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-20th 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 23rd 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.
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