Past Made Future, Part 2: Mesopotamian Architecture

When I started this blog, I never imagined writing about Ghostbusters (1984), but it's a strangely appropriate topic for the beginning of this post!  The plot involves a 1920s high-rise apartment building (semi-fictional) designed by the evil architect and cult leader, Ivo Shandor (fictional), in a kind of neo-Babylonian style that includes a rooftop temple dedicated to the Sumerian deity Gozer (also fictional). Things get a little crazy when an ancient ritual gets out of control (involving the "The Gatekeeper," "The Keymaster," and the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man) and nearly brings about the end of the world -- and if you've seen the movie, you know the rest...

Rendering of "Spook Central" for the Ghostbusters movie

I'm calling the Ghostbusters apartment building "semi-fictional" because it is based, in part, on an actual New York co-op: 55 Central Park West designed by Schwarz + Gross and completed in 1929.  The set designers used the building as a starting point, and through special effects, embellished its height and ornamentation making the structure look taller and more ominous and the architectural details more elaborate.  The pièce de résistance is the pseudo-Sumerian temple topping the building, a kind of exclamation point to the building.

As fantastic as 55 Central Park West appears in Ghostbusters, it pales somewhat to actual skyscrapers of the Jazz Age whose designers were, indeed, influenced by the architecture of ancient Mesopotamia. During the 1920s and 1930s popular interest in ancient Near Eastern societies -- Sumeria, Assyria, and Babylon -- was on the rise. The trend came about largely through the influence of  archaeological excavations taking place in the Middle East during this time and popularized through press reports and news reels.

Reconstruction of Babylon's Ishtar Gate
Pergamon Museum, Berlin, Germany
Photo by Rictor Norton

Perhaps most influential was the work of German archaeologist Robert Koldewey who excavated at the site of Babylon from 1899 through 1917.  Koldewey brought back thousands of artifacts to Germany including the famous Ishtar Gate which was subsequently reconstructed inside Berlin's Pergamon Museum. His discoveries were disseminated to an even wider audience through his book Excavations at Babylon, which was translated into English in 1914.  Included in the book were color plates of ornamental tile work and reconstructions of Bablyon's buildings, including its ziggurat, largely thought to have inspired the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel.

View of the City of Babylon by Maurice Bardin, 1936
(based largely on renderings published by Robert Koldewey)
image courtesy the University of Chicago Libraries

And Koldewey was not alone in his endeavors.  There were many other archaeologists excavating in Iraq during this time period, sponsored mainly by museums and universities in Europe and the United States. The University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, founded in 1919, was one such institution that sent archaeological expeditions to the Middle East in the early 20th century. The university's archaeologists brought back tons (literally) of artifacts for the Institute's museum including a monumental winged-bull from Khorsabad in northern Iraq...

Oriental Institute poster, circa 1933

The fragmentary nature of the remains of Mesopotamian buildings left a lot of room for speculation, especially in terms of architectural reconstructions.  While the monumental architecture of Egypt was constructed largely of stone, that of Mesopotamia was mostly earthen bricks covered in tile. It probably explains, in part, why there never really was a "Mesopotamian Revival" in architecture like there were Egyptian and Greek revivals. Much of what archaeologists found at sites in southern Iraq -- like Ur, Kish, and Babylon -- were mounds of eroded bricks, foundation walls, and occasionally (as with the Ishtar Gate) fragments of ornamental tile work.     Stone relief carvings and monumental sculpture were more prevalent in northern Iraq, especially at Assyrian sites like Nineveh.

But architects during the 1920s and 1930s found ways of incorporating this "new" visual language -- fragmentary as it was --  into their modern designs.  The best example in Chicago is the Medinah Athletic Club (now the Intercontinental Hotel) designed by Walter W. Alschlager and completed in 1929.  It's architectural ornamentation rivals anything from Ghostbusters...

Medinah Athletic Club (now the Intercontinental Hotel), 1929

In The Sky's the Limit: A Century of Chicago Skyscrapers, Jane Clarke writes that:

"The [Medinah Athletic] club was commissioned by a group of Medinah Nobles; affiliates of the Shriners, a nationwide fraternal and philanthropic organization said to have ancient roots in the Middle East..."

In keeping with the group's mythical Middle Eastern roots, the architects designed the building's ornamentation in what was called a "Saracenic" style, a kind of stylistic synthesis evoking the "mystical East" including Byzantine, Moorish, and ancient Mesopotamian elements.  The 50-story skyscraper was topped with a fanciful penthouse "palace" (reminiscent of illustrations from The Arabian Nights) complete with onion dome (serving as the building's water tower) and minaret which legend says was designed as a Zeppelin docking station:

Penthouse of the Medinah Athletic Club with Zeppelin in background, circa 1930.
photo courtesy the Intercontinental Hotel 

Despite the Medinah Athletic Club's eclectic program of "exotic" ornamentation, the structure was designed as a modern skyscraper. The building's massing is typical of several other Chicago skyscrapers of the period, like 333 North Michigan Avenue (1928) and the Carbide and Carbon Building (1929). It's solid 20-story rectangular base supports a tower that gradually tapers through a series of set-backs.  The building's surface is covered with smooth limestone panels broken by a grid of  "punched" rectangles, only a few of which are ornamented.

A closer look at the ornamentation, especially the building's architectural sculpture, reveals a modern aesthetic inspired by historic precedents.  Case in point: the monumental relief sculptures above the ninth floor:

Monumental sculptural relief, south facade of the Medinah Athletic Club
George Unger and Leon Hermant, circa 1928

The sculpture's design is based on an interesting combination of Bronze Age motifs and artistic influences, including Egyptian, Assyrian, Persian, and even Minoan. The relief was designed by George Unger and carved by Leon Hermant, who rendered the sculpture's lines in a sharp, angular manner, giving the sculpture a more modern sensibility rather than mimicking antique styles.

With the new zoning codes of the 1910s and 1920s allowing for taller buildings with stepped massing, architects in New York and Chicago looked for historic precedents that incorporated set-backs in their design.  The ziggurat or stepped-pyramid was one obvious example. This form is found in ancient Egypt (most notably at Saqqara), the Maya Yucatan (most notably at Chichen Itza), but perhaps more famously in the ziggurats found in dozens of Mesopotamia's cities. Perhaps the two best known examples are the Ziggurat at Ur and the Ziggurat at Babylon, also called the Etemenanki.

Model of Ziggurat  at Babylon also called the Etemenanki
Eckhard Unger, circa 1930

Fairly literal architectural expressions of the stepped-pyramid can be found in some Chicago buildings from the 1920s and 1930s, including the Trustees Systems Service Building (1930) designed by the firm of Thielbar and Fugard.

Ziggurat-inspired roof
Trustees Systems Service Building, 1930
Thielbar + Fugard

Other architects used the idea of the ziggurat more loosely to devise massing profiles that were in line with the new zoning ordinances.  Some of the most dramatic of these were developed by Hugh Ferriss and published in trade magazines and books, including the influential Metropolis of Tomorrow (1929).

Rendering by Hugh Ferris from Metropolis of Tomorrow, 1929.

Sources for this post include:

Picturing the Past: Imaging and Imagining the Ancient Middle East, edited by Jack Green, Emily Teeter, and John Larson. Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2012.

"Medinah Athletic Club, 1927-1929" by Jane H. Clarke in The Sky's the Limit, Rizzolli, 1990.

Past Made Future, Part 1: Mesoamerican Architecture

In the 1920s there was a rise in popular interest in the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Mesoamerica.  This popularity coincided with archaeological discoveries made famous by newspaper accounts and movie news reels.  (Howard Carter's discovery of King Tut's tomb in 1922 is just one example.)  The newly unearthed structures and artifacts from Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Mesoamerica, inspired many artists, designers, and architects of the time, giving them a whole new visual vocabulary with which to experiment.

"Mayan Temple"
1933 Chicago Century of Progress Exposition

This post focuses on the influence of Mesoamerican cultures on the architects of Chicago during the 1910s, 20's, and 30s. (Posts on Egypt and Mesopotamia to come later.) "Mesoamerica" encompasses the geographic region of Mexico and Central America, and "Mesoamerican" denotes the societies that thrived in this region before the arrival of Europeans in the 15th and 16th centuries:  Maya, Zapotec, Aztec, etc. 

Well before the 1910s, Frank Lloyd Wright was looking to Mesoamerican architecture as a source for modern architectural forms. His interest grew out of two events: (1) the anthropology displays at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, and (2) the published accounts of early Central American expeditions by pioneering archaeologists like Alfred Maudslay and Désiré Charnay.

Specifically, the architecture of the Maya and the Zapotec provided Wright with historical precedents that served as viable alternatives to European classical architecture. In his book The Future of Architecture, Wright observed that...

“In Maya [architecture] we see a grand simplicity and concept of form. Probably it is greater elemental architecture than anything remaining on record.”

For Wright, this "elemental architecture" was akin to his concept of "organic architecture." He saw Maya ruins as being of the land; a kind of natural architectural expression that seemed to grow from the landscape.

Perhaps the earliest "Mesoamerican building" that Wright designed was the A.D.German Warehouse (1915) located in Richland Center, Wisconsin.  Take a look at the structure as it stands today compared to an Alfred Maudslay photograph of a the "House of the Governors" at Uxmal. This photo (and others by Maudslay) was on public display at the 1893 world's fair and later at Chicago's Field Museum:

Left: Frank Lloyd Wright, A.D. German Warehouse (1915)
Right: House of the Governors, Uxmal

Although not an exact copy, the similarities between Wright's warehouse and the Uxmal temple are striking.  Wright was known for his ability to take multiple influences and synthesize them into something new (despite his insistence that all his architectural ideas were purely original inventions!)  The A.D. German Warehouse is an example of this synthesis of ancient and modern forms which served, for Wright, as a viable alternative to the Beaux Arts Classicism popular at the time.

Wright's fascination with Mesoamerican architecture culminated in his southern California houses of the 1920s, including the Ennis House, Barnsdale House, and the Storer House (see rendering below).  Art historian Barbara Braun described these California houses as Wright's "vision of Maya temples" -- Wright himself called them "California romanza" implying a romanticized view (and use) of the Precolumbian past. It's interesting to compare Wright's renderings of his California houses with the early photographs of Maya ruins that he had seen in museums and books. It's clear that these photos of ancient stone buildings, overgrown with vegetation, informed Wright's aesthetic and influenced his concepts of "organic architecture."  

Wright's Storer House  (1923) -- Hollywood, California 

image courtesy Library of Congress, LC-USZC4-1867

The fascination with Mesoamerican architecture was not restricted to Wright.  Other architects working in the United States were also heavily influenced by Mesoamerican forms and ornamentation, notably Robert Stacy-Judd and Francisco Mujica. And in Mexico in the years after the Revolution, there was an entire cultural renaissance inspired by the Precolumbian past as interpreted and championed by Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Juan O'Gorman, and other Mexican artists and architects.

In the United States the "Maya Revival Style" of the 1920s and 1930s was largely a California phenomenon. But aspects of this movement made their way into Chicago architecture.  The most literal was the "Mayan Building" constructed for the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago:

COP_17_0002_00038_002, Century of Progress Records, 1927-1952
University of Illinois at Chicago Library.

The Mayan Building  (1933-1934)
Century of Progress Exposition, Chicago 

This exposition hall was based on a section of the Nunnery Quadrangle in Uxmal, Mexico (Yucatan), a famous example of Post-Classic Maya architecture in the Puuc style. Archaeologist Frans Blom of Tulane University's Department of Middle American Research was in charge of the project. Photographs, drawings, maps, and plaster casts collected from the site in Uxmal ensured the accuracy of the final design. The interior contained exhibits of Maya artifacts from the collections of Tulane University.

Unfortunately, the Mayan Building -- like all the other exposition structures -- was demolished soon after the fair closed in the fall of 1934.  But other buildings from this time period, although less literal in their use of Mesoamerican forms and ornamentation, survive today.  Two examples include the Wyeth Pharmaceutical Labs and the Engineering Building

McCormick Business Center, Skokie, Illinois
originally Wyeth Laboratories (1930s), architect unknown

The Wyeth Pharmaceutical Laboratories (now the McCormick Business Center) is located on McCormick Boulevard in the Chicago suburb of Skokie, Illinois.  Designed as a factory, the building is long and low (essentially covering two large city blocks) yet retains a monumental quality. It sports an unusual entryway which appears to be modeled after the corbelled arches used extensively in Maya architecture:

Left: Entryway to old Wyeth Laboratories (1930s)
Right: The Labna Arch as drawn by Frederick Catherwood (1843)

Chicago Tribune articles of the time period state 1931 or 1932, but the Illinois Landmark Commission website states 1938.

A more vertical and urban example is the Engineering Building located at 205 W. Wacker Drive (completed in 1928) and designed by the Burnham Brothers (the sons of Daniel H. Burnham). Ornamentation framing the lower level windows seems influenced by the florid forms of Mayan glyphs.

The Engineering Building (1928), Burnham Brothers
"Mayan glyph" motif framing windows

Along the building's roof line, the projecting and ornamented piers contrast with the smooth, buff-colored brick of the building's middle levels. This is a similar convention used in Post-Classic Mayan buildings of the Yucatan.

The Engineering Building (1928), Burnham Brothers
known today as 205 W. Wacker

Neither the Wyeth Lab Building nor the Engineering Building is a copy of Maya architecture -- far from it.  But the architects of these two buildings took cues from Mesoamerican architecture and in doing so created something new and modern.

Future posts will focus on the influence of ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian forms on Chicago architecture of the 1920s and 30s.  More to come...

Sources used to research this post:

Barbara Braun, "Frank Lloyd Wright: Visions of Maya Temples" from Pre-Columbian Art and the Post-Columbian World, 1993.

Marjorie Ingle, The Mayan Revival Style, 1984.

Pauline Saliga, "Engineering Building" from The Sky's The Limit, 1990.

SAIC Architectural Survey on the Landmarks Illinois website, http://landmarksil.org/saic_building.php?id=717

Special thanks to Bruce Brigell of the Skokie Public Library.

Will Price's Pennsylvania Railroad Freight Terminal, 1918

While browsing through the Cushman Photograph Collection, I stumbled across a  random photo of the Chicago skyline from the 1940s.  It wasn’t a typical postcard view of the city.  Rather, the photo was taken from the railroad yards located southwest of the Loop, somewhere in the vicinity of Polk and Canal Streets.  In the background, the photographer captured several 1930s office towers rising above the LaSalle Street canyon.  Clearly visible (from left to right) are:

• Foreman State National Bank Building (1930)
• One North LaSalle Building (1930)
• Roanoke Tower (1925)
• The Field Building (1934)
• Chicago Board of Trade (1930)

(c) Cushman Photograph Collection, University of Indiana

This parade of Deco skyscrapers leads the viewer’s eye to the focal point of the photo: a huge brick structure with an impressive clock tower built over top of a series of arched bays opening onto the railroad tracks.  This intriguing building was, at first, a mystery to me—despite its size and prominence, I was unfamiliar with it. I’ve driven down Canal Street (between Roosevelt and Union Station) dozens of times, but couldn’t remember seeing this structure.

In the photo the building’s signage clearly reads “Western Warehousing Co.”  After some Internet searching, I found my first clue in a digitized copy of the Press Club of Chicago's Official Reference Book of 1922.  The building was identified as the “Western Warehousing Company Plant, Polk Street Terminal, Pennsylvania System.”  The publication describes the building as:

…the immense plant of the Western Warehousing Company at the Pennsylvania Railroad's Polk street freight terminal. Half a million square feet of floor space is available here for merchants and manufacturers maintaining stocks in Chicago… Some idea of its size may be gained when one realizes that beneath the structure there is track space for 360 cars, 18 tracks of 20 cars each…The warehouse and freight station are served by thirty-six electric elevators, varying in capacity from 5 to 10 tons.

Further digging revealed that the structure housing the Western Warehousing Company—commonly known as the Pennsylvania Railroad Freight Terminal—was designed by the Philadelphia firm of Price & McLanahan and constructed between 1915 and 1918.  This massive structure was “Part 1” in the master plan to consolidate the facilities of several railroad companies to allow for the eventual construction of Chicago’s Union Station (1925).

Carl Condit called the Pennsylvania Railroad Freight Terminal “an overlooked masterpiece of Chicago architecture.”  It was designed by engineers from the Pennsylvania Railroad, responsible for the planning and engineering of the terminal, and William L. Price (principal architect of Price & McLanahan) responsible for its unique design.  In the early 1970s, Condit wrote that “the excellence of their achievement is still apparent, even after the increasingly careless maintenance and the atmospheric corrosion of more than half a century.”  Unfortunately, the “excellence of their achievement” was only to a last a few years longer—according to George E. Thomas in his book William L. Price: Arts & Crafts to Modern Design, the terminal was “demolished in the 1970s.”  This explains why I had never seen the building for myself.

Canal Street facade of Penn RR Freight Terminal (from Condit)
Somewhat better photos are accessible on the Art Institute of Chicago website.

Sprawling over a large area, the terminal was bounded by Polk Street on the north, Taylor Street on the south, the Chicago River on the east, and Canal Street on the west. Despite its enormous size, the terminal reads (in photos) as a collection of smaller buildings instead of one gargantuan structure. Price subdivided the mass of the terminal to create the illusion of several smaller warehouses linked together, their varying facades alternately projecting and receding. The overall design was unified by a long platform of open bays on which the warehouses sat (and where the trains entered beneath the building) and the use of red brick and Price’s distinctive detailing throughout.

Although the terminal was not symmetrical, the structure was composed of many localized symmetries with each “building” featuring vertical lines despite the overall horizontal emphasis of the structure.  Price masterfully employed his millions of red bricks to create varied compositions featuring arches, buttresses, set backs, chamfered edges, and restrained ornamentation.  The design is curvilinear and organic and takes pains not to emulate historic styles—a stark contrast to the neoclassical Union Station.

Vintage photo of Penn RR Freight Terminal
Polk Street facade (facing north) and clock tower

In fact, Price’s terminal defies stylistic categorization. It lies somewhere between late Art Nouveau and what some might call “proto-Deco.”  Its precedents range from Price’s Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel in Atlantic City (1906) to Eliel Saarinen’s early designs for the Helsinki Central Station (1909).  But Price’s terminal stands apart from these as something different.

The clock tower was arguably the terminal’s most interesting feature.  Its stepped-back silhouette foreshadowed the design of Chicago’s office towers of the late 1920s and early 1930s.  In the Cushman photo, the formal similarities between the clock tower and the Board of Trade building are evident: classical proportions, vertical lines and emphasis, and tapered massing culminating in a pyramidal roof.

Silhouetted tower of the Penn RR Freight Terminal
Photo courtesy Library of Congress (LOC_8d24881r_JackDelano)

Unfortunately, Price didn’t live long enough to see the Pennsylvania Railroad Freight Terminal completed.  He died prematurely in 1916 at the age of 55. Price’s biographer, George E. Thomas, speculates that had Price lived to complete more works, he would have rivaled his contemporary Frank Lloyd Wright in influence in American architecture. Regardless, Price’s terminal kicked-off a new era in Chicago architecture and design, an era in which multiple ideas of “the modern” competed with one another.

Sources for this post include:

Chicago 1910-1929: Building, Planning, and Urban Technology

by Carl W. Condit (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1973)

William L. Price: Arts & Crafts to Modern Design

by George E. Thomas (Princeton Architectural Press: New York, 2000)

Official Reference Book (Press Club of Chicago: Chicago, 1922) 

Sky Harbor: Airport of Tomorrow

"Sky Harbor, a comprehensive airport and aviation center of the most modern type will soon be placed in operation ... What the highway is to the automobile and the harbor to the yacht, so will Sky Harbor be to Chicago's private aircraft fleet." -- from Aviation: The Next Great Industry, circa 1928.

Sky Harbor Club House, circa 1929
with Gray Goose Air Lines tri-motor sightseeing plane
photo courtesy Northbrook Historical Society

In addition to the skyscraper, the other great symbol of modernity of the early 20th century was the airplane. With the development of aviation technology, mechanized flight became more accessible to the public. In the 1920s investors recognized the commercial potential of airplanes, and aviation businesses sprang-up to carry mail, freight, and passengers.  Soon came the development of airports with new building types: aircraft hangars and airline passenger terminals.

Some of the earliest airfields in Chicago, like short-lived Cicero Field (1911-1916) catered mainly to private aviation enthusiasts. Wooden sheds were built to house airplanes, mechanics, and amenities for pilots and spectators. But by the mid-1920s, more commercial airfields were established and catered to the needs of airmail carriers and passenger lines. Municipal Field (later renamed Midway Airport) in Chicago and Curtiss Field (later renamed Curtiss-Wright) in Glenview sported terminal buildings designed in "modernistic styles" with a spare, almost industrial aesthetic.  The clean lines, flat roofs, smooth surfaces, and ribbon windows of Paul Gerhardt's Municipal Airport terminal are reflective of this more modern aesthetic:

Chicago Municipal Airport, circa 1931
(now demolished)
designed by Paul Gerhardt, Jr., City of Chicago Architect. 

I'll write more on these terminals in the future, but for this post, I'm focusing on one particular airport that opened in Northbrook, Illinois during the summer of 1929: Sky Harbor. It was conceived by the United Aviation Corporation as a kind of "aviation country club" for Chicago's wealthy North Shore residents. Promotional materials touted Sky Harbor as the "airport of tomorrow" designed to accommodate the North Shore's "rich potential of aeronautical development."

Interestingly, the early designs for Sky Harbor were fairly traditional.  The Colonial-style club house looks like it would be at home on the edge of a golf course.  The designs for the hangar were more modern with stepped-back, "Vertical Style" towers flanking an arched opening:

Early designs for Sky Harbor Airport
as published in Aviation: The Next Great Industry
United Aviation Corporation (n.d., but probably 1927 or 1928)

Somewhere along the way, these early designs were replaced by more modern architectural expressions. A Chicago Tribune reporter described the actual built club house as...

"...a picturesque and attractive structure that is both the latest thing in modernistic architecture and also reminiscent of ancient Aztec buildings.  It symbolizes air flight, as it rises higher and higher, diminishing in bulk as an airplane seems to do to the earthbound mortal gazing after a skybound plane."

Sky Harbor club house (under construction), 1929
designed by Alfred P. Allen + Maurice Webster
photo courtesy Library of Congress

Designed by Alfred P. Allen and Maurice Webster "associated architects," the club house was an unusual stylistic and programmatic synthesis.  In aerial photos, its centralized, tower-like design competes with neighboring farm silos to mark its place within the flat agricultural landscape.  Its stepped-platform design is vaguely temple-like and culminated in a two-story lantern that must have been visible for miles at night when lit from within. The first floor contained a waiting room, public facilities, and airport offices.  The second floor housed a restaurant and nightclub (operated by the owners of Perushka's, a downtown Chicago hotspot).  The third floor contained a lounge and rooms for overnight guests.  Wrapping the exterior of the building was a series of terraces which accommodated aviation spectators -- according to the same Chicago Tribune article from 1929, "Night flying, with its searchlights and flares, is an exciting spectacle."

Sky Harbor Club House
as drawn by Alfred P. Allen + Maurice Webster, Associate Architects
and published in American Architect, July 1929

The hangar at Sky Harbor was a completely different architectural expression, perhaps designed by a different architectural firm.  It's elegant, low arch anticipates the Streamline Moderne architecture of the 1930s.

Sky Harbor aircraft hangar (under construction), 1929
architect unknown

photo courtesy Library of Congress

Aerial view of Sky Harbor airport, 1929

Northbrook, Illinois

photo courtesy Library of Congress

Sky Harbor, as an aviation country club, had a very short history.  It opened in June 1929 -- and only six months later, in December 1929, came the stock market crash and the beginning of the Great Depression. Perushka's nightclub soon folded, and the club house was eventually abandoned and later destroyed by fire.

Changing owners several times, Sky Harbor, continued to operate as a small, regional airport until 1973.  Although the runway is long gone and built over by new development, parts of the hangar miraculously survive today.  You can view some good photos (both current and vintage) of the hangar on Paul Freeman's website "Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields."
http://www.airfields-freeman.com/IL/Airfields_IL_Chicago_N.htm

Special thanks to Judy Hughes of the Northbrook Historical Society.

Sources include:

Aviation: The Next Great Industry, promotional booklet published by United Aviation Corporation, n.d., circa 1928.

"'All Airplanes Lead to Chicago': Airport Planning and Design in a Midwest Metropolis" by David Brodherson and published in Chicago Architecture and Design, 1923-1993, pages 75-97.

"Night Flying at Sky Harbor" and "Ideal Landing Field", Chicago Tribune, 7 July 1929.

New school meets old

My last post ended with a photo of 333 N. Michigan Avenue.  Designed by the firm of Holabird + Root and completed in 1928, 333 N. Michigan was described by Carl Condit as "the decisive step in breaking with the past and reintroducing to Chicago the modern skyscraper."

333 N. Michigan Ave

But what precipitated the design of 333 N. Michigan and the "modern skyscrapers" to follow?  Some of the winning entries from the Tribune Tower competition of 1922 were influential on its design.  But Holabird + Roche (the firm that would become Holabird + Root in 1928) set a precedent with the Lumber Exchange Building, commonly referred to as Roanoke Tower (after an earlier building that once occupied the site). The tower portion, completed in 1925, was the first Chicago skyscraper to incorporate stepped massing and restrained ornament. As such, it became a harbinger of the modern "Vertical Style" as uniquely expressed in Chicago in the late 1920s and early 1930s, including 333 N. Michigan Avenue.

Postcard of Roanoke Tower
Building designed by Holabird + Roche, 1925

The Lumber Exchange Building / Roanoke Tower is a bit of a strange hybrid with a complex history of additions and renovations.  Now known simply as 11 South LaSalle Street, it began life in 1915 as a classic, 16-story Chicago School office tower designed by Holabird + Roche. In 1922, a 5-story addition was added  (again, designed by Holabird + Roche).  With the enactment of the 1923 zoning ordinance allowing for taller office towers, the owners of the Lumber Exchange Building decided to build a 37-story addition to the back of the original 1915 structure.  Here's a photograph of the tower taken a few years after its completion in 1925 including the "aerial beacon" that served as a warning for nighttime pilots:

Roanoke Tower, circa 1928
with Foreman State National Bank under construction (left)
and the spire of the Chicago Temple visible in background (right)
Photo courtesy the American Memory Project, Library of Congress

Although Holabird + Roche were the architects of note, the firm had contracted with an outside architect, Andrew Rebori, to design the tower itself.  Rebori designed the lower floors of the tower to seamlessly blend with the architectural style of the original 1915 building.  But his design for the upper stories of the tower boldly contrast with the old "Chicago School" office block. Rebori designed the projecting tower as series of set-backs, gradually culminating in a penthouse that served as a platform for the aerial beacon.  Although the decorative flourishes on the upper stories reflect the historically derived details of the older structure, the tower itself is remarkably restrained in its use of ornament.

Today, almost lost in a sea of newer office towers, the building is somewhat difficult to photograph at street level.  But the following photos give a sense of the tower's ornament, stepped massing, and relationship to the older structure at its base:

The 1923 zoning ordinance was hugely influential in determining the shape of the addition, especially the tower's relationship to the older office block.  The ordinance allowed for the main office block to rise to a height of 260 feet above street level. Additional floors built above the 260-foot height limit were permitted if they took-up 25% or less of the building's overall footprint and made-up only 1/6 of the building's overall volume -- hence the slender proportions of the Roanoke Tower addition.

This particular formula created very distinctive skyscraper designs in Chicago during the 1920s and 1930s.  Essentially, two types emerged, largely dictated by a building's lot size: "Office Block + Projecting Tower" (like the Lumber Exchange / Roanoke Building) and  "Throne Chair" (like the Chicago Board of Trade Building) ...

... more on these two types to follow in future posts.  The next post, however, will look at another expression of modernity of the late 1920s and early 1930s: Chicago's first airports.

Sources for this post include:

Carl Condit, Chicago 1910-1920: Building, Planning, and Urban Technology, pp 118-119.

Pauline Saliga, The Sky's the Limit: A Century of Chicago Skyscrapers, pp 83-84.

Carol Willis, "Light, Height, and Site: The Skyscraper in Chicago" in Chicago Architecture and Design: 1923-1993, p 130.

A tale of two skyscraper designs

The Chicago Tribune Tower Competition of 1922 is often cited by architectural historians as a major influence on the design of Chicago skyscrapers during the late 1920s and early 1930s.  And in some ways, it was.  The second place entry by Eliel Saarinen, for example, is mentioned extensively as being more influential and "forward looking" than the winning entry by the firm of Howells + Hood.

However, I agree with the assessment of Carol Willis that too much emphasis has been placed on Saarinen's entry.  In her essay "Light, Height, and Site: The Skyscraper in Chicago" (published in Chicago Architecture and Design, 1923-1993) Willis states that Saarinen's competition entry "has been emphasized far too much" as a formal model for Chicago's skyscrapers of the 20s and 30s.  I would go even further and venture that if any of the competition entries are to be noted for their formal influence, it should be Bertram Goodhue's instead of Eliel Saarinen's.

Here are Goodhue's and Saarinen's entries displayed side-by-side:

Two entries to the Chicago Tribune Tower Competition
Bertram Goodhue's entry (left) received honorable mention & Eliel Saarinen's entry (right) received second prize.

The main similarity between these two entries--and many of the other entries--is the architects' use of stepped massing.  Each design incorporates a series of set-backs that produce a tapered silhouette. This was a defining characteristic of tall office towers of the late 20s and 30s, not just in Chicago, but in New York and other cities as well.

The elegant massing of these skyscrapers, however, was not a purely formal exercise.  Their tapered designs were influenced by market forces and zoning ordinances as much as by aesthetic concerns.  In her published works, Willis writes about "economic height." Skyscrapers were seen by developers as "machines that make the land pay."  By building taller office towers, a developer could gain a greater return on an initial investment on an expensive piece of property.  Civic concerns about unrestricted building heights led to zoning ordinances in both New York (1916) and Chicago (1920 and 1923) that governed building heights and massing.  Greatly simplified, these ordinances allowed a skyscraper to rise above a particular height limit provided that the mass of the building gradually tapered, ostensibly to allow more light and air into the streets below.

Both Goodhue's and Saarinen's designs for the Tribune Tower follow the same basic formula governing height and massing.  Saarinen's design often scores more points with critics and scholars for its elegant proportions, flat-topped roof, and deep set windows accentuated by unbroken vertical piers. This vertical emphasis produces an illusion that the building is taller than it actually is while still adhering to the prescribed height/mass ratio. Saarinen's competition entry also receives more attention simply because it won second prize and is therefore better know -- Goodhue's entry is often overlooked in a sea of 50 entries that received honorable mentions.

I would argue, however, that Goodue's competition entry was ultimately more influential than Saarinen's. Most striking is Goodhue's flattened surface treatment and simple lines which anticipate the Streamlined Moderne. The building's smooth limestone exterior, reductive forms, chamfered corners (in the upper stories), and understated ornament add to the design's clean, modernistic aesthetic. Indeed, this aesthetic is reflected in Goodhue's two most important built works of the period: the Nebraska State Capitol (1920-1932) and the Los Angeles Public Library (1921-1926).

If you were to lop-off the the more decorative aspects of the penthouse of Goodhue's Tribune Tower, his design begins to resemble the signature style of Holabird + Root's skyscrapers of the late 1920s. Here's a period photo of 333 N. Michigan:

333 N. Michigan Avenue (1928)
Holabird + Root

In contrast to Goodhue's competition entry, Saarinen's  looks a bit old-fashioned with its historically-derived Gothic detailing, ribbed surface treatment, and decorative finials that protrude above the building's massing. However, Saarinen's entry did inspire several Chicago skyscrapers that featured Gothic ornament including the Pittsfield Building (1927), Mather Tower (1928), and the Steuben Club Building (1929). These buildings definitely receive much less attention from scholars than their more modernistic (in terms of detailing) cousins.

Which was the first office tower built in Chicago to incorporate the new stepped massing in its design?  More on that in the next post.

Machine Age goddess

©The Art Institute of Chicago 

Full disclosure: the title of this post was inspired by Debra Bricker Balken's  John Storrs: Machine-Age Modernism (Boston Athenaeum, 2010). John Storrs is best known in Chicago for having created Ceres, the 35-foot tall cast aluminum goddess perched atop the Chicago Board of Trade building. Storrs designed the sculpture as an extension of the architecture: Ceres' streamlined form and long vertical lines echo and compliment the lines of the building  The photo (at left) is of a 26-inch tall chrome steel maquette of Ceres (1928) in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago.




Below is a photo from about 1930 -- the year the Chicago Board of Trade building was completed -- showing Ceres within her intended architectural context:

photo courtesy www.johnstorrs.org

The Chicago Board of Trade building was designed by the Chicago firm of Holabird + Root and replaced an older CBoT building designed by W. W. Boyington from 1885.  Where the Boyington design was Victorian eclectic, the new Holabird + Root design was reflective of the "Vertical Style" (what we might categorize as Art Deco skyscraper design today) considered the height of modernity in the late 1920s.

The Holabird + Root CBoT building seamlessly integrates sculpture with architecture.  Indeed, the late historian David Gebhard considered this characteristic a hallmark of Art Deco architecture where "three dimensional figures were made to spring forth in primeval fashion from the surface and mass of the structure." The CBoT sculptural program was designed by artist Alvin Meyer and includes allegorical figures of wheat and corn (two agricultural commodities that are traded inside the building) that do, indeed, seem to "spring forth" from the facade of the building:

Gebhard also writes that Deco architecture "frequently enlisted sculpture in its game of playing tradition against modernity."  John Storrs was a master of this game.  He designed Ceres as a synthesis of classical and modern forms.  The sculpture is figural, yet reductive.  She represents the ancient Roman goddess of agriculture, yet is created from a Machine Age material: aluminum. Ceres is symmetrical and proportioned like a classical statue, but her abstracted form reflects more modern influences, like the work of Storr's friend and fellow artist, Constantin Brancusi.

Similarly, the buildings of Holabird + Root of the late 1920s and early 1930s reflect a modernizing of traditional forms. John Holabird was the son of Chicago School architect William Holabird and studied in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux Arts.  While there, he met John Wellborn Root, Jr., the son of Chicago architect John Wellborn Root, Sr. (of Burnham + Root fame).  Although both young architects were grounded in the traditional education system of the Beaux Arts academy, their worked eventually evolved beyond emulating classical structures and historical styles.  They retained some Beaux Arts design principles -- like symmetrical floor plans, solid massing, and classical proportioning systems -- but merged these with modern, reductive forms and architectural ornament that wasn't historically derivative.  The Holabird + Root signature aesthetic of this period featured streamlined limestone facades in large-scale projects such as 333 N. Michigan (1928), the Daily News Building (1929), and the Palmolive Building (1929). The designs of these buildings also integrated architectural sculpture and murals by avant-guarde artists like Storrs and John Norton

More on Holabird + Root and the murals of John Norton in future posts.

Sources for this post include:

Debra Bricker Balken,  John Storrs: Machine-Age Modernism (Boston Athenaeum, 2010).

David Gebhard, The National Trust Guide to Art Deco in America (New York, John Wiley & Sons, 1996).

www.johnstorrs.org