Going to the theater used to be a strictly urban phenomenon, especially the act of crossing the symbolic threshold between the real world and the realm of fantasy–a packed sidewalk beneath a brightly lit marquee.
But in recent years, once-sleepy bedroom suburbs have been building their own temples of culture, which need to be attuned as much to the car as to the pedestrian. Now, what is surely one of the most architecturally ambitious of these halls has opened in Skokie, a block south of the Old Orchard Shopping Center.
The expectations for the $19 million North Shore Center for the Performing Arts could not be higher, given that its operators hired a nationally renowned architect, Graham Gund of Cambridge, Mass., and a premier acoustical consultant, Kirkegaard & Associates of Downers Grove.
Publicity even has promised that the new home of Centre East for the Performing Arts and the Northlight Theatre will bring the sophistication of New York City’s Lincoln Center and Washington’s Kennedy Center to a commercial strip lined by the likes of the International House of Pancakes.
Alas, this story’s outcome does more to suggest the mask of tragedy than of comedy. Not only has the North Shore Center been hampered by a terrible site–a former parking lot squashed between the service alleys for a hotel and a supermarket–but the building also has been hamstrung by an extremely tight budget, which even gutted its visual trademark: a curving row of columns that was supposed to be topped by sheets of Teflon-coated fiberglass.
Unfortunately, there are no sheets–just bare pieces of white steel, like bones in need of flesh. And from the exterior walls to the main lobby, lots of other things are missing that would have endowed the North Shore Center with the grandeur to which it properly aspires.
Their absence is all the more maddening because, unlike many out-of-town architects who come to Chicago and perform mindless homages to Frank Lloyd Wright, Gund brought a fresh take to this building. He rejected a typical, inward-turning box for something that would be like a billboard and a showroom, grabbing the attention of passing motorists.
In some respects, particularly in the way one of two theaters operating so far possesses a wonderful intimacy, Gund has succeeded. But in far too many others, the constraints of location and finances have defeated him. As a result, a building that could have elevated the public realm gets dragged down by it.
All architecture begins with its surroundings, and this building–which was funded by a combination of state and local sources and put in place by a quasi-governmental owner and operator known as the Centre East Authority Board–presented more challenges than most. To the immediate north is the slab high-rise of the North Shore Hilton; to the immediate south, the backside of a Jewel food store. Between the theater and Skokie Boulevard is a Hilton parking lot, surrounded by a wall-like berm. Along the street can be found the visual flotsam and jetsam of the commercial strip: flat-topped, one-story buildings, with big, backlit signs–taller than the buildings themselves–along the highway.
The first thing suburban drivers notice about a building is not the building, but its sign. So one of Gund’s early sketches for the North Shore Center foresaw a towering sign along Skokie Boulevard, incorporating such highly recognizable images as the masks of tragedy and comedy. At once festive and monumental, the sign would have allowed the center to be a part of its surroundings while standing apart from them. But the budget didn’t allow for it, so the building itself had to be a memorable form.
To create that impression, Gund lined 15 attached concrete columns along the facade, drawing a pointed contrast between their verticality and the strip’s horizontality. In addition, the facade has a pronounced concave curve, giving it a sculptural presence unlike its boxy commercial neighbors. Atop each column is a trapezoidal frame of steel. The sail-like sheets of Teflon-coated fiberglass would have been tethered to these frames like a hat, accentuating the building’s curvilinear sweep and creating a unified, monumental colonnade. Their absence is regrettable–and, one hopes, correctable through future fundraising. Without them, two columns on the building’s flanks seem like stepchildren shunted to the side.
Even so, the colonnade acts as a welcoming gesture, giving the North Shore Center a mix of dignity and excitement. At night, in particular, the rosy, curving walls of the main lobby become visible from outside, and theatergoers animate the scene, becoming the decoration of the largely unadorned space.
Like a classical temple, the building has been raised a few steps above ground level to signify that one is entering a higher plane. But its latent classicism cuts two ways. Given the temple facade, one expects some kind of forecourt that would allow the building to be set off from its surroundings and thus approached with a measure of respect, if not awe. But there is no plaza out front, only a parking lot for the North Shore Hilton. And with the Hilton and the Jewel elbowing in on each side, there was barely enough room for the 839-seat main theater and its 350-seat companion.
Gund’s rather ingenious solution was to angle the larger theater toward the southwest corner of the site while pushing the smaller theater (still under construction) to the far northeast corner. The curving facade makes these two structures appear to be a single entity, but their architecture nonetheless has been compromised by the budget.
With the exception of the glassy front, exterior walls are faced in a cheap-looking synthetic stucco. Worse, the tower housing fly space for the stage is a rosy red version of the stucco, which seems strangely out of place, even garish, as if a giant hut had been flown in from the New Mexico desert and deposited in Skokie.
It is a telling sign of priorities that the privately owned department stores at Old Orchard have better exterior materials than this public building, or that little thought has been given to such details as the steel handrails that are the first piece of the theater that the visitor touches.
Fortunately, the entrances themselves are well handled. In front, the floating quality that was supposed to characterize the missing fiberglass sheets has been expressed in an off-center steel marquee hung from cables, as well as stylish light fixtures on the marquee’s underside. The same treatment characterizes a secondary entrance on the building’s north side. But whatever sense of ceremony these entrances possess is undercut by their surroundings: loading docks for the Hilton and the Jewel. Even dumpsters for the supermarket are visible from the main entrance.
Once inside, and seemingly removed from such commercial clutter, theatergoers encounter a dynamically curved, two-story lobby that serves both theaters. It is bright and cheery, even if its rosy-colored walls are a bit over the top. The lobby’s convex curving wall subtly plays off the concave shape of the exterior and the detailing is much better here, particularly in the staircase’s fluidly curving steel.
But again, what could have been magical has been rendered mundane. A circular area to the lobby’s north side, framed by eight columns like those outside, was supposed to have been a special space within a space, topped by a skylight and accented by a beautifully patterned stone floor. Both are absent due to the budget, so the gesture falls flat and the lobby lacks a visual focal point.
Worse, the flip side of the building’s showroom approach becomes apparent when one looks outside. For in contrast to the glass walls of Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, through which one sees a park and a sublime skyscraper canyon, the view here is of the Hilton parking lot and buildings along the strip. Not exactly a sight to set the imagination soaring.
Fortunately, the main theater–where Centre East and other organizations will present shows–seems capable of raising the spirit. Because the space is unfinished, with lighting and other refinements still to be made, it is too early to render any judgment. But based upon attendance at a performance last Sunday, it can be said that Gund and the acousticians have shaped a hall that is at once grand and intimate.
The theater is shaped like a megaphone, its gray concrete walls splaying out to allow sound to project from its proscenium stagem. Walls extending from the stage are scalloped to direct sound to the audience, and the exterior’s floating, curvilinear patterns picked up like a leitmotif in hardwood tier fronts and hanging acoustical panels that hover like clouds. Along the walls are three concrete columns, another reference to the outside, topped by steel torch lamps that are not yet working. Seats from Centre East’s old auditorium at Niles East High School have been snappily refurbished.
The sightlines are excellent from the balcony and the ground floor, and there are just five rows of seats beneath the balcony. Perhaps more important, Gund has shaped the theater into a modern version of a traditional New England meeting house, pushing its balcony box seats right up to the stage to make a palpable link between performer and audience.
Here, at least, the North Shore Center seems poised to achieve artful drama. But that sense of the city–or in this case, the suburb–as theater has been dampened by the overriding problems of placelessness and purse strings. As wonderful as it is to have a new suburban arts center, this architectural act rates a thumbs-down.
