Whether or not Mayor Richard M. Daley ultimately decides to move there, the Heritage at Millennium Park should command Chicago’s attention.
Rising directly across Michigan Avenue from its namesake park, the 59-story, nearly 631-foot condo tower is taller than the old Prudential Building, which used to be the city’s tallest skyscraper. It also happens to be one of the tallest residential buildings next to the Loop, offering the latest sign, besides Donald Trump’s supertall riverfront hotel-condo tower, that skyscrapers now are as likely to be places where people live as where they work.
The impact of these behemoths, of course, should be measured by something other than a yardstick. What kind of shape do they etch on Chicago’s vaunted skyline? How will they greet pedestrians who experience them close-up?
Flaunting a double-curved facade that ripples through the sky like a flag waving in the breeze, the Heritage answers these questions in a way that makes it a success, though hardly an unqualified one. While admirable on many levels, from its energetic but civilized skyline presence to the richly textured face it shows the street, it lacks the black-tie elegance demanded by its showplace site.
Developed by Mesa Development LLC and designed by John Lahey and Gary Klomp-maker of the Chicago firm of Solomon, Cordwell Buenz & Associates, the Heritage can be found at 130 N. Garland Ct., a single-block street between Michigan and Wabash Avenues. In 2004, the building took on added prominence when the Tribune revealed that Daley and his wife, Maggie, would move to the tower from their town- house in the South Loop’s Central Station residential complex. Daley did not dispute the report at the time. But now, the move seems uncertain.
Connie Dickinson, a Mesa spokeswoman, declined to discuss whether Daley will move to the building, saying that the Heritage’s owners never publicly discuss condo buyers. City Hall sources said they were unsure of Daley’s intent.
What is clear, at this point, is the Heritage’s visual prominence, especially as it soars over the neighboring Chicago Cultural Center, the Beaux-Arts edifice at Michigan Avenue and Randolph Street.
The tower’s base, which includes six parking levels and ground-level retail space, is more than 100 feet tall, about as high as the cultural center. The base is clad in precast concrete and a limestone that echoes the cultural center. Above it, the tower ascends in two parts, each with walls of painted exposed concrete.
Soars to summit
The southern side rises 27 stories, in keeping with the height of the clifflike wall of historic skyscrapers along Michigan Avenue and the neighboring Garland Building along Wabash Avenue. The interlocking northern side soars to the building’s summit, stretching the Heritage above the ostentatious, diamond-topped skyscraper at 150 N. Michigan Ave. and approximating the scale of the big modern towers, including the Aon Center, along upper Randolph Drive.
A tower of this height easily could have dominated its surroundings, turning the cultural center into the equivalent of a footrest. Instead the Heritage enhances its environs, largely because it is a collection of clearly articulated parts, not a hulking monolith, like the exposed concrete residential towers that have blighted River North.
The tower’s primary urban design strength is that it forms a hinge, a visual transition between the two scales (and two eras) of skyscrapers along Michigan and Randolph. The abstracted rows of columns atop its two sides evoke the colonnades of the cultural center and the old People’s Gas Co. building at 122 S. Michigan Ave. Yet the tower’s height and simplified forms relate well to the modern towers along Randolph.
At the same time, the Heritage excels at ground level, where its curving limestone facade along Randolph builds a visual bridge between the masonry facades of the cultural center and the east side of Marshall Field’s. The curve leaves breathing space for pedestrians and for Richard Hunt’s exuberant new sculpture, “We Will,” at the corner of Randolph and Garland. Near the sculpture is an entrance to the Heritage’s pedway, an attractive, brightly-lit contribution to the network of tunnels connecting downtown buildings.
There are more good strokes along Wabash, where the Evanston firm of McGuire Igleski & Associates, Inc. has done fine work restoring the facades of four historic buildings, three of which were built after the Great Fire of 1871 and designed by architect John Van Osdel. The other is from 1916. Their freshly cleaned ornament is dazzling, from green urns to white sea horses.
With only the skin of these buildings left (they clad the Heritage’s parking garage and ground-level stores), preservation purists are sure to cry “facade-ectomy.” But what has been saved in history and human-scale outweighs the loss of architectural integrity.
As architecture, the Heritage is somewhat less persuasive, in part because it speaks with a mixed tongue.
It is, on the one hand, traditional, with abstracted columns, flaring cornices and a rough-hewn, block-filling base. Yet it also strives to be contemporary, indulging the current fashion for forms that move or appear to be moving. Its concave southern side and convex northern side give the building a pronounced curvilinearity, making the building appear like a flag waving in the breeze. It the latest Chicago high-rise, along with the fine new Hyatt Center office building, to depart from the rigid right angles of the city’s skyline and street grid.
There is nothing necessarily wrong with aesthetic mixing and matching, of course. The curving green-glass office building at 333 W. Wacker Drive, which sits upon a stone base, introduced this postmodern approach into Chicago in 1983 and remains greatly admired. But the Heritage does not match this standard, even though it is has considerable appeal.
The building’s curves effectively communicate that it is a residential tower, softer and less formal than an office building. In the bargain, the curves pick up on the Baroque energy of Frank Gehry’s Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park.
An optical illusion
The architects further enhanced their design with color, using an olive green to make the exposed concrete fade into the background. Bright white paint accents horizontal bands that appear every three floors on the tower’s south side and every six floors on its north side.
The combined effect of these and other nuances fools the eye, making the Heritage appear much trimmer, more glassy and less ponderous than it really is. It is more a soaring tower than a brute slab, and that is a major plus for the Michigan Avenue skyline.
Still, there are significant problems, especially on the building’s sides and back. Here, white becomes the predominant color, yet unfortunately, it draws attention to the tower’s articulated, but bulky, concrete columns, especially those at the corners.
A different league
Even though it’s been painted, the exposed concrete isn’t up to the standards of Michigan Avenue, where buildings tend to be as elegantly outfitted as men in tuxedos. Lahey and Klompmaker wisely have shifted to a glass-sheathed design for their next mega-tower across from Millennium Park, an 800-footer at 21-29 S. Wabash Ave.
On a happier note, the Heritage’s entrance along narrow Garland Court is wonderfully secluded, cut off from downtown’s hustle and bustle. The base has fine proportions and is visually integrated with the tower, avoiding the “plop architecture” of high-rises indiscriminately thrown atop their parking garage podiums.
The Heritage’s living spaces also are well handled, including its clean-lined lobby. Upstairs, typical condo units have 9-foot ceilings and large windows that create a feeling of expansiveness. The views to the east and Millennium Park, needless to say, are drop-dead.
This is, in short, a skillfully done skyscraper, but not quite in the city’s top tier. While it rises far above the low standard of Chicago’s leaden residential towers, it doesn’t manage to set a new standard, as 333 W. Wacker did in its day. Perhaps the architects will accomplish that in their next skyscraper across from Millennium Park. Still, we can be thankful that they have endowed the skyline with a residential tower that does more good than harm.
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The Heritage at Millennium Park
Location: 130 N. Garland Ct., directly west of the Chicago Cultural Center.
Height: 59 stories, nearly 631 feet. Architects: Solomon, Cordwell Buenz & Associates, Chicago. Number of condo units: 358 (all but one sold).
Price of units: About $325,000 for a one-bedroom to $4.6 million for a penthouse.
Sources: Solomon, Cordwell Buenz & Associates; Draper and Kramer; news stories.
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bkamin@tribune.com
