Will the Mies staircase go with them?
The Arts Club of Chicago-for years a distinguished site for exhibits and lectures on contemporary art, as well as a well-known watering hole for the arts and architecture crowd-will be moving from its quarters at 109 E. Ontario St. in 1995. The exact whereabouts of its new home has yet to be determined.
The interior of the club was designed by master modernist Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The visual signature of the interior is an elegant, lighter-than-air staircase by Mies.
The club intends to incorporate the staircase into its new quarters, says a club spokeswoman. If that is not possible, she says, the club will do everything it can to preserve the staircase, perhaps by donating it to a museum.
When the club considered moving to the new downtown center of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, its leaders pledged to do whatever they could to take the staircase with them.
The move fell through, however, because The Arts Club balked at the price-reportedly $5 to $6 million-the U. of C. set for buying the top floor of its six-story building, which is just east of Michigan Avenue.
The club has been in the 109 E. Ontario building since 1951. It is moving because the owner of the property, Chicago developer John Buck Co., on March 19 issued a notice to vacate in a year because of the planned demolition of the building.
A spokesman wouldn’t say when Buck will begin demolishing the 109 E. Ontario building or the others on the block at 600 North Michigan Ave. The spokesman confirmed that the company has sent out its first notices to vacate to tenants in the 600 block of North Michigan Avenue, indicating that construction on a long-awaited retail development there could begin in a year.
– Demolition may also be in store for the oldest surviving McDonald’s restaurant, in the Los Angeles suburb of Downey. But not if Oak Brook-based McDonald’s Corp. heeds the advice of California Gov. Pete Wilson.
In an unusual step for a high-ranking public official, Wilson last week jumped into an architectural controversy, urging McDonald’s to save the 41-year-old hamburger stand.
In a letter to Fred Turner, senior chairman of the board at McDonald’s, Wilson likened the golden arches in Downey to the site where the California gold rush began, Sutter’s Mill.
“While not precisely of the same historic stature as Sutter’s Mill,” Wilson wrote, “. . . McDonald’s represents a different kind of California gold-a young entrepreneurial California business, which grew to be a world-wide symbol of America. The modern history of fast food and McDonald’s hamburgers will be as important to the cultural history of our nation as the invention of Boston Baked Beans, Philadelphia Cheese Steak and Coca Cola.”
McDonald’s Corp. has said it closed the building because it was damaged in the Jan. 17 earthquake. However, the company won’t provide details on what damage occurred. Before the earthquake McDonald’s had expressed a desire to close the restaurant, and said the facility was losing $50,000 a year because it lacked a drive-through window and indoor seating.
According to the Los Angeles Conservancy, a preservation group, McDonald’s last week applied to Downey for a permit that would allow it to remove the building’s golden arches and 60-foot sign. The rest of the structure would then be demolished, while the salvaged pieces would be used in a ’50s theme restaurant McDonald’s wants to build elsewhere in Downey.
A spokeswoman for the conservancy said the suburb does not have a historical and architectural landmark ordinance that can prevent McDonald’s from dismantling the building.
