Brutal II

Several years ago a friend from Prague came to visit. He was living in Chicago when we first met and already familiar with the city. So upon his return I decided to take him to some places he hadn't been. One of these was the University of Chicago. I wanted to show him what I considered to be a lovely campus dominated by early twentieth century buildings built in the Neo-Gothic style.

He was appalled. My friend asked why they would build buildings in the twentieth century using a seven hundred year old architectural style?

Frankly I didn't have a good answer for him.

My friend's opinion made sense because Prague is old enough to have the real thing, that is, Gothic buildings built during the Gothic period. Prague has even older extant buildings. And most of the Czech capital's subsequent  buildings were built in architectural styles that were developed in the period in which they were built, including early twentieth century Cubism, an architectural style virtually unknown outside of Prague. The city is a wonderful mish-mash of divergent architectural styles (including this) making it a tremendous resource for anyone interested in the development of Western architecture over the past thousand years, give or take a century or two.

While you'll find examples of revival styles in Prague, those are the exception rather than the rule. 

So I imagine my Prague friend would be rather perplexed by the recent presidential executive order decreeing that all new American Federal buildings be built in a style (Classical, based on the architecture of Ancient Athens and Rome) that is more than one thousand years older than Gothic.

For another point of view, check out this video.

It seems these two could not be more pleased about the executive order. There are a few obvious problems with this piece, namely the participants don't know what they're talking about. 

In fact, they seem to be reveling in their lack of knowledge saying essentially: "I may not know the slightest thing about architecture but I do know what I like." Of course everyone is entitled to his or her opinion but it seems rather odd to me for someone to go public flaunting their ignorance.

First of all, the presenters make references to some of our nation's most important buildings, the U.S. Capitol, the White House, the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress Jefferson Building and the Lincoln Memorial, the best of the best examples of the "traditional" architecture the executive order is promoting. Why can't new buildings look like those? they seem to be saying.

The answer is because these are the centerpiece buildings of Washington D.C. whose architecture frankly takes a back seat to their importance, their particular history, and their status as national icons. As such, the comparison is setting an impossible standard for new architecture.

What this video doesn't show us are the scores of "traditional" style buildings in Washington that don't come close to these iconic buildings both in terms of excellence in design, or their history. It's not much of a stretch to be of the opinion that many of these buildings are undistinguished, uninspired and graceless, they do little to enhance the urban environment in which they inhabit, and are downright ugly, just like the non-traditional buildings these two lambast. "Throwing some columns or arches in front of them" as one of the commenters suggests, isn't going to change that.

The two people in the video decry the lack of "thought and effort" that has gone into the creation of the more contemporary buildings. This could not be farther from reality, as we'll see in a bit, the opposite may be true, that in fact too much thought went into the architecture of these buildings. 

Getting to the gist of the video: one of the commenters singles out the FBI and State Department buildings in Washington D.C. as being "crushingly ugly". Now that's her opinion and whether you agree with it or not, she has every right to express it. But here she expresses her opinion as if it were a fact, then goes on to say: "it's called Brutalism for a reason" implying at least to my ears, that the architecture is intended to by ugly. 

To be clear, Brutalism is an architectural style that came into being in Europe after World War II when the demand for new housing not surprisingly was enormous. The term comes from the French term for raw concrete, "beton brut", coined by the Swiss architect Le Corbusier, to describe the materials he employed for his post-war housing developments or, Unité d'Habitation, the first of which was built in Marseille in 1952. 

As a building material, raw concrete has several advantages over masonry, stone and steel cladding. Beyond the obvious economic factors, concrete is plastic that is, it can molded into a nearly infinite array of shapes, allowing for the creation of non-traditional forms. It should be noted that the dome of the Pantheon in Rome, built nearly 2,000 years ago, in my book one of the greatest feats of engineering and most beautiful buildings I've ever experienced, is made entirely of unreinforced concrete.

Followers of Le Corbusier, the English architects Alison and Peter Smithson used the term "New Brutalism" to describe their own use of unadorned raw concrete in their work, and "Brutalism" as best as I can tell came into the lexicon of official architectural terms through the architectural historian and critic Rayner Banham in his book: The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic, published in 1955.

Brutalism is the direct descendent of the International Style, or Modernism, whose development can be largely traced to the German design school Stattliches Bauhaus, or simply The Bauhaus. The Bauhaus existed in three entities in three separate cities and times, Weimar, Dessau and Berlin between 1919 and 1933.  The school  was a radical departure from the traditional art schools of the era, in part by bringing together artists and artisans of all stripes together under one roof, beginning their studies with a core program which emphasized craftsmanship and hands-on contact with materials placing a premium on experimentation with new forms . 

The Bauhaus embraced the Industrial Revolution, particularly mass production with the goal of harmonizing fine arts with industrial design. The school's guiding principle in regard to design was that "form follows function" meaning that the end result of a creator's work, whether it be a skyscraper or a toaster, should honestly reflect what that object is intended for, without unnecessary distractions. In that vein, the cladding of buildings most associated with the Bauhaus is steel and glass, i.e.: nothing to hide.

However, the concept of form following function when it comes to architecture did not begin at the Bauhaus but right here in Chicago two decades earlier. As radical an architect for his day as the Bauhaus (and later Chicago) architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was for his, Louis Sullivan in an article published in 1896 titled The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered, wrote the following:

Whether it be the sweeping eagle in his flight, or the open aple-blossom, the toiling work-horse, the blithe swan, the branching oak, the winding stream at its base, the drifting clouds, over all the coursing sun, form ever follows function, and this is the law. Where function does not change, form does not change. The granite rocks, the ever-brooding hills, remain for ages; the lightning lives, comes into shape, and dies, in a twinkling.

It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law.

Louis Sullivan was a passionate and uncompromising advocate of creating an architecture that was derived from nature and at the same time, an architecture that was uniquely American. Despite being inspired by architecture of the past, he had no regard for imitating the architectural styles of long lost civilizations. In his book Kindergarten Chats, published in 1901, regarding the common practice of the time of designing banks in the Classical Revival style, Sullivan quipped: 

I am going to insist that the banker wear a toga, sandals and conduct his business in the venerated Latin tongue -- oral and written.

Hmmm, not a bad idea come to think of it, that bank sounds a lot cooler than mine.

Sullivan's buildings and those of his fellow "Chicago School" architects stripped down the design elements of their buildings, thanks in large part to the technical development of the curtain wall, exterior walls that are suspended from the interior skeleton of the structure rather than self-supporting, a system also developed in Chicago. The curtain wall enabled piers to be kept to a minimum while opening up the windows significantly, which inspired the creation of the "Chicago Window" consisting of a large pane of glass flanked by two double hung windows, entirely filling a bay, the space between the columns that form the structure of the building. In addition to providing more light into the building's interior, this alternation of wide windows and narrow piers emphasized the building's internal structure, hence form following function.

The heyday of the Chicago School or Commercial Style as it was also called, was short lived. Sullivan's dream of a uniquely American architecture was supplanted by a resurgence of the Classical revival, a result of the tremendous success of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Ironically, working for the firm headed by Daniel H. Burnham, the chief architect of the Columbian Exposition, Charles B. Atwood, designed what for me is the most significant and beautiful Chicago Style building, the Reliance Building, which has the distinction of being the first skyscraper to have the majority of its surface area to be of plate glass. 

As such, the Reliance Building is the paradigm of what was to come twenty years later in Germany, one could say making it the first truly Modernist building. 

Depending upon your point of view, that could either be a good or a bad thing as Modernist architecture is not universally loved in our day.

That wasn't always the case.

Two posts ago, writing about the misguided idea of building a triumphal arch in Washington D.C., I made the comment that the experience of two World Wars in the twentieth century changed the world order in countless ways, including our built environment. Growing up in the sixties I remember distinctly the attitude most people had toward architecture which was this: the newer the better. 

People it seemed who lived through the World Wars and the Great Depression, couldn't get away fast enough from the past and looked forward to a bright new future which was in part symbolized by bright and shiny, brand spanking new Modernist buildings. When great Chicago School buildings such as Holabird and Roche's Republic Building on State Street, and Adler and Sullivan's Garrick Theater on Randolph went down in the early sixties, there was barely a peep from the general public, even though the two were deserving of landmark status (had such a thing existed at the time), and were replaced by vastly inferior buildings, in the latter's case a parking lot. 

The few voices of dissent such as those of photographer Richard Nickel, architect John Vinci and historian Tim Samuelson, were like voices crying out in the desert. And when the city bulldozed thousands of acres of homes bisecting long established neighborhoods in order to build massive expressways, most folks just shrugged their shoulders saying: "Oh well, that's progress."

The tide did seem to turn during the demolition of yet another Sullivan masterwork, The Stock Exchange Building in 1972. Richard Nickel was killed as part of the half-demolished building collapsed on him as he was trying to salvage ornament. The tragedy of Nickel's death gained the preservation movement some traction in the community as people started to realize that at the rate we were going, one day none of Chicago's great architectural legacy would be left standing.

At the same time, those bright, shiny Modernist boxes that were so loved a decade before, were starting to show their age. Even worse, masters of the style such as Mies van der Rohe who emigrated to Chicago after the Nazis closed down the Bauhaus, started to die off and were replaced by practitioners who shared Mies' dogmatic approach to his art, but didn't have the old master's soul, his attention to detail, and most important, his design chops. 

The result was instead of "less being more" an old axiom adopted by Mies, less just became less. 

The same fate befell the city's brutalist architecture as its original practitioners, the equally dogmatic  Bertrand Goldberg, author of Marina City and the late, great Prentice Hospital, and Harry Weese the architect of the Seventeenth Church of Christ Scientist in Chicago and Washington D.C.'s Metro system, passed from the scene leaving the torch for lesser architects to pick up. 

Again like Mies, the dogma remained but not necessarily the ability, or the will to design attractive buildings.

In the hands of lesser architects, their buildings, rather than being groundbreaking and daring, became tedious and dare I say, ugly. In my opinion of course.

Today it seems, at least if you believe the mission statement of the National Civic Art Society, we have come full circle in our taste for architecture, preferring the older, pre World War II styles to the post. 

Fair enough, the pendulum throughout history has been constantly swinging.

Does that mean we should relinquish the choice of how to build in our public buildings and monuments to public taste, which as we just saw changes over time, or worse, to the whims of the current occupant of the White House?

I believe that would be a terrible mistake. 

I'll give you two examples.

In the early eighties it was decided that to honor the veterans of the Vietnam War, a monument was to be built in Washington D.C. Here I'm quoting myself from a previous post:

Maya Lin was then an undergraduate student of architecture at Yale who entered a class assignment into the competition and gained instant notoriety when she was selected the winner. Her design was conceptual and minimal, two highly reflective polished black stone walls bearing the inscribed names of 58,175 American dead. The slabs were dug into the earth, as if a giant wound. Her creation which became known simply as The Wall, was a departure from the heroic designs of Washington's existing assortment of monuments. This was to be a statement about war, not merely a monument to those who participated.

There was immediate criticism of the design, much of it bombast from politicians who objected to the unconventional nature of proposed monument. In the midst of the feeding frenzy, there were some valid concerns. Some veterans felt that the monument only paid tribute to the dead, not to those who returned. Others objected to the fact that an American flag was not a part of the design. The debate about whether or not to build The Wall dragged on for several months.

I have little doubt that if it were left up to the public and the politicians, the Vietnam War Memorial as it exists today, one of our nation's capital's most beloved and visited sites, would never have been built. 

The other example is right here in Chicago. It's the sculpture that sits in Richard J. Daley Center in the heart of Chicago's Loop. It's untitled but ask any local "Where's the Picasso?" and they will know exactly what you mean. When it was officially unveiled in 1967, the five story work of Modern Art, was received with a smattering of applause by the crowd, but mostly silence. 

"What is it?" replied the crowd, some out loud, some to themselves. To many I'm sure, the rusty Cor-Ten steel structure resembled an old, broken down 1952 Plymouth that had been left out in the elements too long.

But the creators of the sculpture assured us that the rusty finish, along with that of the building it stood in front of, would eventually develop a lovely bronze patina. They were true to their word. Here's me again from a few years ago:

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 most 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.

Again, had it been up to the public and many of the politicians at the time, the Chicago Picasso would not have been built.

Fortunately, the politician who mattered the most, the mayor of Chicago at the time, Richard J. Daley threw all his considerable weight behind the project. Known more for his malaprops than for his profound utterances, Daley hit the mark at the dedication of the Picasso when he said this:

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

And he was right, the Chicago Picasso is today as much an iconic symbol of this city as is the Lakefront, the Water Tower, the Wrigley Building, the Marshall Field Clocks and the Edward Kemeys Lions in front of the Art Institute. 

That said, the skepticism about Post WWII architecture is not all misplaced. Its champions and its practitioners alike reveled in being iconoclasts who were intent on changing the world in ways many people either find uncomfortable, or outright reject. 

Have a look at random quotes from the manifestos of some twentieth century artists, architects and planners taken off a blog that advocates traditional architecture:

“Not only is ornament produced by criminals but also a crime is committed through the fact that ornament inflicts serious injury on people’s health.” - Adolf Loos: Ornament and crime 1908

“Destruction of artistically valueless monuments as well as of all buildings whose artistic value is out of proportion to the value of their material which could be put to other uses.” - Demand #5 of the Work Council for Art: Under the wing of a great architecture 1919

“Smash the shell-lime Doric, Ionic and Corinthian columns…to the garbage heap with all that junk!” - Bruno Taut: Down with seriousism! (sic) 1920

“In carrying out this industrialization, the social, technical, economic and also artistic problems will be readily solved.” - Mies van der Rohe: Industrialized Building 1924

“We can no longer derive any benefit from the literary and historical teaching given in schools.” - Le Corbusier: Five points towards a new architecture 1926

“All ‘individuals’ are an obstacle in the path of development, and in fact progress takes place in spite of them.” - Hugo Häring: The house as an organic structure 1932

“ART = net resultant of momentarily (time fix) dominant articulability of ego’s cosmic sense.” - Buckminster Fuller: Universal architecture 1932

“Creative art is unthinkable without a spiritual clash with tradition. In this clash existing form must be smashed in order to find the pure expression of one’s own time.” - Reinhard Gieselmann: Towards a new architecture 1960

“A new condition of human intimacy will exist. The inhabitants live naked. The former patriarchal family system will no longer exist. The community will be complete, free, individual, impersonal. The inhabitant’s main occupation: pleasure.” - Werner Ruhnau: Project for an aerial architecture 1960

“Architecture is not the satisfaction of the needs of the mediocre, is not an environment for the petty happiness of the masses. Architecture is made by those who stand at the highest level of culture and civilization, at peak of their epoch’s development. Architecture is an affair of the élite.” - Hans Hollein: Absolute architecture 1962

To say twentieth century architects were dogmatic is a gross understatement, but that goes for artists and architects from time immemorial. Some of these statements are iconoclastic, some are inscrutable, some are revolutionary, some are bombastic, others are outrageous, while some are pure nonsense, although I do kind of like the one about all of us living free and naked. 

No small amount of arrogance either in all the comments above which may account for the resistance to their work from those who are weary of the cultural elite. 

But in the end, architects like all artists must be judged by their work, not by what they said. The truth, and I believe this to be the truth, not just my opinion, is that there are not good or bad styles of architecture, just good and bad design.

Just as there are beautiful Classical Revival buildings, so too are there beautiful Modernist and Brutalist buildings. The same is true for the bad ones and the majority of the ones smack dab in the middle.

The progress of art and architecture, like a great river, is constantly moving and changing, never composed of the same water. That, as Louis Sullivan (as bombastic as they come), might say, is the law of nature.

Governmental mandates for the arts are like putting a damn on the river, leaving a big pool of stagnant water in its wake. 

On that note, I'll leave the last word for Hizzonor Mayor Daley who was asked about the politics of Pablo Picasso. He answered as only he could:

Leave the art to the artists, and the politics to the politicians.

Well said Mr. Mayor.

Brutal I

In my last post I alluded to the current president's executive order titled Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again, which called for restricting the design of new federal buildings in the nation's capital to "traditional" styles of architecture, putting a special emphasis on the Classical Revival style.

The order, which was inspired by the National Civic Art Society * and presumably written at least in part by its president Justin Shubow,  refers to Classical Revival as promoted by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson who:

sought to use classical architecture to visually connect our contemporary Republic with the antecedents of democracy in classical antiquity, reminding citizens not only of their rights but also their responsibilities in maintaining and perpetuating its institutions.

The order goes on: 

Applicable Federal public buildings should uplift and beautify public spaces, inspire the human spirit, ennoble the United States, and command respect from the general public. They should also be visually identifiable as civic buildings and, as appropriate, respect regional architectural heritage. Architecture — particularly traditional and classical architecture — that meets the criteria set forth in this subsection is the preferred architecture for applicable Federal public buildings. In the District of Columbia, classical architecture shall be the preferred and default architecture for Federal public buildings absent exceptional factors necessitating another kind of architecture.

It then defines Classical architecture:

“Classical architecture” means the architectural tradition derived from the forms, principles, and vocabulary of the architecture of Greek and Roman antiquity, and as later developed and expanded upon by such Renaissance architects as Alberti, Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, and Palladio; such Enlightenment masters as Robert Adam, John Soane, and Christopher Wren; such 19th-century architects as Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Robert Mills, and Thomas U. Walter; and such 20th-century practitioners as Julian Abele, Daniel Burnham, Rafael Carmoega, Charles F. McKim, John Russell Pope, Julia Morgan, and the firm of Delano and Aldrich. Classical architecture encompasses such styles as Neoclassical, Georgian, Federal, Greek Revival, Beaux-Arts, and Art Deco.

It goes on to define "Traditional Architecture":

“Traditional architecture” includes classical architecture, as defined herein, and also includes the historic humanistic architecture such as Gothic, Romanesque, Second Empire, Pueblo Revival, Spanish Colonial, and other Mediterranean styles of architecture historically rooted in various regions of America.

You don't need to be an architectural historian to realize this list of acceptable building types encompasses a wide range of architectural styles. 

So what kind of architecture is unacceptable according to the executive order?

In the 1960s, the Federal Government largely replaced traditional designs for new construction with modernist and brutalist ones. (emphasis mine) The Federal architecture that ensued, overseen by the General Services Administration (GSA), was often unpopular with Americans. The new buildings ranged from the undistinguished to designs even GSA now admits many in the public found unappealing. 

Later in the order Deconstructivist architecture is also mentioned. 

In other words, unacceptable architecture according to the executive order, is any architectural style, born and bred after World War I.

In the last paragraph I quoted, the author mentions that these styles of architecture not only don't live up to the lofty intentions of our Founding Fathers, but they are also unpopular with the general public. 

On the homepage of the National Civic Art Society, there is a link to this page publishing the results of a Harris Poll which takes the temperature of the preferences of the American public in regards to architecture, specifically that of federal buildings. 

The poll consisted of seven side-by-side pairs of photographs, each pair consisting of a photo of a federal building built in a "traditional" style and one in a "modern" style. Then the survey asked participants to select in each pair which building they preferred. The comparison photographs were chosen carefully, using similar camera angles and light situations, so as not to skew the results based upon the quality of the photographs rather than the design of the buildings. 

In every case, more respondents picked the "traditional" style building over  the "modern" style by an average margin of about three to one. 

It goes without saying that the one thing each group had in common is that the "traditional " style buildings were all built before World War II and the "modern" style buildings were built after.

The NCAS uses these findings to argue that as the public (at least according to this poll) prefers "traditional" architecture to more contemporary styles, employing the former in the design of government buildings that are paid for by the public through taxpayer dollars is more in keeping with our democratic values than the top-down approach currently used to determine the design of these buildings. 

I suppose on a very superficial level, they have a point.

For what its worth, going through these very limited comparisons myself, I have to say that I personally disagreed with the majority opinion in all but one of the cases. That's not at all to say that I have a general preference of post WWII architecture, I don't. It's just that I found the older buildings chosen for the survey with the exception of one, to be rather uninspiring, while most of the newer buildings, to my eye anyway, could be described at the very least as interesting.

That's my opinion, take it or leave it. I'm not by trade an architectural historian but I do have a passion for the subject and I care a great deal about our built environment which hopefully comes across in this blog. 

Given that, should my opinion on the matter have more weight than the opinion of someone who has little interest in the subject?

Obviously in a democracy, we don't give weight to individual votes based upon the political knowledge of the voter; every individual's vote gets the same weight and that's exactly as it should be. On the other hand, the republic part of a democratic republic means that we vote for individuals to represent us, people who presumably know a thing or two about how government works, and vote on the issues before them based upon that knowledge. Theoretically anyway.

In other words, in a democratic republic, we the people don't get to vote on every issue that comes up before Congress, our State Legislature or our City Council. Rather it is our democratically elected representatives who do that. And that's a good thing because these folks generally (not always) know a thing or two more about these subjects than the average citizen.

In that vein it seems a little preposterous to me to have a referendum on the architectural style of every public building that gets built. And it seems even more preposterous in a democracy to have an edict from the president determining which architectural styles are appropriate and which are not.

Nonetheless, public opinion on the subject as well as the merits of different architectural styles are worthwhile topics for debate. Presidential edicts regarding the same are another story.

I'll discuss all of that in my next post.

And you can find that here.

* The following is the mission statement of the National Civic Art Society:

Founded in 2002, the National Civic Art Society is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. that educates and empowers civic leaders in the promotion of public art and architecture worthy of our great Republic. We do this by advancing the classical tradition in architecture, urbanism, and their allied arts. Through our programs and initiatives we guide government agencies and officials; assist practitioners; and educate students and the general public in the preservation and creation of beautiful, dignified public buildings, monuments, and spaces.

The Phantom Tower

Here's a good Chicago trivia question for you.
It's a picture clue:

In this view looking up Michigan Avenue from Monroe Street, three of the buildings pictured were at the time of their construction, the tallest building in Chicago. Name them.

I bet you can't. Well at least I couldn't name all three a week ago, as at least one of my picks would have been wrong. That in itself might be a clue, but I'll get to that in a minute.

Years ago, the syndicated columnist Sydney J. Harris used to have a regular feature called "Things I Learned on my Way to Looking up Other Things." That was back in the day before the internet when you'd look through a general interest reference book, perhaps an encyclopedia, and come across information that might catch your eye that had absolutely nothing to do with what you were looking for. Internet searches are more focused, so if the web is your primary source of information, you're less likely to be looking up say, gestation periods of mice, and find yourself engrossed in an article about the Gettysburg Address.

But I digress. As I was looking up information for an earlier post on the Sears/Willis Tower on the Emporis website, I came across a link that listed the chronology of the tallest buildings in Chicago, beginning in 1854.

It turns out the same list can be found on Wikipedia, which is what I copied here:

Building	Dates as tallest building in Chicago	ft (m)	Stories
First Holy Name Cathedral	1854–1869	245 (75)	1
Saint Michael's Church	1869–1885	290 (88)	1
Chicago Board of Trade Building	1885–1895	322 (98)	10
Masonic Temple Building	1895–1899	302 (92)	21
Montgomery Ward Building	1899–1922	394 (120)	22
Wrigley Building	1922–1924	438 (134)	30
Chicago Temple Building	1924–1930	568 (173)	23
Chicago Board of Trade Building	1930–1965	605 (184)	44
Richard J. Daley Center	1965–1969	648 (198)	32
John Hancock Center	1969–1973	1,127 (344)	100
Aon Center	1973–1974	1,136 (346)	83
Willis Tower	1974–present	1,451 (442)	108

Now if you know your Chicago buildings, you'll realize that the three buildings in my picture on the list of one time tallest buildings in the city are the Aon Center, (formerly the Standard Oil Building, the tower on the extreme right), the Wrigley Building, (the bright white building which you can see off in the distance in the lower left quadrant of the picture), and the Montgomery Ward Building, (also known as the Tower Building, the third building from the left).

The list contains a few surprises in its omissions. If you're an old time Chicagoan like me, you might be surprised that the Prudential Building, (or One Prudential Plaza as it's now called, the Mid-century Modern building with the huge antenna), is not on the list.  Between the time it was built, 1955, until the construction of the John Hancock Building on North Michigan Avenue in 1969, most people in town assumed the Prudential was the tallest building in the city because it featured an observation deck, and pretty much billed itself as such. Mea culpa, I declared it as Chicago's one time tallest in my appreciation of the building in this blog post. There I called it "the tallest building in the city and the most prominent building in the skyline." Well at least the second part was true. The first part was partially true, as the Prudential did once have the tallest roof and highest occupied floor in the city. But if you count the statue of the goddess Ceres atop the Chicago Board of Trade Building on La Salle Street, as the folks who compile building height stats do, that 1930 building is taller, by all of four feet! It became a moot point when the Richard J. Daley Civic Center was built in 1965, a full 47 feet taller than the Prudential. Still the top of that building is devoted to mechanical equipment so the Prudential still could claim the highest occupied floor in Chicago until 1969.

These may seem trivial distinctions until you consider the brouhaha over One World Trade Center in New York City, which was completed in 2014. The roof of that building is 1,368 feet above the ground. The roof of Sears/Willis Tower in Chicago is 1,450 ft. The difference is that One World Trade has a decorative mast on top of the building, which looks very much like an antenna, bringing the total package from ground to pinnacle, to 1,776 feet, an easy number to remember (no coincidence there). There was a huge debate at the time between backers of the two cities over which town's building was taller. The official arbiter of such things, the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, determined that the thing on top of the New York building was indeed an architectural element, as opposed to a an antenna, which meant it counted toward the building's official height, making it by decree, taller than the Chicago building. Here, on their site you can read about their criteria, which is in agreement with the Chicago list which takes into account architectural elements like church spires and statues atop buildings, but not antennas and other purely functional elements.

Another surprising omission from the list is William LeBaron Jenny's Home Insurance Building. Topping off at 138 feet, the ten, later twelve story 1884 building was dwarfed by the 290 foot steeple of St. Michael's Church. Yet the significance of Jenny's building is far greater than the church steeple as it was the first tall building to have been supported both inside and out, by an interior fireproof metal frame. Ask any dyed-in-the-wool Chicagoan and he or she will proudly tell you that Jenny's building was the "world's first skyscraper." Given the term, one would assume that distinction alone would make it, upon its construction, the city's if not the world's tallest building. It wasn't even close. However "skyscraper" is not a technical term describing a particular construction technique, but a relative term that describes any tall building in relation to its surroundings. In Chicago, a city with today, perhaps 100 buildings with more than 50 stories, no one would call a new ten story building a skyscraper, regardless of how it is constructed.

Beyond their usefulness for providing esoteric facts and trivia game answers, if you actually put some thought into them, lists like these can be useful tools in the study of the history of a city. One might reasonably assume for example, that the tallest building in a city at a given time is an indication of the relative importance of the institution that built it. For example, if you look at the list of the chronology of the tallest buildings in Chicago, you'll notice that in the early years, the tallest buildings were churches. You might conclude that Chicagoans at the time were more concerned about building temples to God than to Mammon. This in fact is an interesting topic which has no simple answer, it is the jumping off point for such disparate topics as19th Century religion and building technology.

There is a practical reason why commercial buildings were not as tall as church steeples in the mid-nineteenth century; the first passenger elevator wouldn't appear in Chicago until the mid 1860s. Before that, it was simply unfeasible to build "walkup" buildings above a certain height as no tenant would rent a space where they'd have to climb more than six or seven flights of stairs to get to their office or home. Church steeples on the other hand, could be built at the discretion of their congregations, to great heights, some of them exceeding the height of a present day twenty story building. The taller the steeple, the greater the prestige of the congregation, and also the neighborhood in which it stood. While religion certainly wasn't the centerpiece of early Chicagoans ' lives, the presence of churches in a community gave at least the appearance of cultivation, that contrasted with the get-rich-quick, no-holds-barred, boom town mentality of Chicago, the necessary yin to the young city's yang, so to speak. In the 1860s, the great landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted cynically wrote in his journal:

A church steeple will be built higher than it otherwise would be because the neighboring lot holders regard it as an advertisement of their property. There is nothing done in Chicago that is not regarded as an advertisement of Chicago.

Spire of St. Michael's, Old Town
The tallest of tis kind in Chicago

 With the introduction of the elevator and William LeBaron Jenny's technical innovations, multi-story buildings could now be as tall as the economic conditions of the time permitted. As commercial buildings grew taller, church steeples did not. With the exception of the 1924 Chicago Temple Building which features a church steeple placed atop an office building, (a unique temple to both God and Mammon), the tallest stand-alone church steeple in Chicago is still St. Michael's in Old Town (not to be confused with St. Michael the Archangel Church, another landmark church with an enormous steeple that defines its community, South Chicago). After the destruction of the Church of the Holy Name in the Great Fire, the steeple of its successor, Holy Name Cathedral, would be several feet shorter than it predecessor's. Rather than compete for height with the new skyscrapers, church congregations in Chicago found new ways to distinguish their houses of worship, such as placing them adjacent to parks and other open spaces.

When I first conceived this post, my idea was to simply print the Emporis/Wikipedia chronology list
accompanied by some comments and contemporary photographs of the nine extant buildings, and historical photographs of the three that have been lost. In doing a little background research, I opened up my copy of the Encyclopedia of Chicago, to their entry on skyscrapers. That article included the book's own chronological list of the city's tallest buildings. To my surprise, their list doesn't quite match the Emporis/Wikipedia List. Here is the Encyclopedia of Chicago list, as borrowed from their web site:

Building	Date	ft	Stories	Address
First Holy Name Cathedral	1854	254	1	733 N. State Street
Water Tower	1869	154	1	800 N. Michigan Avenue
Holy Family Church	1874	266	1	1080 W. Roosevelt Road
Masonic Temple	1892	302	21	State and Randolph, NE corner
The Tower Building	1899	394	19	6 N. Michigan Avenue
Wrigley Building	1922	398	29	400 N. Michigan Avenue
Chicago Temple	1923	568	21	77 W. Washington Street
Chicago Board of Trade	1930	605	44	141 W. Jackson Boulevard
Richard J. Daley Center	1965	648	31	50 W. Washington Street
John Hancock Tower	1969	1,127	100	875 N. Michigan Avenue
Aon Center	1973	1,136	83	200 E. Randolph Street
Sears Tower	1974	1,450	110	233 S. Wacker Drive

Two buildings on the Encyclopedia of Chicago's list are not on the Emporis list, the Water Tower, in place of St. Michael's Church, and Holy Family Church, rather than the old Board of Trade. Now if you look closely at this second list, there is something curious about the inclusion of the Water Tower. Built in 1869, the Water Tower's height of 154 feet is exactly 100 feet shorter than the building it succeeds, the old Church of the Holy Name. That church was destroyed in the Great Fire while the Water Tower stands to this day, so it makes sense that as the tallest building left standing intact, the Water Tower would have succeeded the church as the tallest building in the devastated city. But the fire took place in 1871, so I can only conclude that the 1869 date is a mistake.

Holy Family Church
Prevailing SW winds on the night of
October 8, 1871 prevented this
great west side church from being
consumed by the Great Fire which
started only one half mile away.

Holy Family Church, built in 1860, also survived the Fire, apparently in answer to Father Arnold Damen's prayers that the church he built to serve Chicago's burgeoning immigrant Irish population of Chicago's west side, be spared. Whether it was divine providence or merely the strong southwesterly winds that steered the flames away from his church, less than a half mile from the source of the fire, to this day lights are lit at the shrine of Our Lady of Perpetual Help inside the sanctuary of Holy Family in eternal gratitude that the church was saved. The reason why the the Encyclopedia of Chicago's date for Holy Family succeeding the Water Tower is 1874, rather than its construction date, was answered for me by Father George Lane and his seminal book on the subject, Chicago Churches and Synagogues: An Architectural Pilgrimage, which points out that the spire of Holy Family wasn't completed until 1874.

But what about the spire of St. Michael's, which is 24 feet higher than Holy Family's? Unlike Holy Family, St. Michael's was directly in the path of the fire. As this stereo-photograph of the devastation of St. Mike's shows, had there been a 290 foot tower at the time of the fire, it did not survive.

Confirming what's visible in the stereograph, in his book, Father Lane notes in his book that the fire, "... gutted St. Michael's leaving only the walls and part of the tower standing." According to Lane, the great spire and landmark of the near north side of the city wasn't completed until 1888. I haven't been able to ascertain whether the pre-fire tower was the same height as the one we see today, but it simply cannot be true that the church could claim title of city's tallest structure between October, 1871 and 1885 as the Emporis list claims.

I have no answer at the moment why the Encyclopedia of Chicago omits the old Board of Trade Building from its list. Here is a photograph of it standing on the same site as its Art Deco successor, where LaSalle Street meets Jackson, with the estimable Rookery Building visible on the left. Again it is the tower which puts this building over the top. The old Board of Trade lost its distinction as tallest building in the city in 1895 when its (in my opinion) inelegant clock tower was removed. The opulent building designed by W.W. Boyington, the architect of the Water Tower and many other mid-nineteenth century Chicago buildings, was demolished in 1929 to make way for its successor.

The real mystery surfaced when I began to assemble historic photographs of the buildings on these lists. Although its great size encouraged the Archdiocese of Chicago to use it for official diocesan ceremonies, the Church of the Holy Name, built in 1854, was, contrary to what it is called on both lists, never Chicago's official Roman Catholic cathedral. That distinction went to St. Mary's Cathedral in the Central Business District, what today we call the Loop. Holy Name was built in conjunction with the original St. Mary of the Lake University, Chicago's first university. Continually plagued with debt, both the university and the church struggled to keep afloat, and the university closed its doors in 1866. (The university re-opened in 1926 as St. Mary of the Lake Seminary in the Chicago suburb of Mundelein, IL). The photographs I found of old Holy Name Church were few and far between, but I was unable to find a single photograph with a tower anywhere close to the advertised 240 feet. I don't have the dates on these first two pictures but based upon what I learned, more on that later, I'd say the first photograph was made around 1862, give or take a couple of years.

You can clearly see the base for what would be the tower, hadn't yet reached much beyond the roof line of the church. The next picture shows the second stage of construction of the tower complete. I'm guessing it had to have been made not more than a couple years after the first, judging by the height of the tree on the right:

The date of the next picture is certain, the fall of 1871, shortly after most of the church was destroyed by the Chicago Fire. In this picture you can see the third stage in the development of the tower, and two beams protruding from the top, suggesting that there was indeed some kind of structure above:

Granted it's true that the documentation of the buildings of pre-fire Chicago is inconsistent, but the idea that I couldn't find one photograph of the completed spire perplexed me, especially if it was indeed the tallest structure in Chicago at the time. Unfortunately Father Lane in this case was no help. In his entry on the current cathedral which replaced old Holy Name, he only devotes one sentence to the lost church.

Another book I had on my shelves, Constructing Chicago, by Daniel Bluestone, devotes an entire detailed chapter to the construction of pre-fire churches in Chicago, but was also of no help regarding the specifics of the tower at old Holy Name.  

I also managed to find an old souvenir book on my shelves, published in 1949 on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the founding of Holy Name parish. I got the book at the cathedral at the re-opening ceremony after the church was closed because of damage due to a fire in its roof, I think they were giving copies of the book away just to clean house. Anyway, that book contains a very detailed history of the city of Chicago, told of course from a very Catholic point of view. Turns out the very first cathedral of Chicago was actually the magnificent Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin in Baltimore, designed by Benjamin Latrobe in 1821. Back in frontier days when Chicago was just a backwater settlement, the territory covered by the archdiocese of Baltimore extended all the way to the Mississippi River. The Chicago diocese was founded in 1843. This book didn't go into great detail about the church building either, but it did give a detailed account of the parishioners who donated the money to build it and how much they gave. It also provided an eye-witness account of its destruction which describes the steeple catching fire, then collapsing onto the roof of the church, setting it on fire. That account was my first evidence that the spire actually existed.

Then I remembered a photographic panorama of Chicago made from the tower of the old Court House Building in the center of town. The panorama was published in the book Chicago, Growth of a Metropolis by Harold B, Mayer and Richard C. Wade. In the section of the panorama pointing northeast, three towers are clearly visible. One is the Water Tower, which had yet to receive its distinctive cupola, the tower of St. James Episcopal Cathedral, which also survived the fire and the subsequent 146 years, and low and behold, the base of the tower of Holy Name Church, looking very much like it did in the second photograph, with no spire. Although the photo does not show the towers clearly as they are at least one mile from the camera, it does appear there is work taking place, probably the construction of the third stage of the tower. As the Water Tower was built in 1869, the date of this photograph has to be between 1869 and 1871. Since the city at the time was filled with many 200 ft spires, the assertion that Holy Name was the tallest building in Chicago since 1854, has to be incorrect.

I asked myself, was there ever a tower? True, there was the account of the burning tower crashing onto the roof of the doomed church, but that was a scene repeated over and over again during those dreadful two days of the fire. It occurred to me that perhaps the eye-witness, in all the stress of a huge city burning before his eyes, could have mistakenly been recounting the story of the destruction of another church.

I was prepared to leave the question open until I decided to trudge through the tedious prose of the souvenir book. Reading through the histories of a succession of Chicago bishops with delicate constitutions who met their maker many years before their time, I discovered that in 1863, under the episcopate of one of those unfortunate men, Bishop James Duggan, the pastor of Holy Name, Father Joseph P. Roles:

...undertook with the permission of Bishop Duggan to add to the interior decorations which others had left incomplete. He installed the main altar and two side chapels with their screens, the altar railing and the pulpit, all in hand carved walnut. He also started to build the steeple which was originally planned. This was still in progress when the Church of the Holy Name was burned to the ground in 1871.

So there you have it. My guess is that the process of adding segments to the tower began in 1863 and continued, probably sporadically since those were war years, at least through 1869 or 1870, when work on the steeple above its supporting tower began. The first photograph was probably made just before 1863 and the second, sometime not long after 1865. From the information I have, at the time of the fire, the steeple may or may not have reached its planned 240 foot height, but the account of the destruction of the church mentioned above is most likely true.

Given all that, the Church of the Holy Name could not have been the tallest building in Chicago before 1869, and given that the steeple was not completed at the time of its destruction, its status as tallest building in Chicago at any time is doubtful.

Coming across that information the other day was a little bit of a letdown, I had anticipated doing some more legwork tracking down the story of the phantom tower of the Church of the Holy Name, and learning more about the history of the city along the way. As with many research projects, the journey is more satisfying than the destination. There's no real joy in debunking the notion that the Church of the Holy Name once had the distinction of being the tallest building in Chicago. Had it not been for the Great Fire, it very well may have been, for a little while anyway.

I don't know why but trivial as it may be, knowing that fact makes me a little sad.

The good news is if the spirit moves me, I can now embark on a project to discover the actual tallest buildings in Chicago before the Great Fire.


If I ever get the time.

White Elephant

The great pop idol David Bowie died this week and social media has been abuzz with tributes, memories and laudatory comments about him. That is except for one friend who posted on her Facebook page that she never liked the dead rocker or his music.

I felt a little like her a couple months ago when it was announced that Illinois governor Bruce Rauner was planning to sell the James R. Thompson Center. a move some believe signals doom for Helmut Jahn's bombastic government building , for thirty years the tangible symbol of the State of Illinois in the center of its largest and most important city.

The news caused a tremendous uproar among the city's preservation community who see the Thompson Center as an important architectural landmark in the city.

Swimming upstream against the current, like my friend the David Bowie detractor, I had to admit that from day one, I never much liked the building. It's not that I objected it appearing to have been dropped into the cityscape from outer space, sticking out like a sore thumb in Chicago's Loop which was and still is dominated by architectural boxes. I wasn't too upset that the State of Illinois Building as it was known when it was built, took the place of the old Sherman House Hotel where I spent many happy times with my grandparents at what I once considered the classiest restaurant in the world, The Well of the Sea. And it didn't really bother me that the building's design with its enormous open atrium and bird cage elevators, trumpeted as being unique and original, actually parroted the work of John Portman, the famous neo-futuristic designer of hotels in the decade before the Thompson Center was built. Well all those things did cross my mind but...

One of the several thousand handrail joints
 in the James R. Thompson Center.
Today the edges and corners of the metal rails
are rounded off, sparing the hands of the
tens of thousands of people who use them
every day.

What really bothered me was the complete lack of attention to detail in a building that was first and foremost a grandiose statement on the part of its architect and the governor of Illinois who commissioned it, for whom it is currently named. Much has been written about the building's notorious heating, ventilation and air conditioning problems which resulted in a complete overhaul of the HVAC system shortly after it was built. But the detail that pissed me off above all was the design and execution of the sheet metal hand rails that line the terraced balconies and stairways. At each joint, instead of the pieces coming together smoothly, there was a gap of about one half an inch, leaving exposed metal edges. When the building was new, it never occurred to Jahn or the staff working under him to sand down those edges. Consequently, anyone who held onto the rails as they used the stairs or walked along the balconies, cut their hands bloody (as I did), on the sharp exposed corners and edges of the sheet metal.

I suppose the very real blood letting of visitors gave a new meaning to the term "brutalist architecture". Another brutal aspect of the building to my eyes anyway was its color theme which juxtaposed two starkly contrasting colors, blue and red. As the eye focuses slightly different on each color, the effect of the two colors side by side meant the eyes were continually adjusting to each color, producing a dizzying effect which only accentuated the enormous atrium, the death defying heights as viewed from the terraced balconies of the higher floors, and the kaleidoscopic design of the terrazzo floor below. Thirty years earlier, Alfred Hitchcock may have pre-visualized the building when he made his great film Vertigo.

This was of course no accident, I believe that Jahn intended the building to be the architectural equivalent of an amusement park ride, terrifying and wonderful at the same time.

Looking up into the cavernous atrium of the Thompson Center,
a view a friend once compared to the view from inside
a salt shaker.

Did I say wonderful? Well yes, the building was not without its merits. First and foremost, it was not boring, there was nothing anywhere quite like it. For all its flaws, the Thompson Center was always a featured highlight on my tours of the Loop. It was impossible to be indifferent about the TC, you either loved it or hated it.

These days, even though I find myself inside the building quite often, I hadn't given it much thought until the governor made his announcement. Truth is, after all these years, it has settled on me. Like the old afghan on your couch, I came to appreciate it for its comfort and familiarity despite the ugliness, which was exacerbated by neglect over the years. Time had worn off its edges; the garish colors of the walls faded and even the sharp edges of the hand rails had long ago been sanded down. Despite that, or maybe because of it, the building developed something it never had before, charm. Dare I say, in its decrepitude, the Thompson Center became cozy, which is probably why Helmut Jahn hasn't been very outspoken in defense of saving his building.

A couple months ago I had lunch with a friend at the Thompson Center food court on the lower level, perhaps at the exact site where the Well of the Sea once stood. In the central area of the ground floor, a political rally was going on emceed by Jesse White, the Illinois Secretary of State. As my friend and I were about to dine on our Panda Express Mandarin orange chicken and Szechuan beef, a color guard entered the space followed by a girl belting out the Star Spangled Banner. Feeling uncomfortable chowing down on Chinese fast food during the strains of our national anthem, we grudgingly stood up as did most of the diners around us. As the girl finished singing, we sat back down and settled into a rather serious conversation, trying best as we could to ignore the goings on around us. It was impossible. At the height of our seriousness, in walked a twelve piece Mariachi band, belting out an old Jalisco standard as loud as they could. We felt like we were in an episode of Seinfeld.

Neither of us could be upset however, in short, this brief Dada moment personified the very essence of the urban experience.

The best part of the Thompson Center is all the open space devoted to the public; like it or not, pure and simple, this is our building. Walk in during the week and there is always some kind of exhibit set up on the main floor attracting scores of people representing the diversity of the city of Chicago. It could be an exhibition touting a new book on a local subject, a benefit for some noble cause, or a flea market. These exhibits seldom are professionally constructed, often they're hastily put together, resembling an elementary school book fair. What the exhibits lack in style and grace, they more than make up in the human touch. The Thompson Center is perhaps to Chicago what the agora was to the ancient Athenians, the great public gathering space in the heart of the city. One can almost imagine two citizens of Athens, Plato and Aristotle perhaps, being interrupted mid-conversation in the agora by a 400 BC Greek version of a Mariachi band.

The Thompson Center is no longer as public as it was intended. You could once take an elevator to the top of the building as my ex-wife and I did the day it opened. From there if you chose, you could make your way down through the building one floor at a time either by escalator or by the stairs with those dreaded hand rails. The terraced balconies serve as hallways, connecting the government offices which have no walls sealing them off from the balconies and the atrium. Every noise coming from the public space below reverberates through the building and into the offices. Another friend who worked in the building for a time had his work interrupted twice by the crash of a person falling to his or her death after jumping off one of those balconies.

From what I understand, most of the employees in those offices understandably hate the distractions and lack of privacy, but the design is very symbolic of the idea of the openness of government, a concept that was perhaps unique to the moment in time that the Thompson Center was built.

Sadly, today, unless you have the proper credentials, you can no longer roam through the entire building, thanks to Mr. bin Laden and his suicidal charges. But what the September 11 terrorists couldn't take away was the feeling of openness in this particular building. Restrictions notwithstanding, the Thompson Center remains the most publicly open interior space in Chicago, with its millions of cubic feet devoted to the atrium, which through the ample use of glass in the exterior walls, provides a stunning view of the city outside.

If Governor Rauner gets his way, all that space which now belongs to us, will be gone. The sad thing is that Chicago's Loop is losing its public space at an alarming rate. Around the time of the announcement that the TC might be sold, the company that owns for former Marshall Field State Street store two blocks away, announced that it plans to rethink the current Macys, and most likely will drastically reduce the public area of what in my opinion is one of Chicago's greatest public spaces, second only perhaps to the Cultural Center. What once was a neighborhood of infinite interest to the general public, the Loop is fast becoming a neighborhood of walls and closed doors, sealing off private offices and residences.

The Thompson Center was considered the first twenty first century building in Chicago. Now that it actually is the twenty first century, we don't build over the top buildings like it anymore. Given the desperate financial state of the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois, Governor Rauner's plan to sell the TC may well be fiscally prudent, but not without a price.

The speculation is that what made the Thompson Center such a remarkable public space, most likely will lead to its downfall. If the building is sold to a private concern, most likely all that open space will be deemed very expensive wasted space. By itself the building would probably be considered a white elephant to any private developer as realistic adaptive reuse of such a structure would be quite formidable. On the other hand, demolition would be relatively inexpensive as most of the cubic feet comprising the building consists of glass and air. Unfortunately the writing is on the wall for the Thompson Center and at the moment it doesn't look very good.

Despite its flaws, the loss of the Thompson Center would be nothing less than a crushing blow to the very meaning of the Loop as the vital heart of this city. It's possible loss, combined with the other losses we've experienced bring us closer to the day when the Loop will be virtually indistinguishable from the downtowns of almost any other big American city.

Perhaps we don't care. 

And if that's the case, perhaps we'll get what we deserve.

The Radiant City is Alive and Well

Not so long ago we decided there was something terribly wrong with the way we built our cities. They were overcrowded, had too much traffic congestion, too much noise, and this was contributing to crime, disease and a host of other social problems. Planners and architects set out to change all that, conceiving what they imagined to be the city of the future.

In that vein, two of the most famous architects of the last century took divergent paths to create their own concepts of that city of the future. Although neither vision was fully implemented, the impact of the vision of these two architects, combined with the explosion of technological development in the last one hundred years plus, drastically altered our cities and the way we live.

Frank Lloyd Wright hated cities. He called his idea for the utopian city of the future Broadacre City, not a city as we know it at all, but a strictly planned community where every family is alloted exactly on acre to call its own. The personal transportation device, automobiles at first, then ideally personal aircraft in the future, would be the primary means of transportation. If this sounds familiar (except the part about the personal aircraft), well it has all the trappings of suburbia as we know it today. Frank Lloyd Wright did not invent the concept of suburbs; he saw the movement away from big cities as inevitable as in fact much of it was going on during his life. Where his plan and reality diverge is in the design and administration of these communities. He distrusted big money and politicians, instead, his communities would be administered by designers and architects. Not surprisingly, in the real world the moneyed interests and the politicians won out, and it's unlikely that Mr. Wright would approve of the lifeless, ugly, banal version of his dream, known today simply as suburban sprawl.

Some of Wright's inspiration came directly as a reaction against ideas for the city of the future that came out of Europe, specifically from Swiss born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, the architect famously known as Le Corbusier. Le Courbusier was deeply troubled by the living conditions of the big city poor. His solution simplistically put, was to knock down much of old city housing and replace it with soaring mixed-income, multi-unit apartment buildings. These buildings would be separated by green, open space where everyone, poor and rich alike would have access. All vehicular traffic would be segregated into either above or below ground highways. He would label his utopia, Radiant City. As with Wright, some of what Le Corbusier envisioned became reality. Large sections of cities were cleared to make way for these massive buildings including the entire neighborhood of the West End of Boston which I wrote about in an earlier post. There, a thriving historic working class neighborhood was deemed slum land by the city. It was leveled, and replaced by Corbusian housing, and there it stands today, a successful if rather uninspired, upper middle class housing project.

The fate of the Boston West End project is vastly different from that of very similar housing projects in cities all across the United States, intended to house not urban professionals, but the urban poor. When the big housing projects were first built in the fifties and sixties, they were seen as a welcome relief to the old tenement slum buildings they replaced. They had strict standards for admission and waiting lines to get in. Soon enough however, the rules and regulations became lax and many of the buildings were taken over by gangs of thugs who terrorized the residents who felt imprisoned in their own homes. The projects were so vast and dangerous that even police and other emergency personnel were hesitant to enter them. In much of America, the dream of a Radiant City had become a nightmare.

The first Radiant City to go was Pruitt-Igoe, a vast project built in the mid-fifties in the north end of St. Louis. It was blown up in the early seventies having been around less than twenty years. It took a couple more decades here in Chicago, but eventually all of the major Corbusian housing projects for the poor: the Robert Taylor Homes, and Stateway Gardens on the south side, the Horner Homes, and an agglomeration of projects known collectively as ABLA on the west side, and most famously, the Cabrini Green Homes on the near north side, have been relegated to quote a former president, to "the dustbin of history."

Just as it is unfair to blame Frank Lloyd Wright for suburban sprawl, it is unfair to blame Le Corbusier directly for the failure of large public housing projects. Unlike his vision to create mixed income housing, the American version of public housing was intended, not with entirely good intentions, to exclusively house the poor. By doing this, their ultimate effect was to segregate the poor, cutting people off from the rest of the city and society, and perpetuating the cycle of poverty.

There are in fact, mixed and upper income projects in Chicago that have proven successful including Prairie Shores on the near south side, and Sandburg Village on the near north.

Successful or not, building massive blocks of flats in row upon row of identical buildings in the style of Le Corbusier has been stigmatized and is no longer in fashion, in this country anyway.

But the Radiant City is alive and well in China where new cities have sprung up in some of the strangest, most inhospitable of places, built in a style very reminiscent of the plans of the late Swiss architect. The cities are purely speculative, built with the hope that one day they will be filled with citizens in a booming economy. The fact that these sites sit mostly empty as ghost cities is a fascinating story in its own right and has been dealt with in many places. Just google "Chinese ghost cities" to see what I mean. The bottom line it appears is that the endeavor is either a boondoggle for wealthy Chinese businessmen and corrupt government officials to build a place to hide their money, or a very shrewd, far sighted plan by the Chinese government to prepare itself for the staggering population shift from rural-agrarian to urban that will likely take place imminently in that enormous country. We'll surely find the answer to that question in the near future but today these "cities" sit virtually empty on sites where no one in their wildest dreams would have built a city in the past.

Which is par for the course with most cities built from scratch. Washington D.C. was built on the flood plain of the Potomac River between the already settled cities of Georgetown, MD  and Alexandria, VA. The reasons for building there were political rather than practical, as anyone who has been to our nation's capital in the summer can attest. An even more extreme example is St. Petersburg, the scratch built one time capital city of Russia, built to satisfy Peter the Great's desire to build a great navy for his enormous but for all intents and purposes land-locked country. St. Petersburg was so remote and desperately cold that the hardships suffered by the builders of that great city prepared them and their ancestors for the brutal hardships they would endure during the subsequent three centuries.

Most cities don't begin on the drawing board, they evolve over time, starting out as small settlements, then growing as the local economy will allow. Sensible people don't settle in places with harsh economic and natural climates, it takes a government to make such big and outrageous plans. Enter China, still a totalitarian government with apparently most of the money in the world. Without having to worry about market forces (yet) or the fickle nature of public opinion, the commissars in charge have free reign to build whatever they want, wherever, and in whichever style they want.

It's interesting to see what style of architecture the Chinese officials have chosen to fill their cities. Why is the building style rejected by most of the Western World appealing to the powers that be in China? Maybe it's because multiple high rise units are the most practical means to house the largest number of people. Maybe it is the easiest way to control masses of people, remember that Paris during the 19th Century was reworked first and foremost to eliminate the hiding places of insurrectionists. Or maybe it's because this style of architecture with columns of identical buildings standing like soldiers at attention, evokes grandeur and power, at least in architectural renderings or in photographs of the buildings without people present, which these days are not hard to come by.

Could it be possible that the Radiant City is ideally suited to totalitarianism?

In any case, these real life Sim-Cities beg the question, who on earth would want to move into a ready made city with absolutely no history?

In two words: not me.