On a Neglected Landscape, Amanda Williams Creates a Powerful, Beautiful Statement - with Tulips

 

Traveling on the CTA's Green Line means looking at greystones and other classic buildings standing amidst vast tracts of vacant lots, most empty since the destruction of the 1960's riots.  

On several of those vacant lots around Prairie and 53rd, Chicago artist Amanda Williams has created a remarkable installation of sprawling beds of 100,000 red tulips. Lovely in themselves, the work's title "Redefining Redlining" tips off its greater meaning, the long era where banks deliberately starved of investment the areas most in need of it.

"We're planting the tulips in the shape of houses that should exist, "Williams told the Chicago Sun-Times, adding that she also took her inspiration from Dutch tulip mania of the 1600s, a craze in which, at is peak, a single flower sold for the price of a house, before values collapsed.  

A few blocks away from the plantings is Alfred Alschuler's 1914 B'Nai Sholom Temple, which became Greater Bethesda Baptist only decades later. Nearby is the George Maher designed mansion that eventually became home to White Sox owner Charles Comiskey.

Good bones" exist in the area's surviving buildings. Slowly, very slowly, new infill construction is filling in the gaps, but the emptiness remains. In Williams's flowerbeds, in its symbolism of past injustice expressed in visual delight, a terrible beauty is born, and a better future foreseen.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2023/4/21/23689614/tulips-redefining-redlining-amanda-williams-artist-washington-park-planted-53rd-prairie

On Chicago's Mayoral runoff

A very long time ago, I sat in the 39th ward headquarters and watched George McGovern give his last pre-election speech on TV. And I began, inwardly, to cry. Not because he spoke eloquently and from the heart about what was at stake, about the lives lost and mutilated by a senseless war, although he did. I cried because it suddenly hit me. It didn’t matter. Justice, healing, stopping the slaughter – it didn’t matter.

What mattered was that George McGovern had a high-pitched voice and spoke like you imagined a teacher in a one-room schoolroom would.  He spoke to the better angels of our nature.  He was a loser.

Richard Nixon was a master in speaking to our fears and appetite for vengence.  He was a realist, the emperor of silent majority "normal".  He was a "capable administrator." He was a winner.  (Like Al Capone and tax evasion, he would be brought down not by his mass murders, but for common grift in violating the niceties of democracy.)

Last night I was hit once again by that same emotion as I thought of next week's election.  We're afraid of crime.  I get it.  We're all for the underdog, but uneasy about what might happen if the usual elite isn't in charge.  I get that, too.  Everyone loves a winner, and a guy only a handful of voters could stomach when he ran for governor has become the Great White Hope now that's he's running one-on-one against an uppity, Afro-American official of a powerful union.  I get that, as well.

That there are real differences in policy between the two candidates may explain why so many political establishment figures are falling over themselves to get on the Vallas bandwagon, but not the warmth of the embrace.  It takes a large dollop of basic dishonesty to make-believe you don't see the facts of a "life-long" Democrat who seems most comfortable exchanging MAGA slurs with far-right radio hosts, or the "able administrator" who tends to leave behind messes each time he jumps from city to city like a traveling salesman keeping one step ahead of a process server, or the "take-charge guy" who says he knows nothing and blames everyone else each time his campaign is exposed endorsing racist and offensive statements.  

The Paul Vallas supported by public education destroyer Betty DeVos and Trumpist FOP head John Cantazara?   The man who called Trump's impeachment a "witchhunt?  Hey, that's some other guy.  The false Dimitri.  

We want to be safe.  We want to be sure. And once we buy into a pitchman's spiel that his elixir is the only thing standing between us and affliction, we're disinclined to look behind the curtain.

So, yeah, I'm betting Vallas will win comfortably next Tuesday.  And, yes, a part of me will be relieved Brandon Johnson didn't get in.  The rest of me will just be disgusted.

 

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A Letter to the GSA Opposing the Proposed Demolition of the Century and Consumers Buildings

 
I am writing to strongly oppose the proposal to demolish two classic skyscrapers in downtown Chicago.  This proposal is unacceptable on several levels.

1.  The Consumers and Century buildings are indispensable landmark-quality structures that typify Chicago architecture. The Consumers is from the distinguished Chicago firm of Mundie and Jensen, and is an elegant terra-cotta clad tower that typifies the great Chicago architect Louis Sullivan 's definition of a skyscraper as "a proud and soaring thing".  The Century Building is from another historic firm, Holabird & Roche, and marks the transition from the original Chicago School or architecture, to Art Deco. It's Neo-Manueline terra cotta ornament is unique.  It holds down its corner with power and grace.

2.  The Security justifications for demolition of these buildings are, to be frank, specious.  While one never wants to minimize the concerns of members of our Judiciary, those concerns cannot be allowed to govern policy solely on the grounds, not of reality, but of power.

The Consumers and Century are claimed to be an existential threat to Federal employees, yet only yards from the Dirksen building stands the Berghoff restaurant building, whose roof would provide a dangerous staging area for those looking to inflict harm.  More to the point, directly across the street is the Citadel Center, a glass-clad tower whose south facade opens vistas directly into the windows of the Dirksen Building.  As Citadel is winding down its Chicago operations, the possibility of unoccupied floors grows.

Even more importantly, the range of a common hunting rifle extends up to 400 yards, a long-range rifle double that distance, which means the same threat claimed to be presented by the Consumers and Century is also presented from a large number of tall buildings, privately-controlled, on the periphery of the Dirksen Building, including the glass-facaded former Home Federal Building on State (which ironically would have a clear view of the Dirksen Courthouse should the Consumers and Century be demolished), the Bankers Building (many floors of which are dedicated to transient hotel rooms), the Edison, Marquette and former Continental Bank buildings.  This, of course, would also apply to a terrorist seeking to launch an incendiary device.

The Consumers and Century Buildings have lived in peaceful co-existence for over half a century, ever since the Dirksen building opened in 1964.  There has never been, at least in Chicago, a single federal judge or employee killed or injured from a sniper shooting from outside their building.  The sad reality is that in the one case where the family members of a judge were tragically murdered, it was not at a work site, but at their residence.  In the case of incendiary devices, it should be remembered that Timothy McVeigh did not drive into the Alfred P. Murrah building to destroy it, but simply parked next to it on the street.

Benjamin Franklin famously wrote that a nation willing to trade away liberty for a little temporary safety deserves neither Liberty nor Safety.  To apply this to the present case, what is being proposed is trading two essential pieces of Chicago's urban fabric for a "security" that is both illusionary and dangerous.

3. Both structures are essential contributors to the State Street Streetwall.  Although the promise is to replace them with a park, their demolition would be the equivalent to the wholesale damage done to the center cities of the United States by destroying historic structures for parking lots, like pulling front teeth and replacing them only with painted gums.  More to the point, the proposal to change the Dirksen Building entrance to one off of that State Street park would destroy the entire concept another famed architect, Mies van der Rohe, developed for the Federal Center, in which all three buildings - the Dirksen Kluczynski and Post Office - revolve around the great plaza on Dearborn Street to create a sustaining civic space.

4.  The GSA was already at the point of approving a developer's plan to restore the Consumers and Century buildings as residential structures, when, inexplicably, the rug was pulled out from under them at the last minute.  Despite the GSA's long, often indefensible, laundry list of provisos in its request for comments, I still believe that was a viable plan, with security requiring approval - or even control - by the GSA.

However, local preservationists have presented proposals that meet all of those provisos, turning the buildings into document archives and other back-office operations, with the GSA in full control of security including removal of windows and other modifications where required that do not vandalize basic design integrity.  The GSA should accept these proposals.  The $52 million already earmarked for their destruction should more than cover the cost.

5. Conclusion.

Even a quick glance at the GSA's massive portfolio of properties demonstrates its proud history of enhancing America's cities with superior buildings, including both Mies's Federal Center, and, more recently the award-winning replacement for the Murrah Building designed by another great architect, Carol Ross Barney.  The destruction of the Consumers and Century would stand in stark opposition to everything the GSA's historic legacy stands for.  

We can do better.  We must do better.  Save, repurpose and  restore the Consumers and Century buildings.

Sincerely,

Lynn Becker

Illustration #1: distance between Dirksen and Berghoff buildings

Illustration #2: distance between Citadel Center and Dirksen Building (Century Building in far distance right)

It's Delicious! It's Colorful! It's Fun! It's Plastic! Only through Sunday, The Plastic Bag Store comes to the Wrigley Building.

You have only through Sunday to see weird, wacky, very fun, but far from frivolous The Plastic Bag Store at the Wrigley Building. The "anchor attraction" of this year's Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival,    The store is stocked entirely with very real looking fruit, vegetables, fish and pastries, and packaged goods for parody brands - all made of washed and repurposed plastic bags and trash.

The creation of a team headed by Brooklyn-based designer, puppeteer and filmmaker Robin Frohardt, the installation also includes showing of puppet films - unfortunately sold out - in which an anthropologist far in future works to reconstruct the lost culture of the civilization of "the ancient customers", guided by a note placed in a bottle by Helen, a Met Museum custodian living today, and by the "millions of found artifacts" that are predominantly plastic, which, because plastic doesn't biodegrade, are the most common remnants of our culture to survive.

The Plastic Bag Store that you can visit at the Wrigley is, in concept, that future anthropologists reconstruction of what our society was like.

There's also magazines, and a "time machine" that allows you to put in a plastic bottle today and see what it will evolve into in a thousand years.  (Spoiler alert:  it's the same plastic bottle.)

The level of creativity is amazing.  The vegetables look just like vegetables, flowers, flowers, cakes and cupcakes, real pastries.  There's even a deli counter . . .

... and a prodigious selection of packaged goods (be sure to look at the backs)  that is truly impressive and inventive . .

It took me back to my childhood, and to the Wacky Packs that were a really big deal among 7-10 year-olds of my generation.  

They were inserts trading cards - later stickers - that came with nickel packs of Topps bubble gum that offered up parodies of popular brands and their packaging.  For my demographic, they were snarky-fun high-culture.

Originally exhibited in Times Square, it took a year to create the over 10,000 objects in the installation. "I collected bags from friends and family members," says Frohardt in her Youtube video.  "I had people save things, I rescued bags the street, I pulled bags from the trash, I pulled them from recycling bins. And then we designed all the packaging.  We had to wash every bottle, and label them."

"My aim, "she says, "isn't to make people feel bad. My aim is holding up the mirror and highlighting the absurdity of all this, and fueling the fire of public outage over all this."

Indeed, you won't find any any numbers or charts at The Plastic Bag Store.  "I didn't want to overwhelm with statistics," says Frohardt, "but more just wanted to create a kind of familiar, visually tactile experience that [people] could relate to or understand in a more visceral way than just a bunch of numbers."

Still, the facts are staggering:

The world produces 5 trillion plastic bags a year.  No more than 3% are recycled. Plastic doesn't biodegrade.  It breaks down into ever smaller pieces of itself, with an increasing toxic effect on living things.  Parts of north Pacific are estimated to hold six times more plastic than plankton.  Ingested as food, often increasingly scarce, it can kill from blocking the digestive system or poking holes in organs.  UNESCO estimates 100,000 marine mammals die each year from plastic pollution.  Of 61 dead whales found in the Phillipines, 45 of the deaths were traceable to plastic ingestion.  One young whale was found to have 88 pounds of plastic in its stomach.  The Great Pacific Garbage Patch floating landfill, twice the size of Texas, is mostly made up of plastic.

There are alternatives.  I have my own collection of David Lee Csisko reusable bags, "made from 100% post-consumer recycled content . . . the equivalent of three plastic bottles" to cut down on plastic bag use, but sometimes I forget to bring one with me, and I'm back to sin.  New York City passed a controversial ban on plastic bags in 2020.  In Chicago, we have 7 cent "plastic bag indulgences".

Will we ever get our act in order?  Doubtful.  Remember that decades ago we had a perfect recycling system for pop - glass Coke, Pepsi, etc. bottles that you paid a deposit on, and returned to the store for a refund, but we were too cheap and lazy to lug the bottles back and forth once we could get our beverages in eternally polluting plastic.  "Efficiency," they said.  "More hygenic," they said.  And we said, ".... yeah, why not!"  

So, in summary, we're killing our fellow animals, the environment, the planet, and, eventually, ourselves. But what a way to go!

Again, you have only through this Sunday, January 30th, to see the spectacular The Plastic Bag Store at the Wrigley Building.  Frohardt and team will show you a really good time, and you won't even have to think about the sobering implications of her non-guilting, deliciously colorful fun-ride.  But plastic leaves an aftertaste, and odds are, sometimes afterwards, you will.

The Nine Lives of St. Boniface - Historic Church Architecture at the Crossroads

 

(Note: to just flip through the pictures in large view, simply click on any one of them.)

Saturday, June 12th, developer Zev Salomon gave the Noble Square neighborhood a last chance to view the ruined interior of St. Boniface before it's gutted to create The Boniface, 18 condo units within the church's structure.

Founded by German immigrants, St. Boniface started with a small wooden church in 1864, graduating to the grand new building designed by prominent church architect Henry J. Schlacks.  It offered its first Mass on Christmas Day, 1903,  with construction completed the next year.

Image courtesy Alex Fries, Pipe Organ Database, https://pipeorgandatabase.org/organ/50501

In 1990, St. Boniface was among the 28 parishes closed by the Archdiocese of Chicago.  The windows were boarded up, the 1908 Hann-Wangerin-Weickhardt organ removed.

Image courtesy Alex Fries, Pipe Organ Database, https://pipeorgandatabase.org/organ/50501

The history of the next 30+ years was a roller-coaster leading nowhere, extensively documented on the Saint Boniface Info website here.  The building was under the jurisdiction of two successive aldermen.  It was listed as a "Most Endangered" structure by both Landmarks Illinois (1999) and Preservation Chicago (2003 and 2009), who teamed up with community groups in ongoing efforts to save the building.  

In 1999, the Archdiocese announced plans to demolish the church.  250 people showed up in the rain at a "Stop the Demolition" rally, organized by The Coalition to Save Saint Boniface.   A hold was put on demolition.  An ordinance for the city to buy St. Boniface goes nowhere.  In 2002, the Archdiocese announces its attention to sell the property.  They demolished the parish school and put the facade into storage.  

In 2003, The Archdiocese holds a design competition with submissions from such prominent Chicago firms as Booth Hansen, A. Epstein, Brininstool+Lynch, and Studio/Gang, whose concept coupled new residential towers on the side of the now demolished school with saving the actual church space as a meetings and event space.

At a 2005 reunion mass and dance, an Archdiocese representative declared none of the competition's entries were viable, no money would be spent on St. Boniface, and community organizers could have it if they'd just cut a check for $3,000,000.

Later in 2005, Smithfield Properties unveils a plan that would involve building a high-rise on the school site.  Representatives of the Coptic Church reveal interest in the property.  They are allowed to tour St. Boniface, but two years later in 2007, after being unsuccessful in communicating with the Archdiocese, a letter is sent to Cardinal George asking for action on the Coptic Orthodox Church's proposal.  It is responded to with a pre-printed form.  

A year later, in December of 2008, the Archdiocese rejects the Coptic Orthodox Church's proposal,  and applies for a permit to demolish the church.  As St. Boniface is listed "Orange" in the city's Historic Resources Survey of potential landmark buildings, a 90-day hold is put on the demolition request. At the end of that period, a demolition permit is issued, but the city continues to negotiate.

In 2010, a deal is reached where Institutional Project Management will build senior housing within the facades of the church. Storage of elements of the demolished school's facade are now warehoused by IPM, but will not be used

Four years later, in 2014, after developers are unable to obtain tax credits from the state and city, the senior living proposal is declared dead.  The following year, Carefree Development announces a plan to build 56 one and two bedroom rentals within St. Boniface's facades.  Another request for a demolition permit is made, and put on automatic 90-day hold, which is extended by the city.

In 2016, the developer announces a 10 story tower to be built on the site of St. Boniface.  In April, the hold on the demolition permit is continued as the Chicago Academy of Music presents a plan to use St. Boniface as a music school and performance center.  In October, the Academy enters a deal with Stas Development to purchase St. Boniface. It includes landmarking the church and converting it to 15 condominiums.  The proposal is approved by The Chicago Plan Commission in April of 2018.

For the balance of 2018, and 2019, and 2020, mostly the sound of crickets.

Last April, it was announced that Zev Salomon's ZSD Development had bought St. Boniface.  On June 12th, they opened the church to let neighborhood residents in to get a last look at the interior, cleaned up of the debris and much of the graffiti that had accumulated down through the decades. (There was also free ice cream, very welcome on a very hot day.)  Representatives were on hand and renderings and floorplans on display for potential buyers of the condos of The Boniface, which will range from $750k to $1.5 million.  The open tops of the bell towers will become private terraces for the pricier units. Reps said 3 units had already been sold.

Construction starts this week

It's no small miracle that St. Boniface survived these three, troubled and contentious decades to finally be saved, if not as a community and spiritual resource, then at least as an outstanding architectural marker of its time and place.

Corpus Christi Church, 4900 South King Drive, Joseph W. McCarthy, architect, 1916

As church attendance and the number of priests continue to decline, consolidations, abandonment and demolitions continue. In January, the Archdiocese announced a new round of closures, including St. Alselm, St. Ambrose and the spectacular Corpus Christi (shown above), whose last mass will be later this month.  Whether Chicago will ever find a viable solution or continue to allow our architectural heritage of historic churches to simply vanish remains an unanswered question, but that's a story for another time.

For now, here's some links, and more last images of St. Boniface's interior before it disappears.

August 29, 2003:  Sins of Demolition, The St. Boniface Architectural Competition

September 14, 2008: Archdiocese puts St. Boniface Out for Bid

January 21, 2009:  Archdiocese to St. Boniface: Die! Die! Die!

April 11, 2010:  St. Boniface: Saved?

January 7, 2013:  Heavens to Purgatory: Imploding Churches Flatten Chicago

St. Boniface, Our Lady of urban photography explorers, photographs of Brian Bobek

Behind the Scenes of St. Boniface Church Photoshoot,  Matt Wilhelm

Saint Boniface Church, Eric Holubow: urban exploration photographer

Photograph courtesy Brian Bobek, https://thechicagoambassador.wordpress.com/2014/10/21/st-boniface-our-lady-of-urban-photography-explorers/