There was good reason to think that one of Chicago’s great civic spaces was about to turned into a tawdry mess two years ago when the Chicago Park District unveiled a plan to build four pavilions around Buckingham Fountain.
The danger was that the pavilions, while addressing such real problems as the absence of nearby public restrooms, would detract from the openness of the big plaza around the fountain and would be out of character with the gushing landmark itself.
Moreover, the prospect of T-shirts being hawked from a proposed dry-goods pavilion surely would have horrified the fountain’s architects, including Plan of Chicago co-author Edward Bennett, who based their design on the Bassin de Latone at Versailles.
Yet now that pavilions are complete, it is clear that an aesthetic disaster has been averted. Simply put, Buckingham Fountain remains the star of the show at Buckingham Fountain. The pavilions, designed by Chicago architect David Woodhouse, are civilized supporting actors, at once attuned to the monumental presence of the 70-year-old fountain while lending its vast plaza a more human scale.
To understand why things turned out as well as they did, it is necessary to return to the summer of 1995, when Park District officials announced a plan to build four pavilions on the fountain’s plaza, for a cost of just over $1 million. One of the pavilions was to provide toilets, another a restaurant and outdoor seating, another the dry-goods store, and the last a picnic area.
The dry-goods pavilion was by far the most objectionable part of the plan, because its operators might have sold T-shirts and books, foisting an utterly inappropriate commercial presence on Grant Park’s civic space. But the prospect of any buildings was just as troublesome. For the fountain is a respite from the strains of urban life, in part because of what isn’t there–no buildings, streets or alleys.
After meeting with community groups, the Park District ditched its plan for the dry-goods store and the picnic pavilion and opted instead to have two restroom pavilions and two food stands (which turned out to be Gino’s East pizza and the Buckingham Cafe & Grille).
These uses are appropriate for the park because they provide basic amenities rather than selling merchandise. But it also must be noted that the shift from the original plan helped drive the project’s cost to $2.5 million. A Park District spokeswoman says that having two restroom pavilions instead of one required more plumbing and expensive equipment. In addition, it was more costly to construct a restaurant pavilion rather than the proposed picnic shelter.
In any event, these decisions still left Woodhouse with the crucial matters of where to put the pavilions, how big they should be, and how they should be designed. He handled them all capably.
The pavilions have been placed at the north and south edges of the plaza, more than a football field away from the fountain’s center, so they are not an obtrusive presence. While they block views of the fountain as one approaches on foot from the north and south, these interruptions do not last for more than a few seconds, and the major vistas are not affected.
Perhaps most important, the pavilions respect the fountain’s insistent symmetry, which calls for four of everything. They even align nicely with, and are roughly the same height as, nearby rows of hawthorn trees.
The architect further reduced the pavilions’ impact on the landscape by significantly shrinking the amount of space they were originally intended to enclose. That keeps them low to the ground, well below the towering American elm trees that shape the space around the fountain.
An interesting thing about those elms and the smaller hawthorns: In keeping with the idea of a formal French garden, they are arranged in ramrod straight rows, as if they were the columns of a building. In other words, nature imitates architecture. In designing the pavilions, Woodhouse returned the favor: Architecture draws inspiration from nature, as well as the fountain and its French lineage.
Seeking to blend with the trees, Woodhouse colored his buildings muted shades of green and gave them rounded steel columns and decorative brackets that echo tree trunks and branches. His view, which is pretty much on the mark, is that the columns make it seem as if the building is walking on tip toe, contrasting with the fountain, which seems rooted in the earth.
Laser-cut steel decoration, which forms abstracted waves and shells, explicitly recalls the fountain’s aquatic theme. Semi-circular glass roofs project outward from the pavilions proper, their “spillover” effect subtly evoking the waters that overflow the fountain’s tiers.
The roofs give the pavilions just enough visual heft to stand up to vastness of Grant Park without overwhelming the fountain itself. At the same time, by breaking down his buildings into recognizable parts, Woodhouse creates a more intimate scale that invites people to use the pavilions. It is no small achievement that the restroom pavilions, which have no windows, are not blocky hulks and instead recall the aesthetic model for all four buildings, the refreshment pavilions of Parisian parks.
The interiors of the restroom pavilions also merit praise, for Woodhouse has been attentive to the need to make visitors feel secure, especially at night. Thus, the entire restroom interior is visible from the door, letting people to instantly recognize if someone dangerous lurks within. Moreover, the high-ceilinged spaces allow for natural ventilation and, because the whooshing of the fountain is audible from inside, the bathrooms are unlikely to lead visitors to perceive that they have entered a danger zone, cut off from help.
The need for easy maintenance is critical and, so far, at least, the pavilions are performing well. One night last week, the restroom interiors were clean and graffiti-free. Such exterior materials as a precast concrete base and aluminum walls panel are designed to take a beating.
To its credit, given that there weren’t enough places to sit around Buckingham Fountain, the Park District has installed 32 new benches around the fountain (there used to be just 13). In addition, the operators of the restaurants, which have no indoor seating, have set about 60 tables with chairs outside.
Still, there are shortcomings, both aesthetic and practical. The ends of the pavilions facing the fountain are too blunt, as if they had cleaved by a cutting blade. Installing semicircular wood and metal benches, as Woodhouse proposed for beneath the curving glass roofs, would soften this harshness.
Woodhouse has tried to minimize the buildings’ nighttime presence with small fixtures that create points of light, but the blunt ends of the buildings are washed in spotlights, accentuating their awkwardness and drawing attention from the fountain’s colored lights.
There are other nits to pick, from garbage and service trucks that disrupt the serenity of the fountain to the Park District’s decision to allow restaurant operators to reserve their outdoor chairs for paying customers. If visitors who don’t buy food and drink cannot sit there, it would amount to a privatization of public space.
Taken together, however, the changes have improved Buckingham Fountain. While the pavilions are not brilliantly innovative architecture, neither are they Disneyland–or “Paris-land,” as Woodhouse jokes. They are straightforward, traditional architecture that does precisely what is required of it without straining for effect.
The object of this exercise was to incorporate new uses that would make the experience of going to the fountain more convenient and comfortable, while maintaining its traditional sense of place. At that, the pavilions succeed.
