Late news and too-late news: Jeanne Gang honored by SOAR, deadline for Graham Foundation Individual grants; nominations open for CAF Patron of the Year

Things I forgot to list:

The 5th Annual blueprints celebration, the annual fundraiser for SOAR (Streeterville Organization of Active Residents), will take place Monday night, September 13th, at the Signature Room, and will honor Jeanne Gang of Studio/Gang Architects with their 2010 Vision Into Reality Award.  The deadline for reservations - individual tickets $100 -  was September 8th (I told you I was late), but if you're really desperate to crash the party, direct your begging to SOAR Executive Director Jill Heise at 312/280.2596, ext. 1.

Wednesday, September 15th, is the deadline for submitting this year's Inquiry Form, the first of a two step application process, for the Graham Foundation's Grants to Individuals.  More information and submittal form on-line.

The Chicago Architecture Foundation is accepting nominations for its 2010 Patron of the Year Award, honoring "those responsible for commissioning, financing, and executing a single building or a complex of related structures. Nominations are accepted for all building types falling under one of three categories: commercial, governmental and institutional. Projects must be completed between January 1, 2007 and October 15th, 2010. Projects located in the Chicago region, defined as the counties of Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will in Illinois, and Lake and Porter counties in Indiana, are eligible for nominations."  Nomination form on-line.

Chicago Theater Caryatid

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Got a great tour of the iconic Chicago Theater yesterday.  Here's a preview of what I hope will be a photo essay in the not too distant future.

Greenwashing at the old, "Green" parking behemoth

Whatever the merits of the building, the PR effort behind it has been sensational.  Adoring profiles of HOK's Greenway Self Park, in Chicago's River North have been everywhere, even taking in even my good friend Edward Lifson.  When he featured it on his Hello Beautiful! blog - on Earth Day - he speculated it might be "The best new corner in Chicago .  . ."

Last month's Fast Company article, Windy City's Gusts Supply Power to Stylish Turbines, seemed to be more of the same.   Until I got to this paragraph:

Greenway’s turbines were made by Helix Wind, though the initial plan was to use Aerotecture, a Chicago-based solar and wind energy company. But after studying the wind patterns near the garage, the company decided the site was too “low power,” says Bil Becker, Aerotecture CEO. To avoid making himself--and the burgeoning wind-power industry--look bad, they withdrew from the project. “They’ll try to [force] you into building a sculpture, he says, “but we don’t make sculptures.”

Which pretty much sums it up.  The Greenway Self Park is a triumph of greenwashing, of style over substance.  I apologize to Aerotek: I originally gave them credit for the turbines - at that point I was believing what the press releases were saying, as well - and I admire them for having the guts to decline to participate and to go on record about it. 

If you want all the grisly details on this not-so-good-as-it-first-seems structure, check out my article here.

How could anyone consider  an 11 story lump bringing over 700+ gas-guzzling,  carbon-spewing cars into the center of the city sustainable?  The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind. Just don't expect that wind - or all the PR spin - to turn the pretty turbines very often.

Patron Saint of the Self Park

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If you go to St. Peter's in Rome, you see gigantic statues of the saints along the roof line.  So, just because their focus is on a spot rather than a soul, why should the patron's of the self-park on east Lake be denied a similar flourish?  When you gaze up to the top, about ten stories up, you can see a small figure at the building's crest, the hood ornament to Stanley Tigerman's witty express of the facade of a parking garage as the hood of a stylish touring car.

But this is no generic grace note, but a very particular visage of a mechanic in full Statue of Liberty mode.  Who was the sculptor, and who was the model?

The history of public housing, Great Chicago Houses, Steel Day, PARK(ing) Day and a showcase of green design - more great events in September

Day one: put up the new monthly calendar.  Day two:  go through all the emails about stuff I missed and add it in.

So, already, we've got a half dozen great events freshly added to the September Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.  Every Wednesday morning this month, The National Public Housing Museum is pairing a tour of the site of the museum with a lecture on the role and history of public housing.   Today's lecture is by Executive Director Sunny Fischer, and September 29th will feature Illinois State Senator Mattie Hunter, talking about her life in the Robert Taylor Homes.

Friday, September 17th is PARK(ing) Day 2010, and Architecture for Humanity, Chicago will be doing their part here by transforming parking spaces in Logan Square into a temporary public park.  (But don't cry for Morgan Stanley: AFH-Chi assures us the stickers on all the affected meters will be taken care of for the day.)


On September 24, AISC Chicago will be marking Steel Day 2010 with an architectural cruise past some of Chicago's famed steel-framed skyscrapers. And next Thursday, the 16th, at the Driehaus Museum, (AKA Nickerson Mansion), Stuart Cohen and Susan Benjamin will discuss their book The Great Houses of Chicago: 1871-1921, for the Chicago-Midwest Chapter of the Institution of Classical Architecture and Classical America.

And through Friday, September 10th, you can take in the Green Showcase Exhibition at Harold Washington College, 30 East Lake, Room 102.  The exhibition . . . 

 . . . displays student plans from Harold Washington College and SAIC for projects that were inspired by the City of Chicago’s Green Initiative, two of which are currently in the development stages for Harold Washington College: the Green Roof project for the 30,000-square-foot rooftop of Harold Washington College, which will make it one of the largest green roofs in the city; and the “10 East Lake” project, an outdoor sustainability lab located on the premises of Com-Ed’s CTA Generator Station—activating the plaza that is directly to the west of the college. Both plans are slated to begin construction in the near future. There are real and speculative green projects that SAIC students have been co-designing with south and westside communities in the exhibition, as well.

The renderings on display show living walls, rainwater collection systems, farmers markets, rain gardens, outdoor classrooms, sculpture gardens and much more. Students are responding to the architecture of the city and the sites, as well as the data about the sites that they have collected through digital sun analysis, wind condition calculations, bird habitat observations and other environmental tests. The roof project will be a collaborative space for the whole college, including the integral involvement of the Biology department, which will have classrooms and teaching greenhouses on the site. 

More information on-line.

Check out all the 60+ great events on the September calendar here.

Mayor Daley retires. We all ask ourselves: what now?

In an one of the most shocking events in Chicago's history, powerful Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley has announced he will retire from office at the end of his current term.  Don't think it's shocking?  Hasn't happened in about a century.   Mayors either get booted by the voters or are carried out feet first.  Sawyer? Defeated.  Washington? died in office.  Byrne, Bilandic, Kennelly, Thompson - all defeated.  Richard J. Daley and Anton Cermak - died in office.

The mark of a great executive is knowing when to quit.  Mayor Richard M. Daley has decided it's time.  Like his father before him, he could probably have gotten re-elected as many times as he wanted, but also like his father, the later terms in his tenure would become increasingly contentious and unpleasant.  For the first time, we will have an ex-mayor who will be able to become, in retirement,  a beloved presence, courted on all sides for advice.  If he wrote a truly honest book about how things actually worked, it would become a textbook for civic administration.  If written with the bark off, it would top the best seller lists.

We now have those people throwing their hands up in chicken-little style, moaning and groaning:  "We're all doomed!  What will we do now?"

"Grow up."  That's probably not what Richard M. Daley will say to us, but he should.  He should tell us:

"For the past twenty years, I've tried to be everything to everyone.  I've been the great Earth Father everyone turned to, always expecting I'd be able to make everything right.   And over time our leadership structure grew weaker and weaker.  The circle of people I felt I could depend upon grew smaller and smaller, and I had to recycle them from position to position, like a game of musical chairs."

"And exactly where were you in this equation?  Other than flattering me and telling me what you thought I wanted to hear?  Over time, you didn't get stronger to face up to me.  You grew weak."

"When I started, I was a Daley, sure, but basically I was just a guy people thought would do a good job.  By the time I finished, I had somehow - oh, wait, maybe I had something to do with it - evolved into this kind  of all-knowing, all-powerful, all-healing Civic Shaman.  Only I was never quite as powerful as everyone thought.  If I were, do you think I  would have ever have let things gotten out of hand?"

"Don't get me wrong,  I enjoyed the perks.  I really enjoyed the perks.  I enjoyed - maybe a little bit too much - the way you can swagger when you're king of the hill. But if I was sometimes a bully, you were often way too comfortable being my punching bag.""

"But as you've probably heard somewhere, heavy hangs the head, you know?  Now it's on your head.  How are you going to handle it?  Will you just  go looking for another tooth fairy, so you don't have to do the dirty work, the heavy lifting?  Or are you going to become an adult and do what's necessary to keep a great city great?"

It make not look like it now, but our mayor has given us what is perhaps the greatest gift of his career, and an even greater challenge.   We've been spending the last decades having our political and civic consciousness grounded by Richard M. Daley, of loving him or hating him, of having him be the source of gravity that seemingly kept everything from flying off into space.  And now we won't.   As Robert Redford's character asked, after unexpectedly winning election in the film The Candidate, "What do we do now?"

Pecha Kucha 15, Peter Bohlin, Jacques Ferrier, Jurgen Bey, Zook, Saarinen, new music inspired by Aqua, rappeling down the Wit - it's the September Calendar!

Things are ramping up.  There are so many events on the  September calendar - over 50, even with a light opening week for the holiday. - that we were seriously thinking about adding back a 31st day to fit them all in.

It kicks off tonight, Tuesday, September 7th, with the 15th edition of Pecha Kucha Chicago, where a band of creative folk - this month including architect Ed Keegan and landscape architect Peter Schaudt - make a presentation using only 20 slides with 20 seconds each.  Tomorrow, there's a look at the architecture of R. Harold Zook at CAF,  and the reopening of the renovated 1856 Jane Adams Hull House.

You want architects and designers?  On the 16th, there'll be a lecture by architect Peter Bohlin,  while Alliance Française of Chicago sponsors a talk by French architect Jacques Ferrier on the 21st,  and designer Jurgen Bey speaks at Fullerton Hall of the Art Institute on the 20th,

How about ambitious multi-day events? How about three? AIA/Chicago's Professional Development Conference, the Architecture for Change Summit taking on the affordable housing crisis, and an R+D Symposium [Geek is Good].

Elsewhere,  Craig Miller talks about the J Irwin and Xenia Miller House by Eero Saarinen at Second Presbyterian Church on the 23rd.  On the 25th, Preservation Chicago fall fundraisers gives you a chance to experience the spectacularly-restored Historic Sears Power House.

Jim Phillips will talk about the development of the Chicago Bascule Bridge, and APT Western Great Lakes sponsors Wiss, Janney, Elstner's Stephen J. Kelley talks about Diagnosing the Gingerbread District Port-au-Prince, Haiti,  and, on the evening of the 30th, there'll been tandem open houses and tours at both Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House and Mies van der Rohe's Crown Hall.

If you want music with your architecture, Accessible Contemporary Music sponsors a sequence of original compositions by Chicago composers in the buildings that inspired them, including Aqua, the Monadnock, the Marquette and others.

Still not enough excitement for you? On Sunday the 12th, you join the hardy pack of adventurer/fundraisers who will rappel down the 27 stories of the Wit Hotel to benefit respiratory health.

Okay, so that's about a third of this month's great events.  Clear off your calendar, and check the complete roster here.

Make No Little Plans: Daniel Burnham and the American City -PBS debut tonight, 9:00 p.m., WTTW

Judith Paine McBrien's ambitious Make No Little Plans: Daniel Burnham and the American City, the first feature-length documentary on the architect and planner, has its broadcast debut tonight, Monday, September 6th, on PBS.  Locally, it will be broadcast on WTTW, Channel 11, at 9:00 p.m. View the trailer here.

For Labor Day: some architecture from Unionville . . . and a Temple to Painters

Chicago has always been a strong union town. The story's told that it was a wildcat bricklayer's strike that sent William Le Baron Jenney home so early one day that his shocked wife absent-mindedly parked the heavy book she was reading atop a birdcage. The major saw the weighty volume supported on that minimal skeleton of thin metal, and - voila! - the idea of the steel frame skyscraper was born. (When the legend becomes fact, print the legend . . . )

In the early decades of the last century, a section of the West side north of Jackson and on either side of Ashland became home to a large number of unions. Nearly thirty still make their headquarters there today. Some of the buildings are pretty basic, such as the United Electrical Workers, with it's 1997 mural "celebrating solidarity with Mexican workers" . . .

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Some are more grand, such as the UNITE! Hall at 333 S. Ashland. As recounted by the Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters website, it was "built in 1929 with a library, bowling alley, gymnasium and dental clinic . . . and was the original home of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America . . ."

There's the Plumbers . . .

.  . . and the Truck Drivers . . .

The Teamsters have their own Teamsters City, in mid-century modern . . . 

despite the fact that their logo continues to feature a pair of horses, alluding to the time of the union's founding when a "teamster" was someone who drove a "team" of horses pulling drayage carts.

some union buildings have been decommissioned . . .

But perhaps the most interesting could be called Art Deco meets the Vienna Secession, the headquarters of Painters District Council 14, at Adams and Laflin, constructed in 1956 to the designs of the architectural firm of Vitzthum and Burns.

Built of limestone and polished granite it's one of the most distinctive structures in the district.

. . . and, as the AIA Guide to Chicago notes, there's "not a painted surface in sight."

Happy Labor Day!

Nature Boardwalk at Lincoln Park Zoo photo set

Today's Groupon Deal - $55 CAF members - $25.00 each.

Chicago-based web-marketing phenom Groupon today is featuring a great deal on memberships to the Chicago Architecture Foundation.  Beside supporting a great organization, membership includes discounts on bus and Segway tours, buy-one-get-one-free discount on a River Cruise, and other perks.  The $55.00 one year-individual tour is going for $25.00, and the one year household membership, usually $75.00, is going for $37.00.  As of 6:56 a.m., the deal has already crossed the Groupon minimum threshold of 100 participants, - 71 household memberships, 37 individual. Check it all out here.
UPDATE: As of 11:43 a.m., nearly 1,000 coupons for membership have been sold.

September 3rd is Louis Sullivan's birthday - born in 1856 - his creativity remains as fresh as today

On the occasion of Louis Sulivan's 154th birthday, we're republishing an extended post from early this summer . . .

This summer's must-see exhibition: Louis Sullivan's Idea

The last time Chicago recognized architect Louis Sullivan, in 2006 on the 150th anniversary of his birth, we celebrated by burning down three of his buildings.  This year, we're making amends.

Almost all of the early attention has gone to the Art Institute's fine new exhibition, Looking After Louis Sullivan, featuring photographs of Sullivan's work by John Szarkowski, Aaron Siskind and Richard Nickel along with architectural fragments and drawings by Sullivan, himself.  It runs through December 12th.

The main event, however, is over at the Chicago Cultural Center: the long-awaited exhibition, Louis Sullivan's Idea.

 Curated by Chicago Cultural Historian Tim Samuelson and designed by graphic artist Chris Ware, this is a spectacular show that makes full use of the two-story height of the Cultural Center's Chicago Rooms to create an incredibly eloquent overview of Sullivan's life, work and thought.  Samuelson and Ware fill the spaces with massive prints of historic photographs, cleaned up to an incredible sharpness that lets you see the buildings down to their finest detail.  You're no longer the passive observer looking down on structures reduced to sedate framed portraits.  You're standing on the street looking up at Sullivan's incredible creations.  The pictures often exceed your frame of vision, so its almost as if you're within the interiors.

The exhibition draws on the full force of Samuelson's exhaustive scholarship - and an exceptionally rich collection of artifacts, from ornament, to elevator grills, to metal plates designed to be placed under stoves, and a sample of  carbon filament lighting  - to capture the passion and emotion of Sullivan's life and work.

When I checked out the exhibition early in the morning on opening day last Saturday, I turned the corner and came across Tim Samuelson, himself, sitting at the window sorting out the various captions, which were still to be hung despite the fact that he and Chris Ware had been working until 2:00 a.m. earlier that morning to finish things up.  And, along with one other very lucky visitor, I got a personal tour.  In the following video excerpts, improvised with my usual complete innocence of technique on my iPod, Samuelson talks a bit about Louis Sullivan's Idea.

Tim doesn't like to force ideas on anyone.  He'd rather just let people discover on their own.  Towards that end, he said he was almost tempted to leave the captions off the walls.  By now, those captions are probably up, but you can choose to ignore them.  Last Saturday, there were things still to be installed - most notably, a large-scale model of the Chicago Stock Exchange Building so, like Groucho, I'll be going back to see what develops.

I expect to be writing a lot more about Sullivan and the exhibitions, but make no mistake:  Louis Sullivan's Idea is a phenomenal, not-to-be missed show.  It runs through November 28th, but my advice is don't wait.  It's a true Chicago epic.

Chicago Streetscene: His Master's Voice

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Richard Harris Collection "Morbid Curiosity" from Leslie Harris on Vimeo.

Studio/Gang Architects at CAF today, 2010 Preservation Excellence Awards Tomorrow (and the Calendar is coming . . . promise)

The new season's first Wednesday luncheon lecture, 12:15 p.m. at CAF, 224 S. Michigan, will feature Kara Boyd and John Wolters of Studio/Gang Architects discussing recent projects such as the new Lincoln Park Nature Boardwalk, the renovation of the Shoreland Hotel, and others.  There's also the always popular ARE Study Hall at AIA Chicago,  35 East Wacker, 5:30 - 9:00.

On Thursday at 10:00 a.m., the 2010 Preservation Excellence Awards will be presented in the Claudia Cassidy theatre of the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington, followed at 11:15 by the regular monthly meeting of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks in the Garland Room on the Cultural Center's 1st floor.  Also at the Cultural Center at 12:15 p.m., this time in the Millennium Room, Friends of Downtown will be sponsoring a talk by Rachel Weber of UIC on TIFs and Chicago Development.

All of this is to say that the September calendar isn't quite ready for publication, but we've already got three dozen items - everything from Pecha Kucha 15 on the 7th, to talks by architects Peter Bohlin and Jacques Ferrier, AIA/Chicago's Professional Development Conference, the Architecture for Change Summit on affordable housing at UIC, and Preservation Chicago's fall fundraiser at the recently restored Historic Sears Power House.  Check back Thursday (or maybe Friday) for the full roster of events.

Bestiary on Wabash

203 N. Wabash is one of only two office buildings designed by the firm of Rapp & Rapp, best known for their lavish movie palaces like the Chicago, Palace, and Oriental.

Overall, the slim, 25 story structure, built in 1928 as the headquarters of the Old Dearborn Bank, an official Chicago Landmark, has a restrained, streamlined profile.  The firm's fantasist roots, however, can be seen in the ornament.

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At sidewalk level, it's very subdued, squirrels, rams, and human heads that look like they might have come off a Gothic cathedral.

It's at the building's crest, all but invisible from the street, that things go a bit mad . . .  with a very ornate top accented by the usual lions . . .

  . . . and a flock of massive, truly strange birds as the building's sentrys.

The Final Curtain: Urban Remains selling the Esquire Theater sign

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Even though it's been closed almost four years, the distinctive profile of the Esquire Theater, its marquee and soaring sign, remained Oak Street's most iconic landmark.  Designed by architect William L. Pereira and opened in 1938, it was a unique and indispensable alternative to the Baroque fantasy movie palaces of the 1920's, done in a streamlined Art Moderne style as elegant as an ocean liner.

Of course, our crack Commission on Chicago Landmarks never lifted a finger to protect it.  The 1,390 seat auditorium was destroyed in 1989, re-engineered for retail on the ground floor and above it a two-level multiplex with ungainly shoebox theaters that were already obsolete the moment they were built.  A proposal to replace the building with a 10-story hotel went nowhere when then Alderman Burton Natarus refused to support the necessary upzoning. After the collapse of the real estate market, the property was foreclosed on last November, and eventually wound up in the hands of currency trader Donald Wilson, Jr., obviously not a man of excess sentimentality.

But a big piece of the Esquire can now be yours.  The sign is being sold by Urban Remains.

So the building that gave Oak Street it's character is trashed and destroyed.  What else is new?

Skyscrapers of the Sea Redux - the Tall Ships are Back, only through Sunday

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It wasn't quite as romantic as the last time they were here, in 2006, when they made their way into the city through a heavy fog that made the scene look like an animated J.M.W. Turner.  But the Tall Ships are back, 20 of them versus 17 in 2006.  Instead of deployment all the way down the river towards Michigan avenue, this year, they're all around Navy Pier.

In 2006, we wrote of them as the Skyscrapers of the Sea, "among the tallest man-made structures, scraping the heavens on water as the spires of churches and cathedrals did on land. The way their lightweight sales were borne on the soaring, interlocking skeleton of masts makes them seem a precursor to the steel-frame construction that made Chicago architecture famous."

Included in this year's collection is the replica of the HMS Bounty, created for the 1962 remake of Mutiny on the Bounty, where the real mutiny was that of lead Marlon Brando, sacking director Carol Reed, who had initiated the project, and torturing his replacement, Lewis Milestone, along with pretty much every member of the cast and crew.  Milestone estimated that Brando had been the cause of at least $6 million in overruns towards the film's eventual cost of $19,000,000, a phenomenal sum in those days, and several million more than that of another 1962 epic, Lawrence of Arabia. (Apparently, sand was cheaper than ego.) Brando's career would not recover until The Godfather, a decade later.

The Bounty at Navy Pier was built in Lundenberg, Nova Scotia at a cost, in 1960 dollars, of $700,000.  It was sailed 7,000 miles to the Tahiti location.  According to IMDB, it was set to be burned at the film's conclusion, but Brando insisted on substituting a 40-foot model, which was only fitting, as the surviving ship has had a more successful afterlife than the movie for which it was created.  After filming, it was sent on a highly successful publicity tour for Mutiny, including stops at the 1962 World's Fair in Seattle.  It continued touring, including to the 1964 New York's World Fair, until it was acquired by Ted Turner in 1986, as part of Turner's acquisition of the MGM film library.  The ship has gone on to roles in other films,  including a 1989 version of Treasure Island with Charleton Heston and, most recently, portraying The Edinburgh Trader (not, as often claimed The Black Pearl) in episodes two and three of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.

This year's event runs through Sunday, August 29th.

Despite the stiff tariff of $44 to $54 per passenger, excursions on the ships have long been sold our, but you can still see all the ships for $15.00; $20.00 including dockside boarding.

There are fireworks each evening.  Lemonade, candied nuts, churros, and Japanese parasols, in abundance.  More information at the website here.