even faster, more advanced system, based on state-of-the-art teleportation technology from Star Trek Industries, which will allow readers to obtain a book just by thinking about it, enabling the LoC to outperform the Mansueto's delivery times by several minutes to a week and squeeze them out of the entire high-end storehouse of knowledge market.

We hope to writing a lot more about the Mansueto later. For now, there's a video of a great tour we took this past summer with Senior Project Manager Mike Natarus.