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

1918 and 1948: two ends of the spectrum

Below are photos of two architectural works from either end of the Modern Before Mies chronology:

• Pennsylvania Railroad Freight Terminal (1918)                                                                 designed by the Philadelphia firm of Price + McLanahan
• “Wheels a-Rolling” stage set (1948)                                                                                  designed for the Chicago Railroad Fair by the firm of Shaw Metz + Dolio.

Both photos are from the Charles W. Cushman Photography Collection at the University of Indiana Archives. The Cushman collection is unusual in that it contains hundreds of early color photos from a time period when most photographers were using black and white film.  Many of Cushman’s images capture an immediacy that is often absent from professional architectural photos.

(c) Cushman Photography Collection, University of Indiana

Cushman’s photo of the Penn Freight Terminal (pictured above, the building in the middle ground with the clock tower and sign stating "Western Warehousing Co.") was snapped on November 8, 1942 more than 24 years after it was completed.  Housing 1,500,000 square feet of storage space on five levels, the Penn Freight Terminal was colossal.  It was an integral part of the master plan that consolidated several railways to form Chicago’s Union Station located just north of the Freight Terminal’s site.

Along with the railroad yards in the vicinity of Taylor and Canal Streets, Cushman’s photo also captures an unusual view of the Chicago skyline. The vantage point is from the southwest looking toward a mid-20^th century Loop that is punctuated by “Vertical Style” office towers from the late 1920s and early 1930s.

The clock tower on the Penn Freight Terminal is the first example of a tall structure in Chicago that incorporated a series of setbacks in its design.  As such, it anticipated the trend in skyscraper design of the 1920s and 1930s largely influenced by new zoning codes that mandated tapered massing in tall office towers.  It’s interesting to note some of the similarities between the Price + McLanahan clock tower (completed in 1918) and the Holabird + Root Board of Trade Building (completed in 1930).

(c) Cushman Photography Collection, University of Indiana

Cushman’s photo of the “Wheels a-Rolling” performance (pictured above) was taken on September 13, 1948.  The image presents a striking contrast between an antique train from the 1840s with an uber-modern stage set design from the late 1940s.

“Wheels a-Rolling” was the centerpiece of the Chicago Railroad Fair of 1948 and 1949 which celebrated the centennial of Chicago’s first railways.  It was a historical pageant illustrating progress in land transportation with an emphasis on the benefits of train travel (not unexpected, given that the fair was sponsored by all the major railroad companies)

The firm of Shaw Metz + Dolio designed not only the stage set and grandstand for “Wheels a-Rolling,” but also the master plan for the fair itself.  The fairgrounds stretched along the lake front south of the present-day Museum Campus. The fair’s main entrance was at 23^rd Street and Lakeshore Drive approximately where McCormick Place Lakeside Center is located today.

Little (if anything) has been published about the design of the fair.  However, photos of the fair show that modern design was alive and well in Chicago in the late 1940s before any of Mies’ apartment towers were completed.  More remarkable is that Alfred Shaw, a partner and principal architect at Shaw Metz + Dolio, got his start at the very conservative firm of Graham, Anderson, Probst + White, yet his own firm was designing progressive works like the Chicago Railroad Fair and the Florsheim Shoe Company of the late 1940s.  SM+D went on to design other influential modern buildings in the 1950s.

In between the completion of the Penn Freight Terminal in 1918 and the Chicago Railroad Fair of 1948, a range of influential buildings were constructed in and around Chicago.  Future posts will document the different concepts of what constituted “modern” architecture and design in Chicago during this time period.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Freight Terminal was razed sometime after 1973.  And the Chicago Railroad Fair met its demise in 1950. (As with many fairs, the buildings were designed to be temporary. The SM+D stage set was constructed of a wood frame covered in painted plywood and masonite. The overall effect, however, reads as reinforced concrete.)  If you have more information about either project—especially from primary source materials—feel free to contribute to this blog.  I plan to write more about each building in more detail in future posts.

Sources for the above post:

Condit, Carl.

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

(University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1973) pages 265-268.

Thomas, George E.

William L. Price: Arts & Crafts to Modern Design

(Princeton Architectural Press: New York, 2000)

Chicago Railroad Fair: Official Guidebook, 1949.

Chicago Railroad Fair Records at the University of Illinois at Chicago Archives.

Calling all architecture geeks...

…both amateur and professional.

This blog is an experiment in public participation in architectural history. I’m inviting readers to contribute what they know of the buildings and projects documented on this site.  Some are rather obscure, and the information is often difficult to locate, especially primary source material.  Please feel free to contribute links, texts, and images (especially vintage photos) related to the works documented on this blog.  And of course, cite your sources!

Sky Harbor hanger, 1929        photo courtesy Northbrook Historical Society

The following is a partial list of buildings and projects—reflective of the time period between 1918 and 1948—that I hope to document in upcoming postings. Some of these works are fairly well known. Others not so much.  But this will be the first time that all will be documented in one place, allowing the works to be viewed collectively by a public audience.

Pennsylvania Railroad Freight Terminal, Price + McLanahan,1918

Bertram Goodhue’s Tribune Tower Entry, 1922

National Life Insurance Building, Frank Lloyd Wright, 1924

Roanoke Tower, Andrew Rebori with Holabird + Roche, 1925

333 N. Michigan Avenue, Holabird + Root, 1928

Sky Harbor Airport, Allen + Webster, 1929

Daily News Building, Holabird + Root, 1929

Adler Planetarium, Ernst A. Grunsfeld, 1930

Chicago Board of Trade, Holabird + Root, 1930

Carbide and Carbon, Burnham Bros., 1930

Merchandise Mart, GAPW, 1930

A.O. Smith Research, Holabird + Root,1930

Astor Street Apartment Buildings, Philip B. Maher, 1931-1932

Chrysler Exposition Building, Holabird + Root, 1933

House of Tomorrow, Keck + Keck, 1933

Italian Pavilion, Aldaberto Libera, 1933

General Exhibits Group, 1933

Crystal House, Keck + Keck, 1934

Field Building, GAPW, 1934

Fisher Apartments, Andrew Rebori,1937

Gottschalk-Keck Apartments, Keck + Keck,1937

Campana Factory, Frank D. Chase with Childs + Smith, 1938

Clark-Maple Gas Station, Bertrand Goldberg,1938

North Pole Ice Cream, Bertrand Goldberg, 1938

Madonna della Strada, Andrew Rebori, 1939

IIT campus, Mies Van der Rohe, 1940s

The above list is a work in progress—it’s likely to change over time.  Stay tuned for the first posting on an actual building: Will Price’s Pennsylvania Railroad Freight Terminal of 1918.  This one was a shocker to me on many levels, but primarily because it remains so obscure today.

The (so-called) Lost Years

                            Chrysler Motors Building, Holabird + Root, 1933    photo (c) Hedrich Blessing
1918 marked the end of an era in Chicago architecture and design. It was the year that Louis Sullivan closed his offices in the Auditorium Building. It was also the year that Elmslie & Purcell completed the Woodbury County Courthouse in Sioux City, Iowa, regarded as the last great work of the Prairie School.

1918 witnessed changing times and changing tastes that brought an end to the First Chicago School of architecture.

Thirty years later, in 1948, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe completed his first major commercial building in Chicago, the Promontory Apartments. Designs for his more famous 860-880 Lake Shore Drive apartments were still in development. The success of these two high-rise residential projects—coupled with Mies’ influential design courses and work at the Illinois Institute of Technology—laid the foundations for the Second Chicago School of architecture.

But what was happening in Chicago architecture and design between the First and Second Chicago Schools? (1918 through 1948) Conventional histories often regard this period as a kind of hiatus in which little of architectural significance was produced in Chicago. Adding to this perception is Sullivan’s often cited prediction that “The damage wrought by the World’s Fair will last from a half a century from its date, if not longer,” lending authority to a “step backwards” in Chicago architecture until the arrival of Mies and his brand of European Modernism.

A closer examination of the historical record, however, reveals that the period between the First and Second Chicago Schools was actually one of great creativity, innovation, and even modernization of more traditional approaches to design. Modern architecture in Chicago was not dead between 1918 and 1948. On the contrary, architects and designers experimented with multiple interpretations of “modern” during this time.

Contemporary writers, reviewers, and critics used the term “modernistic” to describe different expressions of modern architecture in the 1920s and 1930s. Modern Before Mies aims to document these Chicago projects that prepared the way for Mies and laid the foundations for the city we know today.