The Chicago skyline is forever changing. Chicago simply isn`t the same city that it was even a decade ago. Buildings are demolished, buildings are erected. It`s a cycle that never quite plays itself out. The 1980s were an especially busy time. During that decade, the city experienced a building boom that still shows no signs of abating.
Chicago, the birthplace of the modern skyscraper, is home to some of the more innovative and imaginative architects and architectural firms in the profession. A few of these would include Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; Harry Weese & Associates; Solomon Cordwell Buenz & Associates; Perkins & Will;
Stanley Tigerman; and such notable out-of-towners as Cesar Pelli and Philip Johnson.
Architects such as the controversial Helmut Jahn have become celebrities in their own right, often receiving more press than their projects.
From Gothic revival to elegant Art Deco to sleekly modern glass towers, the city has plenty of famous buildings to admire, ogle and condemn. Rather than being yet another guide to Chicago`s historical buildings, though, we`ve decided instead to piece together an offbeat look, grouped according to category, of a few of the more singular-or just plain unusual-of the city`s structures. While some are landmark buildings that have pierced the sky for generations, others are recent additions:
– Gracious classics from a golden age. A string of hardy pioneers lines the 400 block of South Dearborn Street. The Old Colony (1894) at 407 S. Dearborn and the Manhattan (1891) at 431 S. Dearborn typify early commercial architecture of the Chicago School. The former, designed by Holabird & Roche, is an example of metal frame construction; the latter, by William LeBaron Jenney, is the oldest surviving steel-framed building in the city.
At 53 W. Jackson Blvd. is the Monadnock Block, home of the Chicago Architecture Foundation`s ArchiCenter and the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects. The simple, unadorned north half is by Burnham & Root (1891), the more ornamental south half by Holabird & Roche (1893). With six-foot-thick walls at the base and projecting bay windows that create an unusual effect, the Monadnock is the tallest wall-bearing structure in the city and the last skyscraper to employ the method of masonry construction.
Another important commercial structure is Holabird & Roche`s Marquette Building (1894) at 140 S. Dearborn St. Don`t miss the wondrous mosaics in the lobby that depict the life of Father Jacques Marquette, an early Chicago pioneer.
– Diamond in the sky. The twin-spired, diamond-shaped Associates Center
(A. Epstein & Sons; 1983) at 150 N. Michigan Ave. is an eye-opener. With its sloped facade facing southward, many understandably think that the building is solar-generated. Not true. Rather, the unusual design has a simpler explanation-it was intended to provide an unobstructed view of the lakefront. The Associates Center was the first building in the country to provide its tenants access to computerized banking, airline reservation, news and informational services.
– Art Deco elegance. Art Deco architecture strikes a bold, confident and timeless pose. Three older examples are the Chicago Board of Trade (Holabird & Root; 1930) at the end of the LaSalle Street canyon and topped by the 32-foot aluminum statue of Ceres, the Roman goddess of grain; and the Carbide & Carbon building, 230 N. Michigan Ave. (Burnham Brothers; 1929), the first skyscraper to employ extensive use of color; a black polished granite base is capped by a dark green terra cotta tower trimmed in gold.
The 333 N. Michigan Ave. building (Holabird & Roche; 1928) was the first Art Deco skyscraper in the city. Across the river and up the avenue is the majestic NBC Tower (Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; 1989), an exquisite limestone and granite 40-story office building that effectively evokes the spirit of the 1920s.
– A return to Roots. The 190 S. LaSalle St. building (John Burgee/Philip Johnson; 1986) is a handsome, 42-story red-granite office tower that takes its inspiration from the work of seminal Chicago architect John Wellborn Root, paying homage to Root`s Rookery building (1888), which stands across the street and is undergoing extensive renovation. The gabled tower is reportedly modeled after Root`s Masonic Temple, demolished in 1939.
In the lobby is a tapestry, ”The 1909 Plan of Chicago” by Helena Hernmarck, honoring Daniel H. Burnham, the influential architect who urged his fellow citizens to ”make no little plans.” The artist used more than 200 pounds of wool and linen yarn, spun and dyed in Sweden, to complete the tapestry, which is more than 22 feet wide and 18 feet high.
– The city`s tallest buildings. Aside from its 1,450-foot height and 4 million-plus square feet of floor space, Sears Tower (Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; 1974)-the city`s and world`s tallest building-is a rather plain structure, a brooding black monolith that`s not much to look at. During the city`s history, other buildings have claimed the title of ”tallest.” At one time it was the Manhattan.
In 1922 the Chicago Temple (Holabird & Roche; 1923) at Clark and Washington Streets violated the city`s height limit of 400 feet, its spire reaching to more than 550 feet. The chapel is reportedly the highest place of worship in the world.
The Board of Trade building became the tallest building in 1930, hitting 605 feet if you include the Ceres statue and its pedestal, 526 feet if you don`t. That skyscraper kept the city record until 1955, when the Prudential Building (see below for details) topped out at 601 feet of actual building, not including antennas-which like spires and statues usually aren`t counted when awarding a ”tallest” honor.
In 1965 the Civic Center (C.F. Murphy Associates; Loebl, Schlossman & Bennett; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill), now the Daley Center, stole the title at 662 feet only to be surpassed in 1969 by the 60-story, 852-foot First National Bank (C.F. Murphy Associates; Perkins & Will) and then the 1,127-foot John Hancock Center (Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; also 1969). The 1,136-foot Standard Oil Building, now Amoco (Edward Durell Stone; Perkins & Will; 1973), held the title for a year until Sears came along.
– Glass houses. One of the most striking of the modern skyscrapers is the 333 W. Wacker Dr. building (Kohn Pedersen Fox; 1983). Its curved facade of green glass curves with the bend of the Chicago River, reflecting the adjacent river and nearby surroundings. At night it presents an especially beautiful sight.
– A state of Jahn. It has inspired more ink-much of it negative-than probably any building in recent years. The 17-story State of Illinois Center
(1985), the building you love to hate, is the brainchild of German-born wunderkind Helmut Jahn. To borrow a phrase from novelist Leon Uris, it`s a
”terrible beauty,” looking like the ungainly offspring of a massive sports stadium and a garish glass box. Whatever your opinion, it is certainly an original.
– Circles and clovers. Two of the more unusual-shaped structures in the city are Marina City (Bertrand Goldberg Associates; 1967), a twin-towered circular apartment complex complete with pie-shaped rooms and semicircular balconies, and the cloverleaf-shaped Lake Point Tower (Schipporeit-Heinrich;
Graham, Anderson, Probst & White; 1968), a 70-story apartment building fronting the lake near Navy Pier. Their futuristic, utterly unorthodox appearances caused quite a stir at the time.
– The Prudential and its spaceship. For more than a decade the city`s tallest building and the first major skyscraper built since the Field Building in 1934, the 41-story Prudential Building (Naess & Murphy; 1955) has since been dwarfed by more formidable giants. But for a time Chicagoans flocked to its observation deck to get the best view of the city`s famed skyline. The deck eventually closed in the mid-1970s.
Directly behind the Prudential is Two Prudential Plaza (Loebl, Schlosman and Hackl; 1990), a distinctively spiked 64-story space-age tower that contrasts sharply with its more conservative neighbor.
– American Gothic. It may not be Notre Dame or Chartres Cathedral, but the Tribune Tower at 435 N. Michigan Ave. (Hood & Howells; 1925) is Chicago`s best known Gothic-inspired building. The design, by New Yorkers Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells, won the $50,000 first-place prize in an international competition sponsored by the newspaper in 1922. The second-place $20,000 prize went to Eliel Saarinen of Helsinki and the $10,000 third place to Chicago`s own Holabird & Roche.
Some 258 contestants from 23 countries, including 143 American cities, entered the contest; losers included such distinguished architects as German- born Walter Gropius, co-founder of the New Bauhaus school of design in Chicago, and Walter Burley Griffin, a Chicagoan and disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright who later designed the Australian capital of Canberra.
Another entry in the Gothic sweepstakes is the American Mart (Raeder, Nimmons & Dunning; 1924), once the center of the Midwest furniture industry and now referred to by the more nondescript name of 680 N. Lake Shore Dr. Its original address-666 N. Lake Shore Dr.-was changed in 1988, apparently by those who took offense at the three-digit number symbolizing the anti-Christ. Before the completion of the Merchandise Mart in 1931, it was the largest commercial building in the world. The eastern lobby facing Lake Michigan is modeled after London`s Trinity Chapel while its 33-story blue ornate tower was inspired by the Parliament building in London. The tower was designed for docking dirigibles but was never used for that purpose.
– Dowagers of the avenue. A pair of dignified structures provide architectural bookends along North Michigan Avenue beyond the river. At the south end is a familiar landmark, the Wrigley Building (Graham, Anderson, Probst & White; 1924) at 410 N. Michigan Ave. Consisting of two distinct parts connected by a courtyard, the exterior design of its white-enameled terra cotta was suggested by the Giralda Tower of Spain`s Seville Cathedral.
Depending upon their age, most Chicagoans refer to the 919 N. Michigan Ave. building (Holabird & Root; 1930) as either the Palmolive Building or the Playboy Building. Its vertical style is typical of commercial architecture of the late 1920s and early 1930s. For many years the building dominated the North Michigan skyline.
On top is a rotating beacon that once guided airplanes to a safe landing. Dedicated as the Lindbergh Beacon in 1930 after the great aviator, Charles A. Lindbergh, its name was later changed to the Palmolive Beacon after the reclusive ”Lindy” refused to acknowledge the honor. When Playboy bought the building in 1965, it became widely known as the Bunny Beacon.
The original beacon was donated to the city in 1930 by Dr. Elmer A. Sperry, inventor of the gyroscope. After taller buildings such as the Hancock sprouted up nearby, the beacon was first partly shielded and then finally extinguished in 1981.
