Architecture sights in Chicago
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Prairie Avenue Historic District pp106–7
By 1900 Chicago’s crème de la crème had had enough of the scum de la scum in the nearby neighborhoods. Potter Palmer led a procession of millionaires north to new mansions on the Gold Coast. The once-pristine neighborhood, which lined Prairie Ave for several blocks south of 16th St, fell into quick decline as one mansion after another gave way to warehouses and industry, hookers and gin. Thanks to the efforts of the Chicago Architecture Foundation, a few of the prime homes from the area have also been carefully restored. Streets have been closed off, making the neighborhood a good place to stroll. A footbridge over the train tracks links the area to Burnham Park and the M…
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Sr Crown Hall
A world-class leader in technology, industrial design and architecture, Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) owes much of its look to legendary architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who fled the Nazis in Germany for Chicago in 1938. From 1940 until his retirement in 1958, Mies designed 22 IIT buildings that reflected his tenets of architecture, combining simple, black metal frames with glass and brick infills. The look became known as the ‘International Style.’ The star of the campus and Mies’ undisputed masterpiece is SR Crown Hall, appropriately home to the College of Architecture. The building, close to the center of campus, appears to be a transparent glass box …
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Illinois Institute of Technology
A world-class leader in technology, industrial design and architecture, Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) owes much of its look to legendary architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who fled the Nazis in Germany for Chicago in 1938. From 1940 until his retirement in 1958, Mies designed 22 IIT buildings that reflected his tenets of architecture, combining simple, black-metal frames with glass and brick infills. The look became known as the International Style. The star of the campus and Mies’ undisputed masterpiece is SR Crown Hall, appropriately home to the College of Architecture. The building, close to the center of campus, appears to be a transparent glass box floati…
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Pilsen Churches
Some wonderful European-influenced churches remain throughout Pilsen. The 1914 St Adalbert Church (1650 W 17th St) features 185ft steeples and is a good example of the soaring religious structures built by Chicago's ethnic populations through thousands of small donations from parishioners, who would cut family budgets to the bone to make their weekly contribution.
The Poles had St Adalbert's; the Irish had St Pius (1901 S Ashland Ave), a Romanesque Revival edifice built between 1885 and 1892. Its smooth masonry contrasts with the rough stones of its contemporaries. Catholics of one ethnic group never attended the churches of the others, which explains why this part of tow…
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John J Glessner House
The John J Glessner House is the premier survivor of the Prairie Ave neighborhood. Famed American architect Henry Hobson Richardson took full advantage of the corner site for this beautiful composition of rusticated granite. Built from 1885 to 1887, the L-shaped house, which surrounds a sunny southern courtyard, got a 100-year jump on the modern craze for interior courtyards. Much of the house’s interior is reminiscent of an English manor house, with heavy wooden beams and other English-style details. Additionally, more than 80% of the current furnishings are authentic, thanks to the Glessner family’s penchant for family photos.
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Henry B Clarke House
The Henry B Clarke House is the oldest structure in the city. When Caroline and Henry Clarke built this imposing Greek revival home in 1836, log cabins were still the rage in Chicago residential architecture. The sturdy frame paid off – during the past 160 years the house has been moved twice to escape demolition. The present address is about as close as researchers can get to its somewhat undefined original location. The interior has been restored to the period of the Clarkes’ occupation, which ended in 1872. A combination ticket (adult/child $15/8) to tour both the Clarke and Glessner houses is available.
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Bronzeville Historic Buildings
Once home to Louis Armstrong and other notables, Bronzeville thrived as the vibrant center of black life in the city from 1920 to 1950, boasting an economic and cultural strength akin to New York’s Harlem. Shifting populations, urban decay and the construction of a wall of public housing along State St led to Bronzeville’s decline. In the last decade it started its comeback. Many young urban professionals have moved back to the neighborhood, and South Loop development stretches almost all the way here. Still, be careful at night; it’s not a good place to be walking around after dark.
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Carbide and Carbon Building
Chicago designers found inspiration from the French movement: Art Deco. The style took on sharp angles, reflective surfaces and a modern palette of blacks, silvers and greens in geometric elements. One of the few remaining buildings in the Loop that characterize this style, the Carbide and Carbon Building, has now become a Hard Rock Hotel Chicago. But check out the building’s polished black granite, green terra-cotta and gold crown – all colorful signals of the deco palate, which is rumored to be designed to look like a champagne bottle.
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Carson Pirie Scott & Co
Carson Pirie Scott & Co was originally criticized as being too ornamental to serve as a retail building. You be the judge, as you admire Louis Sullivan’s superb metalwork around the main entrance at State and Madison Sts. Though Sullivan insisted that ‘form follows function,’ it’s hard to see his theory at work in this lavishly flowing cast iron. Amid the flowing botanical and geometric forms, look for Sullivan’s initials, LHS. The century-old department store vacated the building in 2007, and it has become office space.
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Water Tower
Believe it or not, the 154ft Water Tower, a city icon and focal point of the Mag Mile, once dwarfed all the surrounding buildings. Built in 1869, the Water Tower and its associated building, the Pumping Station (aka the Water Works ) across the street, were constructed with local yellow limestone in a Gothic style popular at the time. This stone construction and lack of flammable interiors saved them in 1871, when the Great Chicago Fire roared through town; they’re the only downtown buildings that survived.
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Hutchinson Street District
In marked contrast to some of Uptown’s seedier areas, the Hutchinson St District is a well-maintained area perfect for a genteel promenade. Homes here were built in the early 1900s and represent some of the best examples of Prairie School residences in Chicago. Several of the homes along Hutchinson St – including the one at 839 Hutchinson St – are the work of George W Maher, a famous student of Frank Lloyd Wright. Also of note are 817 Hutchinson St and 4243 Hazel St.
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On Leong Building
The On Leong Building stands out in old Chinatown. It once housed neighborhood service organizations and some illegal gambling operations that led to spectacular police raids. It now houses the Chinese Merchants Association. Built in 1928, the grand structure is a fantasy of Chinese architecture that makes good use of glazed terra-cotta details. Note how the lions guarding the door have twisted their heads so they don’t have to risk bad luck by turning their backs to each other.
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Reliance Building
With its 16 stories of shimmering glass, framed by brilliant white terra-cotta details, the Reliance Building is a breath of fresh air. The structure’s lightweight internal metal frame – much of which was erected in only 15 days – supports a glass facade that gives it a feeling of lightness, a style that didn’t become universal until after WWII. Today the Reliance houses the chic Hotel Burnham. Added historical bonus: Al Capone’s dentist drilled teeth in what’s now room 809.
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Alta Vista Terrace
Chicago’s first designated historic district is worthy of the honor. Developer Samuel Eberly Gross recreated a block of London row houses on Alta Vista Tce in 1904. The 20 exquisitely detailed homes on either side of the street mirror each other diagonally, and the owners have worked hard at maintaining the spirit of the block. Individuality isn’t dead, however – head to the back of the west row and you’ll notice that the back of every house has grown in dramatically different fashions.
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Charnley-Persky House
While he was still working for Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright (who was 19 at the time) designed the large but only 11-room Charnley-Persky House, and proclaimed with his soon-to-be-trademarked bombast that it was the ‘first modern building.’ Why? Simply because it did away with Victorian gaudiness in favor of plain, abstract forms that went on to become the modern style. It was completed in 1892 and now houses the Society of Architectural Historians.
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Marshall Field’s
Weep all you want over the old Marshall Field’s becoming Macy’s; the building remains a classic no matter who’s in it. The iconic bronze corner clocks on the outside have given busy Loop workers the time for over 100 years now. Inside, a 6000-sq-ft dome designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany caps the north-side atrium; 50 artists toiled for 18 months to make it. The best view is from Ladies’ Lingerie, on the 5th floor.
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Marina City
For some postmodern fun, check out the twin ‘corncob’ towers of the 1962 mixed-use Marina City. Designed by Bertrand Goldberg, it has become an iconic part of the Chicago skyline, showing up on the cover of the Wilco CD Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The condos that top the spiraling parking garages are especially picturesque at Christmas, when owners decorate the balconies with a profusion of lights.
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Printer’s Row
Chicago was a center for printing at the turn of the 20th century, and the rows of buildings on S Dearborn St from W Congress Pkwy south to W Polk St housed the heart of the city’s publishing industry. By the 1970s the printers had left for more economical quarters elsewhere, and the buildings had been largely emptied out, some of them barely getting by on the feeble rents of obscure nonprofit groups.
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Monadnock Building
Architecture buffs on a pilgrimage bow down first to the Monadnock Building, two buildings in one that depict a crucial juncture in skyscraper development. The north half is the older, traditional design from 1891 (with thick, load-bearing walls), while the south is the newer, mod half (with a metal frame that allows for jazzier-looking walls and bigger windows). See the difference?
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Marquette Building
The architects behind the Marquette Building made natural light and ventilation vital components. While that’s nice, the most impressive features are the sculptured panels and mosaics that recall the exploits of French explorer Jacques Marquette; look for them above the entrance and in the lobby (where there’s also a free little exhibit on Chicago School architecture).
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Cyrus McCormick Mansion
The Cyrus McCormick Mansion is one of the neighborhood’s standouts. The 1893 neoclassical home was designed by New York architect Stanford White. McCormick and his family had the whole place to themselves, but it’s now divided up into condos. It’s still the high-rent district – a three-bedroom, three-bathroom unit goes for $1.75 million (washer and dryer included).
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Union Stockyards Gate
The Union Stockyards Gate was once the main entrance to the vast stockyards where millions of cows and almost as many hogs met their ends each year. During the 1893 World’s Expo the stockyards were a popular tourist draw, with nearly 10,000 people a day making the trek here to stare, awestruck, as the butchering machine took in animals and spat out blood and meat.
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Auditorium
The earliest buildings of the Chicago School, like the Auditorium used thick-bases to support the towering walls above. William Le Baron Jenney, the architect who constructed the world’s first iron-and-steel-framed building in the 1880s, soon had a studio in Chicago, where he trained a crop of architects who pushed the city skyward through internal frames.
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Archbishop’s Residence
The 1885 mansion that serves as the Archbishop’s Residence spans the entire block to Astor. This sweet crib, complete with 19 chimneys, is one of the many perks that comes with leading the Chicago Catholic Archdiocese. Seven archbishops have lived here, and world leaders from Franklin D Roosevelt to Pope John Paul II have crashed at the residence while in town.
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William K Kimball House
Unfortunately, it’s not possible for you to visit the following houses, but you can still admire them from the outside. Modeled after 15th-century French châteaux, the William K Kimball House dates from 1890 to 1892. Both it and the Romanesque Joseph G Coleman House now serve as the incongruous headquarters for the US Soccer Federation.
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