about designslinger
follow designslinger
more posts
networks
designslinger
Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago
[Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago (2012) Zimmer Gunsul Frasca, architects /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
In a couple of weeks, when Chicago's Children's Memorial Hospital leaves the neighborhood it has called home for 130 years and moves about a mile-and-a-half-south, it will have a new address, a new state-of-the-art building and a new name. The move will physically bring the hospital into the multi-block, Northwestern University Medical complex, an institution that Children's has been closely associated with for a number of years. Their new home is one of a number of healthcare facilities in the portfolio of architects at Zimmer Gunsul Frasca (ZGF), including Children's Hospital in LA. The $915 million, 23-story, structure will have twice as much space as the old facility and provide patients with 288 beds in private rooms. In addition, the architects have given both patients and visitors a special, dramatically spacial moment in a two-story "sky lobby," all wrapped-up in an environmentally LEED conscious building.
[Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, 225 E. Chicago Avenue, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
Children's started life as the Maurice Porter Memorial Hospital in a two-story house located at the corner of Belden and Halsted Street in the city's Lincoln Park/DePaul neighborhood in 1882. Julia Foster Porter was born in Chicago in 1846, one of three daughters of Dr. John Foster. In 1874, when Foster died after being thrown from his carriage, the three girls inherited a large portion of their father's estate which included some of the city's most productive, income producing property. Way back, when Chicago was no more than a few log cabins and a fort, Lt. Amos Foster (John's brother) was stationed at Fort Dearborn and purchased a number of recently plotted city lots in and around the intersection of Wabash, Randolph and Washington Streets, in what would eventually become Chicago's downtown Loop district. When the unmarried and childless Amos was shot and killed in 1835 by another soldier while stationed in Wisconsin, John was the beneficiary of those empty city lots, which became the bedrock of the Foster family fortune.
[Lurie Children's Hospital /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
After her father's death, Julia, married to Episcopalian minister Edward Clark Porter pastor of a church in Racine Wisconsin, bought out her sisters share of the inheritance when they decided they weren't interested in real estate and wanted to sell. Edward and Julia Porter had two sons, Maurice and James, and after Maurice's death at the age of 13, soon followed by her husband's death of a ruptured appendix, Julia moved back to Chicago, and in 1882 purchased the Belden Avenue property and opened the city's only hospital devoted to children's care, in the name of her son. Soon after establishing the small hospital, she purchased a large, corner piece of property nearby and built a three-story brick building on Fullerton at Orchard Street. By the time of Julia's death in 1938 at the age of 90, the hospital campus had grown to include the triangle of land it sits on today, and the name Children's Memorial Hospital.
In 2007 the trustees announced that a new facility was needed, and instead of tearing down the jumble of buildings built in the 1920s and 1960s on their triangular plot and starting over, it would be better to move to a location closer to the top-notch facilities located in and around Northwestern. Ann Lurie who had once been a nurse at the hospital in the early 70's stepped in with a donation of $100 million. Lurie's husband Bob was real estate mogul Sam Zell's partner, and in 1988 Bob Lurie was diagnosed with colon cancer and died two years later. A widow with six children to raise, Ann made the decision to devote time and energy into overseeing the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Foundation, which has given away over $300 million to a variety of causes, including founding and funding children's care hospitals, the Africa Infectious Disease Village Clinics, in Kenya.
See another recent Chicago hospital's latest addition at: Rush University Medical Center.
Friday Snippets 5.18.12
[Overalls Shirts Pants /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
Scaling tall buildings. [Bustler]
Jubilee Queen. [Telegraph]
City type. [Inhabitat]
Here's the skinny. [Guardian]
Underground art. [Travelettes]
Vivid space. [yatzer]
And another week speeds by. Whew. See you Monday.
EnV Chicago
[EnV Chicago (2010) Valerio Dewalt Train Associates, architects /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
While a giant drill began to burrow holes deep into the ground of the former parking lot at the corner of Kinzie and Wells Street in late August 2008, prepping the site for the solid concrete caissons that would support the luxury apartment high-rise, the country's economy was on far shakier ground. Just 3 weeks later, it looked like the U.S. was on its way to another Great Depression, but construction continued on EnV Chicago.
[EnV Chicago, 161 W. Kinzie Street, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
Lynd, a large developer and property management company based in San Antonio, Texas, had decided to break into the Chicago market with a cutting-edge apartment tower. The 24-story building, designed by the architects at Valerio Dewalt Train Associates, included a floor plate comprised primarily of studio and one-bedroom apartments, with a two-bedroom unit on one end. Sitting just 8 feet from the steel super structure supporting a branch of the city's famous El, the designers installed 1 1/4" thick glass to help and cut down on the noise. Floor to ceiling glass was also used to enclose small, balcony-like sky-boxes that projected out from the corners, which would provide a non-acrophobic tenant with great views, while being suspended in air.
[EnV Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
For the next 2 years while other projects around town never got off the ground at all, or were destined to end up as just a hole in the ground, or to have several floors of their concrete framework rise into the sky only to be stopped as the economy tanked and end up sitting it there forlorn, unfinished and wrapped in plastic, the glass sheeting on the EnV tower continued its march upward. When the building was completed in the summer of 2010, the developers optimistic promise that its 200+ apartments would be fully leased on opening day fell a bit short. With some of the highest rentals rates in the area, the project only had about 40% of its apartments leased. But insurance giant MetLife must have seen potential in the building, because in January 2012 they plunked down a reported $120 million for the shiny blue, El-adjacent tower, in a hot rental market that has loosened the purse strings.
See two adjoining neighbors at: 325 N. Wells Street, Chicago; and 300 North LaSalle.
Marshall Field & Co. - Wabash Avenue South Building
[Marshall Field & Co. - Wabash Avenue South Building (1892) D.H. Burnham & Co., architects; Charles B. Atwood, designer /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
The year 1891 did not start out well for architect Daniel Burnham. Although his office was as busy as ever and he was overseeing the design and construction of Chicago's huge Columbian Exposition, on January 15th, John Root, his business partner, friend, and creative genius, died of pneumonia. Into the void left by Root's death stepped Burnham & Co. architects Ernest Graham, Dwight Perkins, and a recent hire, Charles B. Atwood.
[Marshall Field & Co. - Wabash Avenue South Building, 104 N. Wabash Avenue, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
Atwood had been recommended to Burnham by one of the Fair's consulting architects William Ware, founder of the architecture programs at MIT, and New York's Columbia University. Atwood had gained recognition in New York as the in-house architect and lead designer for Herter Brothers, New York's exclusive, high-end interior decorating firm. He was credited with the interiors of William Henry Vanderbilt's double mansion on Fifth Avenue, and a number of other Beaux Arts, classically-inspired projects on the East Coast. Charles McKim, one of New York City's pre-eminent architects cautioned Burnham that while Atwood was very talented, he was also, well, perhaps a bit unstable. Burnham brushed aside McKim's concerns and brought the 42-year-old architect to Chicago, putting him in charge of the design of over fifty Fair structures, as well as projects needing attention unrelated to Fair business. One of those projects was for retailer Marshall Field, who was looking to expand his State Street store.
[Marshall Field & Co. - Wabash Avenue South Building /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
When you visit the massive Macy's State Street location today, which was once the flagship store of the Marshall Field & Co. chain, the seamless looking property is actually a series of interconnected buildings constructed over a period of 15 years. The original store stood on the northeast corner of State and Randolph Streets, and by 1890 was bursting at the seams. Field turned to Burnham & Root, who had just finished the design for an armory for Illinois' 131st Infantry on land donated by the retail baron. With Root's death, and an important client to impress, Burnham turned over the design to Atwood.
The new building would stand on the corner of Wabash and Washington, directly behind the existing Field & Leiter store. Field was only going to use the first 4 floors of the new 9-story building for retail purposes, and rent-out the upper 5 floors to business clients, where the "New Marshall Field Building" would offer the most up-to-date office space available in Chicago's burgeoning business district. Atwood may have helped with the marketing of the 1st class office building by designing a skyscraper that looked nothing like any other building on the city's bustling downtown streets. The structure stood-out among some of Chicago's latest and greatest because with its elaborately decorated "Spanish Renaissance" facade - the city's first purposefully Beaux Arts high-rise. Unfortunately, not long after the building was completed in 1893 the steel girders of Chicago's elevated railroad system rose up along Wabash burying the east facade in shadow. And, as the store you see today began to rise, it slowly began to engulf Atwood's stand-alone structure to become known as the Wabash Avenue South Building. With the store building completed and the Fair on its way to being launched, Atwood turned his attention to another Burnham & Co. project just a block away from the "New" Field Building, the Reliance Building. Completed in 1895, it was Atwood's triumph and his end song. Just a year later, Atwood was dead, succumbing to an opium addiction which may have explained the erratic behavior that Charles McKim had once cautioned Burnham about.
See more of Burnham & Co.'s Marshall Field complex at: Retail Revived, and more of Atwood at: The Reliance Building.
Friday Snippets 5.11.12
[Stevens (ca. 1923) Stevens Building /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
Friezing. [NY Magazine]
Printing. [Design Observer]
Sketching. [National Geographic]
Viewing. [Wired]
Buying. [Telegraph]
Styling. [Guardian]
See you Monday!
Albert F. Madlener House
[Albert F. Madlener House (1902) Richard E. Schmidt, architect /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
The Albert Madlener house is one of those Chicago architectural wonders often referred to as "groundbreaking," and making all kinds of "must see" lists. Originating from the architectural office of Richard E. Schmidt and his lead designer Hugh M. Garden, and paid for by liquor distiller and investment banker Albert F. Madlener, the house is a blend of Prairie School styling with a touch of Arts & Crafts, and a dash of Louis Sullivan.
[Albert F. Madlener House, 4 W. Burton Place, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
Madlener & his wife Elisa Seipp Madlener, daughter of one of the city's wealthier brewers Conrad Seipp, raised their son Albert Jr. in the house, who, in 1963, decided to sell the old family homestead following his mother's death the previous year, to a real estate developer. Once word got out that the Madlener house was on its way to becoming a pile of rubble in order to clear the site for a modern high-rise apartment building, a small but vocal group of architects began writing letters to the the editor of the city's newspapers in an attempt to raise awareness of the impending demolition. Charles F. Murphy, Jr. a Chicago architect and partner in his father Charles, Sr.'s firm, stepped in to save the day.
[Albert F. Madlener House/Graham Foundation /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
The Murphys were trustees of the Graham Foundation for the Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, founded in 1956 from a bequest left by architect Ernest Graham after his death in 1936. The country was in the midst of the Great Depression at the time so there was no interest income being generated by the principal monies left in the estate, and it took another 20 years before the Foundation was able to award its first grant. By 1963 the lease on the foundation's Superior Street office was set to expire and Charles, Jr. thought a move into the Madlener house seemed like the perfect solution. He went to see his parents and proposed the idea, they agreed, and because of all of the bad publicity surrounding the loss of the house to the wrecking ball, the developer agreed to sell the property for $450,000.
Although the house was saved, all of the original hardware had been stripped from the interior. Prior to the sale, Albert, Jr. held an auction where the hardware was put-up for sale to the highest bidder, and the money raised was given to charity. Other than that, the house had survived the previous 61 years intact and unchanged, and has been meticulously cared for by the Graham Foundation ever since.
See more of Schmidt & Garden's work at: Montgomery Ward & Co. Mail Order & Catalog House Building, Humboldt Park Boathouse, and Reese's Pieces.
Charles A. Stevens Building
[Charles A. Stevens Building (1912) D.H. Burnham & Co., architects /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
In 1886, Charles A. Stevens left the tiny town of Colchester, Illinois and journeyed 250 miles northeast to Chicago. Stevens and his brothers were running a dry goods store in Colchester at the time, when middle brother Charles decided to take a chance in the big city. He saw a future in the silk trade, and opened a small store on the second floor of Burling & Adler's Central Music Hall Building which shared the same city block with Marshall Field's State Street emporium. Selling silk exclusively paid off. By 1889 all of the male Stevens siblings had relocated to Chicago, and the following year Charles A. Stevens & Bros. moved into the ground floor space beneath the second floor shop. The company was on its way to becoming the largest, exclusive silk-seller in the country.
[Charles A. Stevens Building, 17 N. State Street, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
By sticking to one commodity, the company cornered the market on offering fine silk products from around the world, and required more space in which to do business. In 1890, Stevens moved into a larger storefront just down the street, and by 1901 had expanded into the upper floors of that building as well as having taken over two adjoining properties. Then in 1912, Chas. A. Stevens announced that they would build a brand new store on their multi-building, rather disjointed piece of land, designed with a sparkling white terra-cotta exterior by D.H. Burnham & Co. The 19-story structure would be unique among its mammoth merchandising neighbors because Stevens wanted to lease the upper floors to smaller retailers. He wanted to give them an opportunity to rent space in one of the country's most popular (and high-rent) retail districts, which was totally out of reach for many small business people. It harkened back to the days when he started out in his small shop on the second floor of the old Music Hall Building, which by this time had been demolished to make way for an ever expanding Marshall Fields.
[Charles A. Stevens Building, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
The ground floor included an arcade passageway that extended from State Street through to a Wabash Avenue property that Stevens had acquired in his earlier expansion binge. The arcade was actually more of a long hallway which included a row of display windows along one side that featured the goods and services sold by the upper floor tenants. Once you'd been enticed to take a further look, a bank of strategically placed elevators would whisk you up to the retailer of your choice. It seemed like a great idea, but it never really took off as intended, and many of the upper floor Stevens Shops became home to a cluster of shoe repairmen and manicurists.
Charles A. Stevens & Co. The Store for Women, celebrated in 100th anniversary in 1986, and closed for good in 1989. The ground floor retail space has continued to host variety of women's clothing stores, while the upper floors have lost their shoe fixers and fingernail filers to Westwood College and other non-retail focused tenants.
See a few more gleaming white terra-cotta State Street former retail establishments at: Relics of Retail; The Boston Store, Chicago; Maurice L. Rothschild & Co. Building; Three R's - Rothschild, Renovation & Reuse.
Friday Snippets 5.4.12
[Oriental Theatre Building (1925) Rapp & Rapp, architects /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
Meiered in Rio. [Architizer]
Simply modern. [Wallpaper]
What a Scream. [Artinfo]
Breakout! [New City Art]
Cam captured. [Architectural Record]
Hi-tech mix. [Bustler]
Having fun this weekend? Hope so. See you Monday.
Ford Oriental Theatre
[Ford Oriental Theatre (1926) Rapp & Rapp, architects /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
It was once known as the Randolph Street Rialto, four city blocks of hip, happening entertainment. Thousands of lightbulbs and neon outlined a long row businesses which included restaurants, clubs, hotels and seven gigantic theater marquees, cloaking teeming nighttime crowds in a blaze of light. The opulent 3,200-seat Oriental Theatre, the largest on the block, survived through those good times, and some bad.
[Ford Oriental Theatre, 24 W. Randolph Street, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
A couple of decades before the Oriental opened its doors on May 8, 1926 the site had been the scene of a horrific fire. The Iroquois Theater opened in November, 1903 and 5 weeks later was closed after a fire ripped through the interior auditorium and left over 600 men, women and children dead in its wake. The death toll was larger than the official final estimate of 250-300 lives lost in the aftermath of the city's huge conflagration of 1871. There were approximately 2000 people attending a holiday matinee on December 30th when a fire broke out backstage, and leapt into the auditorium causing panic and mayhem. Soon after the fire, the Colonial Theater rose-up out of the ashes.
[United Masonic Temple/Oriental Theater /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
In 1922 the local Masonic order decided to leave their 32-year-old, Burnham & Root designed Masonic Temple building at State and Randolph Street, and were on the hunt for a new location. They found one a half-a-block to the west on Randolph where the Colonial Theater stood. After a series of lease agreements with various land trusts that owned adjoining property, the Masons hired architects C.W. and George L. Rapp to design their new home. The building would not only provide lodge space for the fraternal order with a 1,500 seat, vaulted ceiling, meeting room on the top floor, but include commercial office space for rent, and room for a large theater. The decorative elements would be inspired by the architecture of the East, which was a popular theme for many Masonic buildings in the 1920s, and span an area extending from the Middle East, to India, and on to southern China. The elaborately embellished and colorful ground-floor restaurant was dubbed "The Signapore," and the theater, Balaban & Katz's "Oriental."
[Ford Center for the Performing Arts, Oriental Theatre (1998) Daniel P. Coffey and Associates, Ltd., architects /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
Over the next 60 years the lights along Randolph Street's Rialto grew dimmer and dimmer. By 1980 the teeming crowds around the Oriental of the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s had been replaced by a more unsavory group of Chicago gang members. On December 8, 1980 a group of undercover police officers arrested 75 rival gang members who had gathered at the Oriental to work out their south side vs. west side differences. Violence had escalated in the weeks before, when a gang member was shot by a an opposing affiliated member on the sidewalk in front of the theater. Then on December 10th, the building's owner said that the theater would closing. The grand two-story lobby was converted into an electronics store, and the auditorium sat forlorn and shuttered for the next 16 years.
In 1996, investors purchased the building with the help of the city of Chicago. And the architects at Daniel P. Coffey and Associates, along with the craftspeople at Conrad Schmitt Studios, oversaw the restoration of the theater, returning it back to all of its stunningly, magnificent, oriental glory.
See a few neighboring buildings at: Rathskeller on the Rialto, Building Boom, and Strikingly Typed, and a selection of 1920s-era Masonically inclined construction projects at: They Just Don't Build 'Em Like This Anymore - Pt.II, and Bloomingdale's at Home in Medinah Temple.
George A. Weiss House
[George A. Weiss House (1886) Harald M. Hansen, architect /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
1886 was a good year for George Weiss. His beer and malting business was raking in the dough which provided him with the cash to buy a city lot in an emerging Chicago neighborhood, soon to be known as the Gold Coast. Weiss' architect Harald M. Hansen designed a home for the brewer that stood-out in a community of stand-out architecture, with its pink-blushed Georgia stone and crocket-lined roof.
[George A. Weiss House, 1428 N. State Parkway, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
Just three years before construction on the house began, Weiss had made another major purchase. The George A. Weiss Malting and Elevating Company acquired a large piece of property on Ashland Avenue on the city's near west side, where George built a large new malt house and elevator. His business and holdings grew, and the plant became the largest of its kind, in what was then considered the western United States. By 1889, the Weiss company was doing so well that George expanded into the production of beer and opened the American Brewing Company on the Ashland property. Then in 1896 he secured $800,000 in financing through bond-backed loans from the National Bank of Illinois where George Schneider, the bank's president, just happened to be George Weiss' father-in-law. All the capital stock of the Weiss company was then placed in George's hands as sole trustee. Unfortunately he used the cash infusion to speculate in other business ventures, where investments were kept in his name if they were successful, but transferred to the company if they were not.
[George A. Weiss House, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
1896 was also not a great year for Chicago's beer makers. A beer war was going on between the competing interests of Chicago brewers and their nearby competitors in Milwaukee and St. Louis. Although lots of beer was being consumed, prices kept dropping in a shake-out maneuver to see which of the large brewers would be able to take the heat and remain standing in the kitchen. George was caught up in the battle to survive, and everything started falling apart when he couldn't keep up with the payments on the $800,000. Because the loan was so large, it pushed the bank into insolvency, leaving bond holders empty handed and mad as hell, landing George in court. On February 28, 1899 a judge put the American Brewery and George A. Weiss Malting and Elevating Company into receivership, and George began liquidating personal assets to cover the losses. That September he sold the summer estate he had built in Lake Geneva in 1893 to fellow Chicago brewer Edward Uihlein, and by mid-1900, the pink marble, many crocketed house on State Parkway was no longer in the hands of George A. Weiss.
See the Weiss' next door neighbor at: Charles K. Miller House.