Century Building, Chicago
[Century Building (1916) Holabird & Roche, architects /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
The Century Building stands, barely, with its Neo-Manueline decoration hanging on for dear life, hoping for a future that extends beyond its 20th century roots and far into the 21st.
[Century Building, 202 S. State Street, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
The Century was finished and ready for occupancy in 1916, and was the period that finished a 7-building sentence from the firm of Holabird & Roche which lined downtown Chicago's State Street. To decorate the exterior, the architects looked to Portugal and a late Gothic period named after the country's king, Manuel the First. Portuguese architects revived the style in the 19th century, with the Chicago designers adding their own twist to the 16th century ornamentation. The 16-story high-rise was built by the Buck & Rayner Drug Store Company who put one of their stores on the ground floor, and leased the upper floor offices to doctors and dentists. Soon called the Twentieth Century Building, perhaps after one of the independent drug stores the Buck & Rayner syndicate owned, the name was shortened to the Century by the late 1930s.
[Century Building, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
And there it sat. A little worse for wear after years of coal-sooted, acid-filled air slowly ate away at its terra-cotta face, but still providing cover for small shop owners on the upper floors. The building was eventually purchased by Home Federal Savings and Loan, with a banking floor in the old drug store space and offices on the floors above. Then the Feds stepped in.
One of the buildings comprising the city's Federal Center complex sits behind the Century, and after 9/11 the government wanted to do everything they could to insure the safety of their property. They began purchasing adjacent buildings in 2003 and eventually landed the Century through eminent domain. How much longer the 20th-century structure will survive into the 21st-century is anyones guess. But for now it's still standing, in glorious, well-worn Manulined splendor.
See another building whose fate is in the hands of the Feds at: Consumers Building, Chicago; plus more of Holabird & Roche's State Street structures at: The Boston Store, Chicago, Chicago Savings Bank Buiding/The Chicago Building and Three R's - Rothschild, Renovation & Reuse; and Chicago's Federal Center at: Federally Funded.
Posted by designslinger at 8/2/2011 3:21 AM 
Categories: Architecture, Architects, History
Tags: Holabird and Roche State Street Chicago Loop commercial architecture
Categories: Architecture, Architects, History
Tags: Holabird and Roche State Street Chicago Loop commercial architecture
I wonder if the pieces of terracotta piers (now replaced with aluminum covers) are still piled up on one of the floors inside the building. I've got a bad feeling about this one.
Perhaps they are. Unfortunately I've got bad feelings on that score. As well as for the future existence of the building itself. But maybe the GSA will surprise us all.