It is a Tuesday evening in Chicago`s venerable Fine Arts Building and, to paraphrase that old facilitator of the fine arts, Fats Waller, the joint is relatively jumpin`.
Down the corridors, up the stairwells, gossamer soprano and resonant baritone voices drift from the cozy studios where voice teachers-many of whom work at more lucrative daytime jobs-have set up shop.
On the sixth floor, Anurima Bhargava, a sophomore at Kenwood Academy, is waiting on a bench for her violin lesson with George Perlman, who has been in the building longer than any other tenant.
On the 10th floor, in Curtiss Hall-with its lovely vistas of Grant Park, Lake Michigan and Buckingham Fountain-an aerobics class is winding down, soon to be replaced by a class in Bible study. Earlier, five local performers had been rehearsing for an industrial show to be presented at a meeting of B.F. Goodrich dealers in Switzerland.
On the fourth floor, men and women are filing into classrooms for the University of Chicago`s Continuing Education classes, which range from
”Introduction to Italian” to ”Kafka and the Imagination.” Down the marble-floor corridors, other students are taking courses in ”Drawing Techniques” and ”Fundamentals of Color” at the 400-student Harrington Institute of Design, which covers about 20,000 square feet spread over four floors.
On the ninth, in a store called Performers Music, a young woman is searching for sheet music for the French horn.
On the seventh, Celeste Rue, who took piano lessons as a child in the Fine Arts Building, is sitting on a ubiquitous bench, waiting to play piano with voice teacher Elsa Charlston. Upstairs a flight, Rosemary Doolas, director of Dancespace, who took dance lessons down on the fifth floor as a girl, is teaching a class in ballet.
On the first, moviegoers are lining up to see Woody Allen`s ”Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
While other buildings in the Loop are vacant at night except for the cleaning staff and resident workaholics, the Fine Arts Building, at 410 S. Michigan Ave., is a constant kaleidoscope of sounds and sights.
A now-landmark structure built in 1885, it is largely unknown to the majority of Chicagoans, who probably know it only for the movie theaters on the ground level. But on the other nine floors is a crazy-quilt collection of individuals and organizations, most of which are connected, however loosely, with the arts. Tenants run from the William Ferris Chorale to the World Affairs Bookstore, the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra to the Hungarian Opera Workshop, Bein & Fushi (dealers in rare violins, violas, cellos and bows) to Nickle Plate Records.
There is, occasionally, the jarring juxtaposition of a dentist or insurance agent, the Daughters of the American Revolution or the Scientology Center. But mostly the rooms are occupied by the likes of Chamber Music Chicago, the Jazz Institute of Chicago, the Chicago Chamber Orchestra Association, the Guitar Academy, the Classical Symphony Orchestra and all sorts of persons who either teach a musical instrument or repair one. (During the Depression, rumor has it, music teachers would supplement their incomes between lessons by panhandling in the lobby.)
One of the newest tenants is Booksellers Row, which actually is in the five-story Fine Arts Building Annex (c. 1891) at 408 N. Michigan. In 1982, a major problem was solved when the Fine Arts Theatres took over the spaces formerly occupied by the Studebaker Theatre, a legitimate house that had gone dark, and the World Playhouse (originally designed for chamber music), a shuttered art-film theater that at one point had been reduced to showing entries such as ”Pink Flesh on Black Satin.”
Those entering 410 walk under lettering that reads ”All Passes-ART Alone Endures.” Originally, the edifice with the Romanesque facade was built for the assemblage and display of carriage and wagon parts for the Studebaker company of South Bend; the architect was Solon Beman, who had designed the town of Pullman. When the Studebakers moved to newer quarters for more space, it was transformed in 1898 into the Fine Arts Building under the leadership of Charles Curtiss, the son of a former mayor.
It is a place in which there is no central air-conditioning; in which the old-fashioned elevators are manned by real-life operators; in which, tucked away on the fourth floor, there is the fountain-dominated Venetian court, part of a famous tea room, the Piccadilly, that closed in the mid-`50s. (Its modern counterpart, the Artist`s Restaurant on the ground floor, bills itself as ”a favorite gathering place for many local and international celebrities-from Nureyev and Baryshnikov to Maria Tallchief and Mike Ditka.”)
The elevators feature glass-and-statuary-bronze fronts ornamented with the forms of musical instruments, and on each floor there are lovely wooden clocks and those sturdy, venerable wooden benches on which students may sit while waiting for their lessons. On the top floor, the 10th, there are 23-foot ceilings and skylights and eight murals over the stairwells done by artists who had studios on the floor, including Joseph Leyendecker of Arrow Collar fame.
”The building really has a living soul of its own,” says Robert Marks, dean of the Harrington Institute. ”I think of it as Chicago`s Carnegie Hall. It`s amazing how it has touched the lives of so many people in this city. Everybody has memories of coming into this building as a kid, myself included. Invariably, I`ll meet someone who says, `Oh, I took piano lessons there when I was a little girl.”`
”The first Christmas we were here, people were caroling in the halls, moving pianos out into the halls, going around and visiting,” says Howard Decker of Decker & Kemp, a firm that has served as adviser on the building restoration. ”It really is like a big family. There are maybe a dozen architects here, and we know one another and share with one another, instead of knocking each other over the head. We didn`t want a modern, sterile building. These rooms are like craftsmen`s studios. We have lots of young architecture students come into our office, and just be silenced because of these tall rooms and great views.”
”There have been many changes in the building over the years,” says violin teacher Feldman. ”When I first came here, it was conducted almost like a cathedral. I happened to be walking down the hallway one day, and there was a young man in front of me who was whistling. Mr. Curtiss, who was the manager at that time, stepped up to him and said, `You may not do this in this building.` It was very staid, very proper. Then it went through some very unfortunate times until Mr. Graham took over. It`s never been in such beautiful shape as it is now because of him. He`s done everything to make it one of the show spots in America. Carnegie Hall doesn`t begin to compare.”
Ten years ago Thomas Graham and his partners in a development corporation bought the building for slightly more than $1 million. ”At one point, I understand the building was owned by Abraham Teitelbaum, who had been Al Capone`s lawyer,” says Graham, a former real estate officer with the First National Bank. ”In the late `50s and early `60s, the building was foreclosed a couple of times. The owner right before us had been in the paint manufacturing business, and he left it to his elderly widow. She and her sister didn`t want the hassle of taking care of it-they came down only to sign paychecks-and after I spent about a year holding their hands, they decided to sell.
”When we took over, the occupancy rate was less than 50 percent. Everything was in need of repair. The boiler room/basement area looked like a museum of old equipment. They actually had an old lawn mower running pumps. Basically, we modernized that, as well as the electricity, and sanded the beautiful hardwood floors and generally cleaned the place up, including the bathrooms, which were in terrible shape.
”Our occupany rate now is always 100 percent, and our rents have gone up 3 or 5 percent at most. We encourage teachers to double up, share their space. We`re trying to keep it to those kinds of tenants, rather than going with lawyers and the other usual office tenant. It`s a nice little niche to have, and you can do it in a big metropolitan area like this. If a lawyer or businessman wants to rent a space, I ask him why he wants to be here. We do have some-the ones who want to be here, because they like the feeling. Some are musicians themselves, and when they`re done for the day, they play the piano or violin. But others who have come here don`t last. It`s too far to the court building.” Graham laughs. ”And it`s not the kind of place where they want to meet their clients.”
Longtime tenants observe that there has been a decline in the last decade in the number of painters, and that they seem to have been replaced by architects. Graham agrees. ”We haven`t had much luck with painters. They need large amounts of space, and they can`t double up like the music teachers, so the rent`s a little tough for them. We have had some dilettantes. They`re here for a year, and then they`re on to something else.”
It is obvious Graham is something of a purist, intent on keeping the ambience of his building intact. Several years ago, he was approached by a fast-food franchise to take over ground-floor space, but rejected the offer. He also discourages rock `n` roll musicians. ”They need a lot of room, and it`s just too much noise. We rented Curtiss Hall to some drummers last summer, and they closed the doors, and even that drove our architects up there nuts.” Tenants such as John Norwood Lee, who worked for Bein & Fushi and decided to form his own bow-making-and-restoration business in the late `70s, have nothing but praise for their landlord.
”The rents have stayed very even,” says Lee, whose clients include three members of the Chicago Symphony, as well as Isaac Stern, Yehudi Menuhin and Dorothy DeLay (Itzhak Perlman`s teacher). ”We have five rooms, and we`re paying 1,500 bucks. When I first came here, there were all kinds of problems, real crazy times. About half the building was empty, the heat didn`t go on until 11 in the morning, and you couldn`t get the engineer to do anything unless you paid him off.”
”This is such a gorgeous building,” adds Rosemary Doolas, whose dance classes for children and adults include ballet, jazz and tap. ”We go into the public schools and, periodically, we bring inner-city children to this space. It`s like the movies to them. They go up to Curtiss Hall and look over the fountain and the lake and it`s like, they`ve never seen that. I mean, I`m wowed by that. They`re also intrigued by the elevators-whereas sometimes we`re nauseated by the elevators, which leave our stomachs somewhere else.
”Unfortunately, we`re all so busy at our jobs, we don`t get to know each other. But we try to collaborate with other artists. Michael Geraghty is an architect on this floor, and he did a set for one of our dance pieces. And the man in the music store upstairs introduced me to a musician in Boston who wrote a piece for cello and violin, and we`re going to collaborate with him.
”One thing I`ve noticed over the years is the change in lifestyle. There are so many working parents, and the kids are so programmed. They have this and that after school. In dancing and other arts, you have to be dedicated. You can`t be `exposed` to everything in the world. And you have to have supportive parents. Parents are very busy these days supporting themselves-financially, emotionally or whatever.”
”I`ve never really looked at the building as being in `good or bad shape,` because to me, it always has been a wonderful place,” says psychiatrist Marvin Ziporyn. ”One of the things I`ve liked about it is that it`s sort of Old World. It doesn`t have that kind of sterile, monolithic homogeneity that you find in modern office buildings. I used to have an office on the ninth floor, and I`d walk all the way down at night because every floor was different. It`s like going to a museum. You find little treasures-a painting, a special door.”
Owner Graham says he`d like to do more with the building, but finances are a problem. ”It`s very frustrating. We`ve replaced all the front doors, and we`re removing all the grime and dirt from the scagliola (a plasterwork technique that imitates marble) in the lobby. We`d like to clean the front facade, although some say that these old buildings shouldn`t be cleaned, that they should be allowed to age.
”Whatever, it`s very satisfying to own a place like this. Curtiss Hall, for instance, is rented out for all kinds of production tryouts, from the Santa Fe Opera to Disneyland. Sometimes I`ll drop up there and we`ll have lines of young women and young men warming up, and they`ll be out there filling the whole hall. I mean, you`ll never see that in the IBM Building.”
