Eliel Saarinen was a well-known Finnish architect back in 1922, when his wife, Loja, dreamed her prophetic dream. Someone in Chicago had lost a jewel; she found it and gave it back.
The day of the dream, the Saarinens later learned, The Chicago Tribune announced its architecture contest for a new skyscraper.
Saarinen, who had never seen a skyscraper, sent in the design that won second place. ”There might have been 12-story buildings in Europe but certainly not in Finland,” says Christian Laine, a Chicago architecture critic. ”For Saarinen to envision what Louis Sullivan called the most pure American skyscraper-everyone was profoundly impressed.”
An exhibition of drawings, models and home furnishings by Saarinen opened Friday at the Chicago Athenaeum, an architecture gallery at 333 W. Wacker Drive. It runs through March 30. (Hours are 11 a.m to 6 p.m. Mondays through Fridays.)
Saarinen worked in decorative arts as well as architecture; many of his pieces are still made today. Several chairs, elegant and polished, stand in the show; a tea set and sterling silver flatware are there as well.
”His furnishings were parallel to his buildings,” Laine says. ”When people were first doing modern buildings, there was no modern furniture; they had only Chippendale to work with. His furnishings were really smaller versions of his architecture designs, but they all had this immense quality of craftsmanship.”
Saarinen came to Chicago in 1923, at age 50, to accept his Tribune prize. He never looked back. He designed the Crow Island School in Winnetka, working with Perkins & Will, but is probably better known as the architect-and president-of the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., just north of Detroit. He taught there with Harry Bretoia, Charles Eames and other top designers of the period, and his wife headed the Department of Weaving.
Saarinen`s home in Finland, Hvittrask, is now a museum. His son, Eero, was famous as the architect for such landmarks as the St. Louis Arch and Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C.
