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.

Share the Wonder of Chicago Architecture - do you have what it takes to be a CAF docent?

I could never be a Chicago Architecture Foundation docent.  You have to know what you're talking about.

Thankfully, however, there are a large number of  Chicagoans who so love the city's architecture and sharing it with others that they dedicate their time to learning the facts and leading the tours.  It's a great gig, and here's a quick quiz to see if it's for you.

• If you find yourself explicating the history  of Soldier Field while everyone else in the bar just wants to watch the Bears struggle to evade another ignominious defeat  - you, too, could be a CAF docent.
•  If you know all the names the Aon Building has had -  you, too, could be a CAF docent.
•  If you spend intermission at a Grant Park Symphony concert rhapsodizing about Frank Gehry rather than Gustav Mahler -  you, too, could be a CAF docent.
•  If you sometimes forget the complete roster of your grandchildren, but can name every gargoyle on the Cobb Gate,  you, too, could be a CAF docent.
• If you can tell one Pond brother from the other - you, too, could be a CAF docent.
• If you find turning on an archi-virgin to Louis Sullivan's Auditorium even hotter than sex -  yes, you, too, could be a CAF docent.

This Saturday, August 21st, from 10:00 to 11:00 a.m., the CAF will be throwing the last of two open houses to encourage potential docents to kick the tires, meet current docents, and learn about the program.   There are 85 tours on the CAF roster, on all kinds of topics, on foot, by bus, boat, bicycle, Segway, camel and - if you are less than this tall - Asian carp.  The CAF's Jennifer Lucente is in the home stretch of her Around Chicago in 85 Tours, in which she's set herself the challenge of taking each one of those 85 tours.   There are nearly another twenty tours to go through October, and you can tag along, as well.

This Saturday's open house is at the CAF's home in the historic, gleaming terra cotta Santa Fe Building at 224 South Michigan.  Docents enjoy benefits such as a free CAF membership, and access to their own website.  Docentry is apparently kind of like a guild - it's a self-governing body with its own elected council and secret handshake.

CAF docents are among Chicago's best good-will ambassadors.  Now's your chance to join that elite - yet egalitarian - corps.  More info here.

. . . when Burnham Wood come to Daffodil Hill - and went all orange and yellowey

tree trunks that look like steamed crab claws - click images for large view

This is the scene in Grant Park just west of Lake Shore Drive.   Last winter, in their unending efforts to transcend the paltry limitations of nature, the Chicago Park District slapped yellow and orange paint on a bunch of defunct Lincoln Park trees slated for removal.  This year another seven trees were marked "condemned" with an overlay of blue and orange.  In April, director of natural resources Adam Schwerner, while declining to disclose which distant Daley relative got the contract for this brainstorm, said it was a "nature exhibition . . . to engage people in the parks in a different way." (Your smart-ass remark inserted here.)

Not content with painting the tongues of the expired blue, the CPD went on to replanting the corpses in similar gaudy array. The Painted Forest ransacked local nurseries for 100 dead, leafless trees,  done up in "vivid orange and yellow hues . . .  installed by drilling holes into the ground and then back-filling the holes with gravel for maximum stability."  Schwerner said the idea was to "provide a colorful focal point [during] the monochromatic season."  Well, anyone who's actually ventured outside and seen the lush foliage our recent monsoons have produced, we're a long way from the drear of the winter, but that hasn't stopped the Park District from moving their Painted Forest to "Daffodil Hill" in Grant Park, just west of LSD and south of the of the Cancer's Survivor Garden.

Even as, a little to the north, architect David Woodhouse carefully placed his new DuSable Harbor building into a natural berm, the Park District trashes Grant Park with the synthetic.  As art, Painted Forest has a certain fascination.  It might, floodlit in winter's dark days, divert.  In the warm sun and bloom of summer, however, it's an intrusion, cheap and garish.

Olmsted and Jensen are probably turning over in their graves, but I ask you: what dead trees did they plant?

Chicago Air and Water Show in the air, Götterdämmerung in the ear

Click on images for larger view.

What a trip -  watching fighter plans roar through the sky with Siegfried's Funeral Music, from today's L.A. Opera broadcast, as the background music.

 I stumbled upon a location with a great view, far from the madding crowds, which my equine friend, who seemed to be tripping out a bit on his own, promised not to reveal.

It's not nicknamed God-damn it's long, as my friend Lita calls it, for nothing.  My iPod ran out of juice and cut out dead before I got to hear the ending.  If anyone heard it all the way through, can you fill me in?  Did everything come out OK?

Planes on Point and Pretzel Trails - Chicago Air and Water Show 2010

Click on images for larger view.

Procession with Bull, no extra charge

click for larger view - highly recommended

Clean Sweep on the Cheap at the Wrigley Building

 click images for larger view

As we've written about before, the old plaza between the Wrigley Building and in its annex had grown increasingly derelict and forlorn, especially when seen against the sparkling new Trump Tower riverwalk.

So a few weeks ago, they shut the thing down for what was described as facade repairs on the annex, which had already undergone a rehab a while back with red granite, metal frame windows, and a thick canopy in 60's/70's modern demarcating what was then the Wrigley Building restaurant.

The new rehab is now open, replacing the restaurant entrance with a series of storefronts with large windows, white metal frames, heavy framed doors, what looks to be large extruded light panels (although they weren't lit up last night) capped by rectangular vent panels above.  The new designs are like an ugly scar against the elegance of the Wrigley's ornamented terra cotta, looking as if a 7-11 might move in at any minute.

 

The old fountain that had been boarded up for years, the desultory shrubbery - all gone, although you can still make out their footprints on the paving.  The plaza has been completely emptied out. It's now just a wide expanse of walkway.

It's as if Wrigley's new owners, the Mars candy company, simply threw up their hands and decided to just make the plaza a kind of prelude to the spectacular, lushly landscaped Trump walkway to the west.

It's an acute disappointment, especially if it's a sign of how Mars's stewardship of one of the great jewels in Chicago architecture is going to play out.  Still, if you aren't going to add anything worthwhile to the conversation, I suppose the next best thing is to just shut up and get out of the way.  Cleaning out the clutter is an improvement. Before, all those shabby stuffings in the plaza were just an obstruction to the view towards one of the more spectacular walkways in Chicago, terminated by the Trump Tower and, in the distance, the handsome new 353 N. Clark, by Lohan Anderson.

I have a new camera

click images for larger view

The two of us - myself and the sales guy at Best Buy - stared at $1,600 worth of stuff sitting in a flimsy, blue plastic bag: a camera, a 55-250mm telephoto lens, 8GB Extreme memory card, the bag to carry it all in.  The guy who was helping me - whose name, idiot I am, has already fallen out of my head - is a recent import to Chicago from Dallas-Ft. Worth, and just that afternoon had made the trek from Wrigley Field to the Hancock Center on his bike along the lakefront, for the first time.  He was so generous with his time helping me find everything I was looking for that I almost forgot the hideous amount I was spending.

It's quite a leap from a three year old Powershot 720 IS to a Canon Rebel T2i.  For a long time, I was able to hold off the purchase because the model is so hot that it seems to be pretty much sold out everywhere,  all the time.  Last Friday, the Best buy website showed none of their stores had it in stock except the outlet at Kimbell and Belmont, but when I called ahead to confirm, I found out the website was, in fact, wrong.  They did not have any T2i's at all.

Customer:  This is a cheese shop, isn't it?
Clerk:         Finest in the district!
Customer:  Justify that remark.
Clerk:        It's so clean!
Customer: Well, it's certainly uncontaminated by cheese.

Apparently, the Best Buy website is not especially reliable in reporting their inventory.  Just for the hell of it, I stopped by the Hancock Best Buy on Saturday.  The website said it didn't have any T2i's.  The associate told me they did - they had sold the last one 15 minutes before I walked in.  She did tell me that shipments came in on Tuesday and Thursday, and by 5:00 on those days the trucks are fully unloaded and the shelves restocked.

So, when I really should have been writing (really, really should be writing),  I returned just after work, and as Texas guy was  looking to see if the camera was in stock, another associate rolled up with a hand truck,  and on that hand truck there was a small brown plastic shipping container, and in that small, brown, shipping container was a small black box with bright red lettering -  the last T2i to be had that day.  Spending that kind of money - even on myself - pains me, but since I take 10,000 to 20,000 photo's a year, I decided it was time to finally take the plunge.
 
And at the moment, I'm a bit intoxicated.  I hurriedly brought my prizes home, and although it was dark by the time the battery was charged, I still couldn't resist running outside and putting the highly-rated camera through its paces.

So, for this first sequence of photo's, I used a $1,000, state-of-the-camera as if it were a $200 point-and-shoot, in idiot mode, without a tripod.  And still the results were amazing.  With my old 720 IS, auto mode resulted in night scenes that looked like they were shot through a heavy blanket.  The T2i, on the other hand, soaks up available light like a sponge - in fact, in auto mode, there was more light in the photographs than in the actual scene being shot. 

Obligatory cat shots:

Did I mention it also shoots 1080 HD video?  (I'll get to that soon.)

Imagine what I'll be able to do if I actually use a tripod or take the time to learn how the thing works.

When the Cranes return to Clark and North

It's like the Chicago Children's Fountain couldn't catch a break.  Created in 1982 during the administration of Jane Byrne, it was fabricated on a small plaza isolated amidst rushing lanes of traffic along the south bank of the Chicago River.  When east Wacker Drive was reconstructed in 2001, the fountain was ripped from its moorings and unceremoniously stuffed under the Roosevelt Road Bridge, where it remained for four years.  In 2005, it was finally taken out of mothballs, and after a much needed  restoration, remounted just south of the Chicago History Museum.

Unfortunately, vandals and scavengers soon found the four spouting cranes at its base soon too much of a temptation to resist.  One by one the cranes disappeared - a while back I saw one of them splayed forlornly on its side, dangling from the metal bars that connected it to the fountain, before it, too, disappeared.  And there was one.

Now all four cranes are back, spitting exuberantly into the wind.  (Thank goodness they're not camels.) Let's hope they're now treated with a bit more respect, and maybe even a little enhanced security.

Harboe at Carson's, Neutra discusses Neutra, Studio/Gang at Columbia College - SCB in Abu Dhabi, and much more: the August architectural calendar

It's the 9th of the month - time for the August calendar!

Actually, the first week was less front-loaded than usual, and a lot of Chicago institutions are still on summer hiatis, but there's still a ton of great stuff coming up in August.

The National Public Housing Museum is offering a series of lectures on public housing in both architectural,cultural and social aspects each of the remaining Wednesday morning's in August. On August 12th, Dr Raymond Richard Neutra, son of the famous architecture will lecture on the significance and survival of Neutra's Los Angeles VDL Studio and Residences for AIA Chicago, which is also offering a panel of architects including Walter Eckenhoff and Jackie Koo talking about hotel design throughout the world on Tuesday, the 10th, Christine Caryle discussing her firm's planning work in Abu Dhabi at Solomon Cordwell Buenz on the 11th.

On Thursday the 19th, AIA/Chicago will be offering a tour of the new Columbia College Media Production Center with a representative from the building's architects, Studio/Gang, as a guide. The same afternoon, the Glessner House Museum is offering a tour of the recently restored Louis Sullivan formerly known as Carson Pirie Scott by architect Gunny Harboe.

There's also SEAOI's day-long seminar on the Design of Low-Rise Reinforced Concrete Buildings o Tuesday, the 24th, when Christopher Miller is also talking about Urban Morphology at APA/Chicago. The Häfele Chicago showroom has a lecture by Robin Whitehurst and Greg Williams of Baily Edward Architecture on the Independence Park Bungalow project on Monday, the 16th, and there's an opening reception and a panel discussion led by Victor Margolin Monday the 30th at the opening of the exhibition Get Inspired! The Swiss Design Award at Crown Hall, IIT.

And that's not all! There are nearly three dozen great events in August. Check them all out here.

Proms!

Most of the time, I'm quite content being stupid. Occasionally, though, it grates.  Months ago, I found myself hungrily going over the schedule for the 2010 London Proms, the annual musical festival that includes nearly a hundred concerts and recitals, which can be listened to via streaming audio via the BBC both live and for a week thereafter. Then I forgot all about it, and only remembered today, at the end of Proms Week Four.  Why does this make me angry?

Prom #1: Mahler's Symphony of a Thousand, with the BBC Symphony conducted by Jiří Bělohlávek.

Prom #2: Wagner's The Meistersingers of Nuremburg, with the Welsh National Opera and, as Han Sachs, Bryn Terfel.

Prom #3: Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, with Placido Domingo and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden conducted by its director, Antonio Pappano.

On Friday, the 30th, the Proms celebrated the 80th birthday of Stephan Sondheim with Terfel singing excerpts from Sweeney Todd, plus Judi Dench, and the incomparable Simon Russell Beale.

It appears that, unlike some other places I might mention, the 5,000 audience members weren't shooed away after a factory timekeeper's 85 minutes, but given a generous sampling from the wealth of landmark works Sondheim has created over his long, brilliant career, capped by a sustained, ecstatic ovation for the composer/lyricist, himself.


Well, that's all water under the Tower Bridge now, and not every concert, true be told, offers the same blinding starpower. You can, however, still catch - through next Wednesday - the Valery Gergiev conducted Mahler 5 with the World Orchestra for Peace, the ensemble founded by Georg Solti, which may be the globe's most illustrious pickup orchestra. Andrew Patner reported the group's performance of the 5th in Salzburg recalled the famed Solti brass sound, with solo's from former CSO Associate Principal horn player Gail Williams, plus violinists Olga and Ilya Kaler, Larry Combs on clarinet, and Gene Pokorny on Tuba.  For a few more hours, you can hear Violeta Urmana, Ben Heppner and Simon Rattle conducting the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in a blistering account of Tristan, Act 2.

Future weeks bring everything from the Nachstuck from Der ferne Klang by recently rediscovered composer  Franz Schreker (thank you, James Conlon), to Ligeti's Night and Morning and Violin Concerto, Arvo Pärt's St. John Passion, and, later that week, Symphony No. 4 Los Angeles, which continues to grow on me after its CSO premiere a season ago, Simon Keenlyside singing Mahler's Rückert-Lieder, A Freak in Burbank by Albert Schnelzer, Gil Shaham playing the Barber Violin Concerto, David Robertson conducting the BBC Symphony, Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra tackling the Beethoven 9, Karita Mattila singing Strauss' Four Last Songs with Simon Rattle conducting the Berlin Phil, along with Five, Six, and Three Pieces for Orchestra - you probably already know by who, John Elliot Gardiner conducts the Monteverdi Vespers of 1610, Andrew Davis leads the BBC in Brahm's 4th,  Jennifer Larmore helps recreate the 1910 Last Night of the Proms, and Renée Fleming headlines this year's Last Night, on September 11th.

Check all all the goodies, and find the links to the broadcasts, here.

I know there can be only one Proms, and Chicago's not London. I cherish the Grant Park Symphony, and have fond memories of Ravinia, but given the world-class talent both native to the city and attracted to perform here, is what we have now really the best Chicago can do with its summers?

Chicago Streetscene: Waiting for the Frontera to open

In 1987, chef Rick Bayless took the risk of opening a new kind of Mexican restaurant, with an emphasis on authentic dishes and ingredients, in an 1870's building of what was then a Chicago's skid row, when it was not unusual for Bayless to find a drunk sleeping it off in the doorway when he came in to open. Soon, Frontera Grill was a smash, and part of the bedrock that transformed a skid row into the thriving River North district. Bayless has gone on to create a restaurant empire.  With the recent opening of XOCO, it's expanded along Clark Street  all the way to another 1870's building at the corner. Next door is Topolobampo, which takes reservations, and then the original Frontera, which doesn't, upholding an original tradition.  So every day before five the pilgrims begin to line up.  I believe it's to qualify for the nightly lottery in which one lucky diner will win a solid gold 1917 Estados Unidos Mexicanos. Or maybe it's for the food.

Update on Northerly Island today at 12:15, Bauhaus, Hitler and Chicago at noon

As we continue on our long trek towards producing an August calendar, we thought we'd give you a heads up of today's events, which includes :

Update on Northerly Island - Friends of Downtown sponsors a talk by Gia Biagi, director of planning for the Chicago Park District.  "Since the closing of Meigs Field more than seven years ago, Northerly Island has been waiting for a comprehensive redesign. Biagi will provide an update on the process that has happened to date, what they have heard so far in their public review and what is next in the project planning. Joining her in the talk will be Gregg Calpino with the Chicago office of JJR, a national leader in planning, landscape architecture, engineering and environmental services."  12:15 p.m, today, August 12th, Millennium Room, Chicago Cultural Center

Commission on Chicago Landmarks - monthly meeting, 12:15 p.m., City Council Chambers, Room 201-A, 121 N. LaSalle.  Agency includes final landmark recommendations to the City Council on the Blackstone Library in Hyde Park and the Germania Club on Clark.

A Break with the Past: The Bauhaus, Hitler, and Chicago
12:00 p.m., - Smart Museum of Art, 5550 South Greenwood
Sponsor: Smart Museum of Art
Free event, advance registration required.

Alan Fern, emeritus director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery, discusses the people and ideas that led to the foundation of the Bauhaus, a school of architecture and design that opened in Weimar in 1919. Eventually closed by Hitler’s Third Reich, the Bauhaus school of masters and students dispersed—only to play a major role in shaping contemporary aesthetics in America and around the globe.

Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Mid-Century: Good Design" in Europe and America, 1850–1950, on view at the Smart Museum of Art from July 8 to September 5, 2010.

To register, contact Kristy Peterson via email or call 773/702.2351. Information online.

IAll About IDP and ARE
6:00 - 8:00 p.m. - Chicago Architecture Foundation, 224 S. Michigan Ave.
Sponsor: AIA Chicago Young Architects Forum, NCARB
Free event
1.5 LU

Whether you have just enrolled in the Intern Development Program or you're considering starting the Architect Registration Examination, this program is for you. Harry M. Falconer Jr., Nick Serfass, Rachel Allegra Kros, and Martin Smith from the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards, will explain these two phases of the licensure process, which in Illinois may now be undertaken simultaneously. Learn the essentials of both, and if you have questions about how you're proceeding through either one, bring them to this presentation. Frank Heitzman, AIA, IDP coordinator for AIA Chicago and AIA Northeast Illinois, will also participate in this program., as will Luis Martinez from the Illinois Architecture Licensing Board.

Information: 312/670.7770; Information on-line.

Chicago Streetscene: Boredom

click for larger view

Chicago Streetscene: Mummemschanz Peeping Toms

(seriously, we're working on the August calendar now.)

Transformers 3 guns may not be real, but they sure are noisy.

Filming continues on Transformers3, as combatants struggle to secure Chicago's Wacker drive from adversaries to be added later, where every shot seems to require starting off with a big explosion.  I think it's the law.  Bay's law, actually.

Father Time takes it all in unmoved.