Reshaping the streetwall
Chicago's dramatic cliff of buildings faces a major makeover. And much more is at stake here than architecture.
By Blair Kamin
Tribune architecture critic
Published October 26, 2004
It's the face of Chicago, this row of buildings is, and it's about to experience one of the most significant bursts of construction since it started to take shape at the end of the 19th Century.
Some of the prospects are dazzling, others depressing. What they reveal is the need for a sharper set of planning tools as developers rush to capitalize on the success of Millennium Park by erecting new condo towers that could add to the row's glory or mar it forever.
The row, or streetwall, extends like a cliff along the western edge of Grant Park from Randolph Street on the north to Roosevelt Road on the south. For drop-dead grandeur, it is every bit the equal of the buildings that line New York's Central Park. Two years ago, fearing that a building boom could blight this magnificent stretch with the sort of hideous concrete slabs rising in River North, Mayor Richard Daley wisely turned all but the southernmost block of the streetwall into a landmark district, giving the city tight control over future construction.
Architects fumed, saying the district would curb their creativity. The city denied it wanted to impose a straitjacket. Now, there is evidence to support both sides -- and to remind us, in this age of spectacular buildings by the likes of Frank Gehry, that mundane planning instruments still wield tremendous influence over the quality of the cityscape.
On the plus side, the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies has advanced a boldly innovative plan for a new building that would rise just north of its present home at 618 S. Michigan Ave. The design, expected to be approved in November by the Commission on Chicago Landmarks, calls for a 10-story structure with a diamond-like facade of folding glass. It is so skillfully done that it tempts one to say that the doomsaying architects were wrong about city bureaucrats squelching their style.
Yet precisely that sort of meddling helped compromise the shape of a now-approved condo highrise at 1000 S. Michigan. It represents a far more telling case than Spertus of how the district will collide with marketplace realities. The result: An acceptable design, but hardly one for the art history books.
The contrast is equally sharp on the north and south ends of the streetwall where new towers will form giant bookends for the district even though they are outside its borders and are not governed by its constraints.
On the north, the soon-to-be-finished Heritage at Millennium Park, where Daley is to live, uses contemporary architecture to create a surprisingly graceful transition between the row's historic buildings and the much-taller modern towers along Randolph Street. Yet to the south, at 1160 S. Michigan, a setback skyscraper called the Columbian -- it has yet to begin construction -- shapes up as a disappointing retro design, a missed opportunity to end the streetwall with an innovative exclamation point.
Much more is at stake here than how to extend the streetwall's stunning smorgasbord of styles -- Venetian Gothic, Romanesque Revival, Classical Revival, Chicago School -- into the 21st Century. The streetwall is the image Chicago projects to the world. It appears on postcards, on television, and now is more visible than ever because of the throngs that have surged into Millennium Park.
But the park, which lines the streetwall's northern edge, has transformed the real estate dynamics of its environs, turning a sleepy business zone into a bustling neighborhood that teems with tourists. The booming Central Station residential development has had a similar impact near the row's south end.
As construction cranes prepare to move in, the question looms: Does the city have the right set of tools to guide the streetwall's growth?
Few are aware that the city has never gotten around to formally approving its tools, a series of draft design guidelines made public two years ago. As city landmarks officials acknowledge, the buildings that have been approved so far are, in effect, test cases. What those cases show is that the guidelines, for all their admirable sophistication, still need to be tweaked.
Prepared by the Chicago firm Gonzalez Hasbrouck, the guidelines are a kind of architectural recipe book, with do's and don't's that cover everything from additions to new construction. New buildings can be built on vacant lots in the district and, the guidelines say, they may replace existing buildings that don't contribute to the district's character. New buildings, the guidelines add, are supposed to exhibit "sound contemporary design" that respects the district's historic qualities.
But divining exactly what that means can prove as difficult as teasing out the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's famously vague definition of pornography: You know it when you see it. As the Spertus case shows, such judgments are invariably subjective.
Benefits of Millennium Park
Ten years ago, when aesthetic conservatism reigned at Daley's City Hall, landmarks officials might have told the architects of the Spertus plan, the Chicago firm of Krueck & Sexton, to slap some classical columns on their facade. Today, though, the design enjoys the benefits of the post-Millennium Park effect, which has created a new receptiveness to contemporary design at City Hall.
Instead of hammering the plan for not following the prevailing masonry exteriors in the district (brick, stone and terra cotta) city landmarks officials went out of their way to be open to it, even observing that glass can be thought as the terra cotta of today.
This is stretching standards like salt-water taffy, but the Spertus plan is so good it's easy to see why that's happening.
Designed to house the institute's college, library and museum, the building will strike a remarkable balance between respecting the row and making a powerful contemporary statement. Like buildings throughout the district, it will be strongly vertical, subtly suggesting the three-part division of a classical column. Its folding glass facade promises to match the ever-varying shade and shadow patterns of the district's richly articulated historic buildings.
But, this being Chicago, there's a catch: Spertus seems likely to prove an exception, not the rule.
First, it's a small building, just 161 feet tall and located in the middle of a block rather than at a prominent corner site. Second, the client is a non-profit institution, not a profit-making developer who wants to build the maximum amount of space. Indeed, the building's top will be nearly 120 feet shorter than the height ceiling suggested by the guidelines.
Elsewhere, the tension between business-as-usual development and the design guidelines is clear, present and potentially dangerous.
Consider the saga of 1000 S. Michigan, which was designed by Chicago's DeStefano and Partners and is being developed by a venture that includes Guy Gardner. A groundbreaking will be held early next year, Gardner said.
In 1999, the developers brought to City Hall a proposed tower of 700 feet, nearly 300 feet taller than the district's tallest buildings, the neo-Gothic Willoughby Tower at 8 S. Michigan and the beehive-topped Britannica Centre at 310 S. Michigan.
City planners asked the developers to cut its height to the 425-foot ceiling suggested by the guidelines. Simultaneously, neighbors in the building to the north got the developers to trim about 25 feet off the building's north side, making way for a shaft that will let light and air into their apartments. The developers, not surprisingly, were intent on maximizing square footage and profit.
The design that emerged from these colliding forces is hardly a terrible building, but it's a classic case of what might be called "not quite" architecture.
While the terra cotta-clad base nicely continues the row's prevailing 280-foot height, it isn't quite wide enough to give the tower the muscular oomph of the streetwall's best buildings. The glassy top, meanwhile, isn't quite tall enough to look like a true tower. It's part slab, part whiskey bottle, with just enough towerlike elements to make it visually palatable. The result would have been better if city planners had shown greater flexibility on the issue of height, trading more floors for better proportions and a more elegant skyline.
Still, greater height is hardly a panacea, as seen by the contrast between the two ends of the streetwall, the Heritage at Millennium Park and the Columbian.
Despite its off-Michigan location, one block behind the row at the corner of Randolph and Wabash Avenue, the Heritage has a major presence in the row. Designed by Solomon Cordwell Buenz and developed by a joint venture that includes Mesa Development, it is due to open next year. Its outlines, though, already are evident: A base steps up from an older building to the south and turns into a slender, 620-foot tower.
Not a meek building
With its glass and painted concrete exterior, the skyscraper makes a strikingly effective transition between the historic row and the much-taller modern towers along Randolph, including the slice-topped Smurfit-Stone Building. Yet it is no meek background building. Its curves strike up a conversation with the explosive metal shells of Gehry's Jay Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park. The design works not only as an object but also as part of a larger whole.
At the Columbian, which will rise at the high-profile corner of Michigan and Roosevelt Road, the outcome seems likely to be very different.
Developed by Allison Davis and designed by DeStefano and Partners, the 493-foot, brick-faced tower is in the final stages of city review. Its design seeks to evoke the slim, setback skyscrapers of the 1920s and to resemble, as the architects assert, a corner post that punctuates the end of a fence.
While the design is a cut above the brute concrete slabs of River North, its setbacks creating a sculptural profile, it is nonetheless draped in the sort of nostalgic cloak that seems to appeal to aging Baby Boomers returning to the city from the suburbs.
This is generic traditionalism, better suited to the banal towers of Central Station than to the extraordinary architecture of the streetwall. While the tower correctly bookends the streetwall, it does so with considerably less panache than the Heritage.
Yet even if the guidelines had affected the Columbian -- city planners did not include the block between 11th Street and Roosevelt in the district because the block had too few historic buildings -- it is hard to see how the guidelines would have significantly improved the skyscraper. For all the influence that planning tools have, this tower reminds us there are limits to their impact: It is impossible to legislate good design.
There are other lessons to be learned from these cases, although the lessons seem contradictory: The guidelines at once need to be loosened and tightened.
Heading off the monsters
To be sure, the guidelines have done exactly what they were supposed to do, preventing monstrously tall towers from invading the district.
Yet as the Heritage and 1000 S. Michigan cases show, it may make sense for planners to raise the height ceiling, letting new residential towers go as high as 550 or 600 feet. A little jaggedness -- as opposed to a uniform height cap -- can only enrich the skyline, as Chicago architect Ben Weese, a member of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks, suggests: "If we lop 'em off, it's like mowing the grass too short."
Why not extend this flexibility across stylistic boundaries? The Heritage shows that large-scale contemporary designs can work in the streetwall, not just tiny modern buildings like Spertus.
Now for the tightening up: For the guidelines to be meaningful, they should be applied not only across the entire row but also, perhaps, behind it. As good as the Heritage is, the risk is that future towers along Wabash will create an ugly backdrop to the streetwall. Think of the way the hulking red CNA high-rise at 333 S. Wabash looms above the wall, like the blockhead who wrecks the class portrait.
While city officials including Planning and Development Commissioner Denise Casalino defend what they've done so far, they leave the door open to change.
That's welcome news because, while good design cannot be legislated, bad rules can get in the way. And good design, however hard it is to define, is what Chicago's showcase streetwall richly deserves.
You'll know it when you see it.
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The Michigan Avenue streetwall (New or planned construction is highlighted in red below and shown in detail above.)
1.Columbian
2. 1142 S. Michigan
3. 1130 S. Michigan
4. Grant Park Hotel
5. Columbia College
6. Lightner Building
7. 1000 S. Michigan
8. Karpen-Standard Oil Buildin
9. Crane Co. Building
10. 830 S. Michigan (former YMCA)
11. Johnson Publishing Co.
12. East-West University
13. Essex Inn
14. Chicago Hilton & Towers
15. The Blackstone
16. Columbia College
17. Spertus Institute
18. Spertus Insitute (Future)
19. Harvester Building
20. Congress Hotel Annex
21. Congress Hotel
22. The Auditorium
23. Fine Arts Building
24. Fine Arts Annex
25. Chicago Club
26. McCormick Building
27. Karpen Building
28. Britannica Centre
29. Santa Fe Building
30. Orchestra Hall
31. Borg-Warner Building
32. Peoples Gas Building
33. Municipal Courts Building
34. Illinois Athletic Club
35. Monroe Building
36. University Club
37. The Gage Group
38. Chicago Athletic Association
39. Willoughby Tower
40. Montgomery Ward Building
41. Smith, Gaylord & Cross Building
42. Michigan Boulevard Building
43. Chicago Cultural Center
44. The Heritage at Millennium Park
City panel OKs design for Spertus Institute
A plan to create a distinctly modern building in the city's Michigan Avenue historic district appeared to be sailing toward final passage Thursday. The plan for the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies calls for a 10-story building with a folding, faceted glass facade.
(Handout image of proposed building)
October 8, 2004
Sources: City of Chicago Department of Planning and Development
Chicago Tribune/Keith Claxton