All Gone

Now something from the day late and dollar short file:

Back in 2017, I wrote about the plans to build the Barack Obama Presidential Library smack dab in one of Chicago's most important treasures, Jackson Park. On a lovely summer day, I took my daughter to the proposed site and my heart broke as we encountered a lovely urban landscape filled with rolling berms and an extensive variety of mature trees, some well over a century old, all marked with little orange dots, signifying they were slated for destruction. 

I didn't realize it at the time, as there were no little orange dots present, but just to the north of the landscape, one of the loveliest formal settings in the park, the Perennial Garden, which featured a circular sunken lawn surrounded by flowering crab apple trees and the eponymous perennial plants, was also to be destroyed. 

The landscape, creation of the estimable landscape architects Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted, who restored the site back to a park after the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, and the Garden, the work of May E. McAdams in the 1930s, were not destroyed right away, as a lawsuit challenging the wanton destruction of public park land delayed the inevitable for a couple of years. 

In 2019 a judge threw out the suit and the Obamas, shovels in hand, ceremoniously broke ground in 2021, officially sealing the fate of this portion of Chicago history. 

According to this Op-Ed piece in the Chicago Sun Times, published in 2020, citing an inventory of the site, said the 640 trees on that site alone:

store 203.8 tons of carbon, remove 5.8 tons of carbon from the air per year, remove 341.5 pounds of air pollution per year,...and have an avoided rainwater runoff amount of 9,591 cubic feet per year...

In addition, according to the piece: 

The planned tree destruction and Obama Presidential Center construction will evict small wildlife, including resident birds. Its 23-story tower will occupy a currently building-free migratory bird flight path, which inevitably will become a new source of migratory bird deaths.

A magnificent White Oak that almost certainly was present during the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, dominates the landscape that stood in the way of the site of the future Barack Obama Presidential Library.
Everything in this photo has been destroyed. 

In my 2017 piece I quoted Barack Obama defending the construction of his monument in Jackson Park:

It's not just a building. It's not just a park. Hopefully it's a hub where all of us can see a brighter future for the South Side,

I have no qualms with the Obamas' claims for the value of the presidential library and all the potential good it will do for the city and especially for the South Side which has been neglected far too long. But I take strong issue with the former president's careless "not just a building, not just a park" remark. 

For God's sake Mr. President, you as a former Chicagoan of all people should know that landmarked buildings and parks are an important part of this city's cultural legacy. They were designed and built by some of the most significant artists this country has had to offer, and we have every right to be proud defenders of them. The loss of any of these should never be taken lightly as they are irreplaceable elements of our public, civic, and cultural landscape. 

Sometimes there may be no alternatives and serious choices must be made, even for ones on the National Register of Historic Places as Jackson Park is. 

But it is ridiculous to assume that there were no reasonable alternatives to the wholesale destruction of twenty contiguous acres of a landmark public park. Perhaps the designers could have worked with the existing landscape architecture of the park, or better yet, build somewhere else. It's a pretty hard sell to say there is simply no available land in that part of town. 

In both cases, perhaps scaling down the massive size of the project may have been necessary. I'm not sure but I don't think that idea would fly with the principal characters in this story, especially in a day and age where public monuments are becoming more and more imposing with each one trying to "one up" the previous one. Maybe we should be happy the Obamas didn't insist on having their monument occupy all of Jackson Park. 

Anyway, it's all water under the bridge now, the deed is done. A massive construction site today has replaced the landscape and perhaps the most beautiful formal garden that once graced the city.

It's all gone now and perhaps even worse than its loss is the dangerous precedent it sets. 

Our city's parks, a precious public trust, are no longer safe, even from people from whom we should expect much more.

What a shame. 

The Picasso Thing

This week during a ceremony in Daley Plaza commemorating the golden anniversary of the work of art known to every Chicagoan simply as "The Picasso", Mayor Rahm Emanuel called its introduction to the city a "critical inflection point in Chicago's story."

Almost fifty years ago to the day, that point wasn't lost upon Mike Royko, who in his Chicago Daily News column published the day after the unveiling of the fifty foot sculpture by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, called the event, not without a trace of irony, the "cultural rebirth of the city." True to his curmudgeon spirit, Royko continued:

Out there in the neighborhoods and the suburbs, things probably seemed just the same. People worried about the old things·would they move in and would we move out? Or would we move in and would they move out? 

But downtown, the leaders of culture and influence were gathered for a historical event and it was reaching a climax with Mayor Daley standing there ready to pull a ribbon. 

Thousands waited in and around the Civic (now Richard J. Daley) Center plaza.

They had listened to the speeches about the Picasso thing. They had heard how it was going to change Chicago's image.

When Mayor Richard J. Daley struggled, then finally succeeded to free the artwork from its shroud, Royko wrote that the Picasso was greeted by a spattering of applause, followed by lots of silence.

Royko, like many Chicagoans at the time, wasn't particularly taken by the sculpture.

They had hoped, you see, that it would be what they had heard it would be. 

A woman, maybe. A beautiful soaring woman. That is what many art experts and enthusiasts had promised. They had said that we should wait that we should not believe what we saw in the pictures. 

If it was a woman, then art experts should put away their books and spend more time in girlie joints.

Mike Royko was no art critic. But he was one of the best observers and chroniclers of the life and times of this city that you will ever read. He was writing at a time when this city was bitterly divided over race, class and ethnic identity which he alluded to in the column. That would all come to a head the following year as the city burned during the riots after the assassination of Martin Luther King. Royko pulled no punches when it came to describing his passionate distrust of Mayor Daley, the Chicago Democratic Political Machine, and the moneyed establishment, all of whom exerted their considerable influence upon the city and in doing so, among other less charitable things, made the Chicago Picasso possible. To him, the Picasso was nothing more than a bone the powers-that-be threw at the people of this city, a silver lining within a cloud of greed, corruption and arrogance that controlled Chicago. And Royko famously made a living out of pointing out, as Jerry Garcia once sang, that every silver lining has a touch of gray. On someone's comment that the Picasso captured the "spirit of Chicago", Royko picked up on that point and ran with it:

...from thousands of miles away, accidentally or on purpose, Picasso captured it. 

Up there in that ugly face is the spirit of Al Capone, the Summerdale scandal cops, the settlers who took the Indians but good. 

Its eyes are like the eyes of every slum owner who made a buck off the small and weak. And of every building inspector who took a wad from a slum owner to make it all possible... 

It has the look of the big corporate executive who comes face to face with the reality of how much water pollution his company is responsible for and then thinks of the profit and loss and of his salary. 

It is all there in that Picasso thing the I Will spirit. The I will get you before you will get me spirit. 

Picasso has never been here, they say. You'd think he's been riding the L all his life.

I suppose few Chicagoans at the time read that deeply into the Picasso; they just shook their heads and failed to see what all the fuss was about. After all, to them it was just a big pile of rusty metal that didn't really look like much of anything recognizable.

Fifty years almost to the day after its unveiling, the rusty Cor-Ten steel of both the sculpture and the building it stands in front of, has developed as promised, a lovely rich, deep bronze patina, Today taken out of the context of the time, Royko's words and the feelings of the average Chicagoan sound philistine and sacrilege. The Picasso is every much as beloved, and part of Chicago's iconography as the lakefront, the Water Tower, the Chicago Theater marquee, the Wrigley Building, and the Marshall Field clocks.

Just as most locals never set foot inside the Art Institute, Symphony Center, or other institutions of so called "high culture", I dare say that Chicagoans deep down consider the Picasso if not beautiful, at least something to be immensely proud of. Just as those esteemed institutions, the Picasso has put this city on the map of respectability. After all, being regarded only as the city of  hog butchering, Al Capone rat-a-tat-tat, and corrupt politicians, gets a little old.

Young man "owning" the Picasso

If you don't obsess over the silly question of what it is supposed to represent, the Chicago Picasso is indeed, to my eyes anyway, a beautiful object in its own right. The form of its graceful, sensuous lines set against the ninety degree angles of the surrounding buildings creates a powerful study in contrast, especially when the light is just right. But that's only the half of it. The Chicago Picasso has done what none of the other great works of public art that were inspired by it have managed to do. It has become part of the urban fabric, and in doing so, has transcended its role as a work of art.

When you think of objects of art in a museum, chances are you take them dead seriously, your immediate reaction is to look and not touch. If that thought doesn't happen to occur to you, there are guards to remind you. Likewise, for a while, the Picasso was cordoned off with chains so you could not get too close, presumably to prevent the natural inclination of children sliding down its base. Removing those barriers played a big role in humanizing the work.

In his speech the other day, Mayor Emanuel said the Picasso belongs to all of us, and that is certainly true. Today without the chains, day and night you can see children and adults as well, using the sculpture as if it were an enormous playground apparatus. It's hard to imagine that Pablo Picasso, himself a child at heart, would have objected. Less exhilarating but equally poignant is the crevice underneath the base which serves at times as a shelter for homeless people.

Daley Plaza, Chicago's agora, is hands down the city's most democratic public gathering space. True to the democratic nature of the place, during his speech the other day at the foot of the Picasso, there were demonstrators shouting Mayor Emanuel down.

As Daley Plaza's centerpiece, the Picasso has borne witness to important moments in this city's history for the last half century. Joy, tragedy, exaltation, frustration, anxiety, hope, and every other imaginable emotion have all played out in front of the sculpture. The plaza is the site of political rallies, demonstrations, celebrations, memorial services, ethnic festivals, a wide range of musical and dance performances, farmers markets and the annual Kristkindlmarkt, the most authentic German Christmas market anywhere this side of the Maginot Line.

In 1983 I was in front of the Picasso at a pep rally for the Chicago White Sox who were about to enter the post-season for the first time in my memory. Four years later I was there when the official announcement was made that Mayor Harold Washington had just died. A few weeks later I was present in the plaza as Eugene Sawyer, a good man who was appointed mayor by the City Council in the most shameful of ways, lit the city's official Christmas tree. I saw Lech Wałęsa there in 1989, soon after he led Poland to a peaceful revolution from its Soviet subjugation. I was there in the late seventies when Iranian students demanded that the Shah be ousted from power. I attended many more events, both happy and sad, at the plaza, that have faded into the recesses of my memory, save for the presence of the great statue and its somewhat ironic role  (given its iconoclastic origin) as a stabilizing force mediating the array of events taking place around it.

Today as we read and hear stories of the anniversary, reporters are still eliciting opinions from passersby over what they think the Picasso represents. For all his shortcomings, miscues and malaprops, Richard Daley the Elder set everybody straight when he said, hitting the nail right on the head: "with modern art, you're just supposed to use your imagination."

At the unveiling fifty years ago this coming Tuesday, either Daley, or his speechwriter came up with another remarkably prescient line:

We dedicate this celebrated work this morning with the belief that what is strange to us today will be familiar tomorrow.

Powerful words spoken by a man not known for profound utterances, how can it be you may ask that Richard J. Daley of all people, son and lifelong resident of the once hardscrapple, provincial neighborhood of Bridgeport, was instrumental in bringing the Picasso to Chicago?        

Daley prided himself on being a builder and Chicago is filled for better or worse, with roads, bridges, buildings, projects, institutions and monuments that are the direct result of his power and influence over his twenty one year reign as mayor of Chicago. In that respect, he was no different from other big city mayors of the fifties, sixties and seventies. Speaking from experience having lived through the era, people back then had a profound faith in the new; in those days the word "modern" was an unequivocally positive term.  No matter how banal, uninspiring, or purely awful it may have been, anything modern was unfailingly preferable to anything old. That is precisely why there was so little objection to the wanton destruction of some of Chicago's greatest buildings during that era, virtually all of them replaced by vastly inferior modern buildings.

That the Picasso was strange or didn't conform to Daley's expectations of what art should be didn't matter in the least, the fact that it was important and new was all he cared about. When he became mayor in 1955, Richard J. Daley could very well have not known Pablo Picasso from a hole in the ground, but shortly after learning that Picasso was the most important Modern artist around, Daley became the artist's biggest Chicago benefactor. And Picasso returned the favor.

The story goes that the architect William Hartmann of the architectural firm Skidmore Owings and Merrill first approached Picasso in 1963 at his studio in Paris, Hartmann allegedly mentioned to Picasso that he was offering him a "site for the most important piece of sculpture in the United States." Never known for a small ego, those words were music to Picasso's ears. Back in Chicago, a man of no small ego himself, Daley was quite pleased, giddy in fact when Hartmann relayed the story that Picasso asked him if Mayor Daley was still in charge of Chicago. Despite the fact that they never met in person, it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Hartmann reportedly offered the artist a check for a cool $100,000 for his efforts, which Picasso turned down. The sculpture would be Pablo Picasso's gift to the people of Chicago.

The work itself was the result of several years of sketches and three dimensional maquettes, some of which were displayed at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1966. While the exhibition wasn't overwhelmingly attended, word got out that this would not be your grandfather's public monument. There was a bit of resistance to the construction of what for the time was a groundbreaking project. One alderman, a Republican of course, famously suggested that a statue of Chicago Cubs star Ernie Banks be erected instead. There were also rumblings about Picasso's communist sympathies. But Mayor Daley put his foot down and insisted the project go forward, reportedly saying: "Leave the art to the artists, and the politics to the politicians."

Maquette and preliminary drawing of Chicago Picasso
that were exhibited at the Art Institute in 1966,
one year before the unveiling of the sculpture

In the end, it may seem impertinent to lump Chicago's Picasso with the expressways, universities, housing projects and all the other major public works projects built under Mayor Daley's watch, but there it is. Richard J. Daley forever changed the face of Chicago and not all of it for the good. Mike Royko was right about Daley about 95 percent of the time, but he fell a little short with the Picasso thing. It is a piece that defies categories. It can be whatever the viewer wants it to be. To Royko it may have been a metaphor for all that was evil and corrupt about the city. Conversely, it could be a beautiful object representing the more edifying aspects of the spirit of Chicago.  Or if you are so inclined, it could simply represent a woman, an Afghan Hound, a horse an insect, or most likely all the above. Like all good art, it makes you stop and ponder. You may not have the answer but sometimes all that's important are the questions.

Beyond its own merits, the Chicago Picasso opened the door, the flood gates actually, for public arts projects to flourish all across the city and the country. Ironically in this, the "year of public art", officially proclaimed by the current mayor in honor of the anniversary, we are learning of the possibility that some of the works of art mentioned by Rahm Emanuel in his speech in front of the Picasso, are themselves endangered, either by the elements, or by removal. It turns out that of all the works of public art in Chicago, only the Daley Center Picasso is protected by landmark status, ensuring that kids of all ages generations from now, will still be able to slide down its base, and that it will continue to stand watch over the ebbs and tides of the flowing river of Chicago history.

It didn't happen very often in this town, but in the case of the Chicago Picasso, Mayor Daley got the last laugh. This coming Tuesday morning, the fiftieth anniversary of the unveiling, I'll be looking toward the sky and tipping my hat to Hizzoner.

Ya done good with this one Mr. Mayor, real good.

Progress, 1963 Style

Courtesy of my Facebook friend Gregory Jenkins, a Chicago based architect, here is a link to a 2013 post on the blog "Historic Indianapolis.com"  that describes along with a heart rendering photo, the demolition of the French Second Empire Style Marion County Courthouse building in 1963. Behind the doomed building in the photo is the MCC's successor, the Indianapolis City County Building, The newer building is a typical example of the International Style or Mid-Century Modern, the style of design that would dominate commercial architecture all over the world for a generation.

The post doesn't tip the hand of its author's opinion over which building is better, or whether it was wrong to demolish the older building. Instead, it invites readers to decide in the comment section. In stark contrast to a couple social media groups on Chicago history I belong to, I was mildly surprised at the measured tone of the comments, which seem exclusively written by Indianapolites, (or whatever the proper term is for people from Indianapolis). For the most part, while regretting the loss of the old building, the comments were favorable to the newer building, One writer, a long time resident of the city wrote this:

I will preface this by saying that I, too regret that the old courthouse couldn’t have somehow been saved or adapted. In the late 1950s, my dad taught night school in another now long-demolished building across from the courthouse. His memories of the courthouse are not very nostalgic. He remembers it as a grimy, run-down building in a dangerous neighborhood. I don’t consider it’s demolition necessarily a crime or that the city planners were short-sighted as such. The new city-county building was simply a part of what was happening across the country at that time as cities expanded and modernized. My mom worked in the city-county building when I was a kid and I used to love going down there with dad to visit at lunch. Especially remember the great view from the observation deck. Like some of the other posters have mentioned, I have a spot in my heart for mid-century modern. It was part of the fabric of my background growing up. Much as I am sure people growing up in Indianapolis in the late 19th Century had a spot for the old courthouse in their hearts.

The writer has a very good point, being able to look at the situation from a 1963 rather than a 2016 perspective. My guess is that he and I are roughly the same age as both of us can remember a time when the general attitude toward architecture in this country was simple: the newer the better. That opinion changed drastically in the past half-century, but why?

Keep in mind that the folks running the show during the fifties and sixties lived through the hard times of the Great Depression and World War II. The mood of the general public of the time was to move forward rather than look backward. Furthermore, like all big cities in the US, here in Chicago, there were no sizable commercial building projects between 1934 and the construction of the Prudential Building, completed in 1955. The highly influential Mies van der Rohe 860-880 Lake Shore Drive apartment buildings were built in 1951. Not only did the construction boom of the fifties and sixties stimulate the economy and create new jobs, but new architecture, which at the time meant steel and glass boxes built in the style that Mies and others pioneered, symbolized forward thinking and embodied that virtue that drove architects, planners and politicians alike, progress. The general public bought into the idea that progress in whatever form it took, was a good thing.

From a 1963 perspective, the photograph in the Indianapolis blog post would have symbolized welcome progress. I can guess that only a handful of people in Indy mourned the loss of the MCC at the time, just as few in Chicago mourned the loss of Louis Sullivan's Garrick Theater and Old Stock Exchange buildings.

Of course progress is a double edged sword. As Nelson Algren wrote in his book, Chicago, City on the Make:

Chicago lives like a drunken El-rider who cannot remember where he got on nor at what station he wants to get off. The sound of the wheels moving below satisfies him that he is making great progress.

It would take years of tearing down historic old buildings, and replacing them with mostly second rate, character-less, knock off Mies, Mid Century Modern piles of crap, before most people began to realize the mistake we were making. It took true visionaries like Richard Nickel and Jane Jacobs who were willing to swim upstream against the current of popular opinion to show us the folly of our ways. By the time folks were ready to listen to them, it was too late, and much of the charm, character and history of our cities was lost.

But not entirely. Jacobs fought, and won against New York's ultimate mover and shaker, Robert Moses, by stopping the construction of an expressway that would have cut Manhattan in half. Her books, most notably The Death and Life of Great American Cities, were the inspiration for the renaissance of the American central city. Nickel through his intrepid work documenting vanishing Chicago, and his untimely death in the wreckage of Louis Sullivan's Stock Exchange Building, inspired the architectural preservation movement in this city that lives today.

On the right is an image of a cross section of Chicago architectural history. Here, Mid-Century Modern, represented by Mies van der Rohe's 1964 Everett Dircksen U.S. Courthouse, happily coexists with the 1890's in the form of the Italianate facade of the building that houses Chicago's venerable Berghoff restaurant. Like the Indianapolis City County Building, the complex the Dirksen Building is part of, replaced another glorious old building, Henry Ives Cobb's Chicago Federal Building.  It was one of those rare occasions in this city where a great building was replaced by arguably a greater one, in this case, three of them.

If you look closely, in the background, you'll see the eclectic Post-Modern, Harold Washington Library built in 1991, and behind that, a 2009, mixed use commercial, residential building called Library Tower. While this crazy quilt of styles might not be everybody's cup of tea, to me it represents a thriving city of infinite variety with a surprise around every corner. Wonderful as his work is, I couldn't bear living in a city filled with nothing but Mies van der Rohe buildings, or for that matter, nothing but any one of these particular styles.

It is not without a little irony that some of the mid-century works that supplanted earlier buildings, today themselves are threatened with defacement and destruction. Once again, the general public has little regard for these buildings; to many, steel and glass boxes have as much charm as a visit to the dentist's office. They are in that middle territory, too old to be up to date, and not old enough to be charming. And who should come to their defense but the preservation community who sees their rightful place in history, and yes, even their beauty.

The circle goes round and round; alas, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Richard Nickel: Dangerous Years

My friend Rich Cahan has done it again.  Along with Michael Williams he just compiled and published the third of (what his wife hopes to be) a trilogy on the life and work of the Chicago photographer Richard Nickel. Cahan's first Nickel book, They All Fall Down: Richard Nickel's Struggle to Save America's Architecture, was a straight ahead biography which depicted his subject as a driven young man whose life's work began as a grad school project documenting the work of the architect Louis Sullivan. The project which Nickel made his own, to record and save everything he could of the architect's disappearing work, turned into an all consuming passion that ultimately cost him his life. In I972 Richard Nickel was crushed underneath the rubble of Sullivan's Stock Exchange Building while attempting to salvage artifacts of the building as it was being demolished.

The second book was called Richard Nickel's Chicago: Photographs of a Lost City, a book that allowed Nickel's camera speak for him. Beyond proof sheets, Nickel didn't make many publication or exhibition prints of his own work, so the lion's share of images in this exquisitely printed book had not been seen outside of a small circle. The book, not limited to the work of Louis Sullivan, or architecture for that matter, could be considered the definitive work on Richard Nickel the photographer, as it is to the best of my knowledge the most comprehensive collection of his photographic work to be found.

Richard Nickel was the Charles Marville of Chicago. Marville if you recall was the photographer who was commissioned to document the city of Paris as it existed before and during its mid-nineteenth century destruction and re-construction under the hand of Baron Haussmann in the reign of Napoleon III . Here is a link to a site describing a major exhibition of Marville's work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art In New York.

Unlike Marville, Nickel's work documenting the destruction of his city was for the most part, self-commissioned. Richard Nickel's Chicago shows us the ways and means of a soon to be post-industrial city, rooftops with their smokestacks and water tanks, steel rails reflecting the sun, automobiles in motion, and the incessant building up and tearing down of a restless city.

Early on, Nickel photographed people. Many of his early pictures show the influence of his school, the Institute of Design, especially the work of Harry Callahan with whom Nickel studied. The very first picture in the book proper in the chapter titled, The Passing Scene, is a provocative image of a woman standing alone in front of the Tunnel of Love at Riverview amusement park. Her expression suggests concern or maybe disappointment. Perhaps she is waiting for a lover who has stood her up, or one that never existed at all. One can't help but think of this image as a metaphor for Richard Nickel and his first love, the City of Chicago. a love that was unrequited.

As Callahan taught Nickel how to construct a photograph, it would be his other major influence at the ID, Aaron Siskind, who would teach him how to tell a story. Siskind initiated the Sullivan project and the two worked closely on the project during Nickel's remaining time at the Institute and beyond.

Eventually Nickel became a one man band with the Sullivan project which remained incomplete at the time of his death. Were it not for the steadfast work of Nickel's close friend and accomplice in salvaging Sullivan's work, architect John Vinci, Nickel's project would have died along with him in the rubble of the Stock Exchange Building. Forty years after Nickel's death, Vinci managed to complete Nickel's project with the publication of the massive tome The Complete Architecture of Adler & Sullivan.

Cajan's third Nickel book, Richard Nickel: Dangerous Years, What He Saw and What He Wrote, puts the photographer/preservationist's life, work and times into context. This time along with Nickel's photographs, his words speak for him. Nickel was a compulsive letter writer who kept carbon copies of all the letters he sent out as well as copies of letters he never sent. The current book reproduces in full color, selections of Nickel's letters to friends, collaborators, newspaper columnists, architects, landmarks commissioners, Mayor Richard J. Daley, the residents of buildings about to be demolished, and the owners of those buildings whose help he enlisted in gaining access before and during demolition, even though he openly opposed their intentions to destroy them. The book also reproduces Nickel's personal notes, sketches and detailed itineraries for photographic road trips in minute by minute detail.

Two of Nickel's struggles to save Chicago Landmarks are covered in great detail in the book, the Garrick Theater and the Stock Exchange Building, two of Louis Sullivan's greatest works.

Another great loss, and perhaps a bigger personal blow to Nickel was the demolition of Holibard and Roche's Republic Building on State at Adams. A self-portrait of Nickel on the roof of the Republic graces the cover of They All Fall Down. The new book includes two Nickel photographs of the Republic that I've never seen. The first is a stunning cityscape from about 30 stories up looking southeast. The stepped pyramid atop the Metropolitan Tower with its famous beehive beacon, dominates the picture. Grant Park and Lake Michigan can seen in the background. Virtually every building in the photograph still exists, save for the Republic Building, smack dab in the middle of the frame. The Republic stands out from its neighbors with its classic Chicago School facade, gleaming, (despite its grimy surface), in the hazy late afternoon light.

The other photograph, taken from the NW corner of State and Adams, shows the building toward the end of its demolition, with only the first two floors remaining. (the caption mistakenly identifies the picture taken at the start of the construction of the building that would replace it). Signs on the scaffolding proudly announce the coming of the new building, the Home Federal Savings Savings and Loan Building. Even the architects of the new building, Skidmore Owings and Merrill, shamelessly display their stylized logo, despite the fact that part of the ornament of the doomed building was still visible through the scaffolding. Talk about a lack of respect! In the photograph, passersby go about their business, causing me to wonder what must have been going through their minds as one of the best buildings to have ever graced this city turns to dust before their eyes, about to be replaced by a second rate building, despite the first class pedigree of its designers. My guess is that most of them, as was the popular opinion of the day, thought that new necessarily meant better.

Richard Nickel begged to differ. In one letter reprinted in Cahan's book addressed to a Chicago Daily News reporter he wrote:

I had a good look recently at that Home Federal S&L building which replaced the Republic several years ago. That looms in my mind now as one of the great tragedies... or rather as one of the most willful unnecessary destructive acts to Chicago School heritage. I'll  never forgive Hartmann (Bill Hartmann, then senior partner of Skidmore Owings and Merrill) and SOM for that. The Republic was a work of art, and the new building is nothing... maybe some tinsel!

Nickel wrote a much more scathing letter to the editor of a publication called The American City, responding to an article they wrote in praise of the Garrick Parking Garage which replaced the Garrick Theater, The article pointed out the design of an ornamental panel which consisted of 233 slabs of concrete that were cast from a molding of a detail from the Sullivan building, plus one of the original details, all stuck together. in a large mass. Nickel scoffed at the caption of a photograph of the garage that said: "Chicago's new Civic Center Parking Garage represents a growing awareness of Chicago's architectural heritage." In response Nickel wrote:

...what about the lines, "the building pays graceful tribute to the memory of "Louis Sullivan"? They wreck one of his masterpieces, and you conclude it is a tribute. How? Why? Would  you say that if someone wrecked St. Peter's Cathedral [sic] in Rome and erected a garage on the site,  using some statues and whatever, that that was a tribute to St. Peter???

Whoever wrote that article is soft in the head...

Nickel was one of the leading advocates for saving the Garrick Theater. It turns out that he was successful in convincing none other than Mayor Richard J. Daley that the building was worth saving. The city of Chicago filed an injunction in an attempt to halt the demolition of the Sullivan building, but were over-ruled by the courts.

Daley was not so moved to save the old Stock Exchange Building. In a letter to CBS News, praising their coverage of the fate of the building, Nickel wrote:

it doesn't surprise me at all that hizzoner Daley is the dumbhead who lacked the imagination to save this unquestionable work of art. ... 

The question now is, well, it obviously isn't even a question... why do we have a landmark commission (headed at the time by the aforementioned William Hartmann), which gets $100,000 a year (?) funding, and is getting nothing done, is working at odds with the City Council and the blankety-blank mayor?

Nickel goes on in the letter to lambaste the cultural elite of Chicago who turned a blind eye to the fate of the city's architecture, by failing to show up for demonstrations to save the building:

Where was the cultural leadership of Chicago?? The architects, the curators, the professors and historians, etc. So perhaps it boils down to our getting what we deserve... 

Cahan follows that letter with another, a bitter attack of the city fathers, perhaps written under the influence, a double scotch to be exact, to William Hartmann himself. What does the letter say? Well you'll just have to buy the book to find out.

What follows these two letters are a series of heartbreaking photographs of the construction of the scaffolding around the Old Stock Exchange Building, symbolizing the demise of both the building and the photographer. This time, passersby stop and look in dismay at the sight of impending doom for a marvelous building.

The book is a fascinating look into the psyche of Richard Nickel, into what drove him, and the conflicts he faced as the life's work of the artist he chose to devote a good portion of his life to, was crumbling all around him.

It's easy to imagine Nickel as a bitter, tragic figure, pursuing a quixotic mission, doomed to failure, much the way Cahan portrays him in his biography. But the correspondence in this book show another side to the man: funny, engaging, awkward and perhaps like any good artist, just a bit off.

One letter (presumably never sent), which Nickel put huge crosses through, is a comical, rambling, stream of consciousness rant to a potential collaborator, referencing everything from sailing, to the author's car troubles, to his frustration about the apparent sexual advances from a male art historian. As if it were necessary to point out which side of the fence he was on, Nickel writes: "I often do a lot of things I don't want to do just to accommodate people and then I get impossible and bitchy. And art history is so full of old ladies...and whilst I'm not married, that doesn't mean I like to travel with men, or associate with men much at all." then at the bottom of the typed page he writes out by hand: "I'm beginning to appreciate women more and more! Backlash?" There he closes the letter with "Regards, Dick", but he wasn't finished. On the flip side of the page he typed another half page explaining the tone of the letter by saying he was sitting listening to (the composer) Janacek while downing some Johnny Walker Black, a "real luxury." Once again he closes the letter, this time with "Drunken Dick."

Nickel did have one release valve and that was a sailboat which he kept moored in Burnham Harbor. He delighted in inviting friends to sail with him. One post card printed in the book was an invitation written to the daughter of the ID professor and photographer, Arthur Siegel. "Oh I love to have pretty girls aboard the boat..." he writes, "wear your bikini (or whatever the girls are not wearing nowadays)." At a recent lecture at the Art Institute promoting his book, Cahan flashed on the screen that postcard, not commenting on its content, when who should turn up but the recipient of that letter, Julie Siegel. Being perhaps the one person in the room who actually knew Nickel, she tried to assure the audience that while tragedy befell Richard Nickel, he was quite a lovely, engaging character, not at all the sullen, miserable wretch as he is often portrayed.

Having written three books on Richard Nickel, Richard Cahan must now be considered the world authority on the subject. His quest to document the man rates up there in tenacity with Nickel's pursuit of Louis Sullivan. Cahan said at his talk at the Art Institute that when you think about it, Richard Nickel was a failure in everything he did. He lived much of his life with his parents in Park Ridge, Illinois. He wasn't successful in preserving any of the Sullivan buildings he worked diligently to save. He never came close to finishing the Sullivan project. And he never finished the house he bought for himself in Bucktown.

This time I beg to differ. Cahan is certainly right in asserting that Nickel left this world with an unfinished legacy. But his work to save the most important Sullivan buildings did make a difference. The group that Nickel led, protesting the raising of the Garrick Theater in the early sixties was a ragtag bunch that managed to get the mayor's attention and his tacit support. By the time the Stock Exchange Building was about to turn to dust, there was a more significant presence of protesters opposed to the demolition. The ultimate loss of the building and the tragic death of Nickel inside it, galvanized the preservation movement in Chicago. It would be premature to say battle lost but war won, as the struggle to save Chicago's architectural heritage continues. Yet I'm convinced that Nickel both in life and in death was and is the driving force of the preservation movement in this town and for that we have much to be thankful, as well for the efforts of Messers Vinci and Cahan who have worked so diligently to care for and preserve the legacy and the work of Richard Nickel.

My heartfelt thanks to all of you.