old chicago skyscraper of the week–Mather Tower

One of the more bizarre skyscrapers in Chicago is the “pencil thin” Mather Tower on Wacker Drive.  Alonzo Mather had made a fortune by designing a more humane rail car for livestock, and invested in a small lot at 320 N. Michigan in the early 1920s.  In the overheating real estate market of the mid-decade, he purchased a similarly sized lot fronting on the new Wacker Drive, and announced plans for twin towers–one on each lot–to frame Alfred Alschuler’s London Guarantee Building (that’s it to the left in the photo).  With newly relaxed height limits, Mather was limited only by volume and setbacks, and his architect, Herbert Hugh Riddle, was able to exploit the zoning code’s nuances and proposed a 521-foot tower on a site that measured only 65 x 100 feet.

The structural and logistical gymnastics required to achieve this height were formidable.   Riddle, a residential architect who had never designed a tower before, did his best, but was left with a tapering profile that, at the top, provided less than 400 sq. ft. per floor after space for elevators and stairs were taken out.  Worse, the constant setbacks required by the zoning code meant that structural columns needed to be offset multiple times, creating large shear stresses that needed deep, cantilevered beams.  The tower was so thin, in fact, that calculations revealed a very real danger that the structure could topple over in a wind storm, meaning that the foundations had to be designed not only to carry the building’s gravity load, but also to hold it down against uplift caused by wind.

Not surprisingly, the second tower never got built.  Mather Tower, finished in 1928, never earned its $2.6 million construction cost back for its owner, whose estate finally sold it in 1945 for a mere $600,000.  Its tower was popular with artists, many of whom rented the small floor plates as studios with world-beating view.  The lower block is now a hotel that looks out on the equally slender Trump Tower, across the Chicago River.

Raymond Hood on “Exterior Architecture of Office Buildings”

In the wake of the Tribune Tower competition, Architectural Forum asked Raymond Hood, co-designer of the premiated entry, to comment on the “Exterior Architecture of Office Buildings.”  They undoubtedly expected a scholarly essay on the appropriateness of the Gothic, the necessity of verticality, etc., etc.  Instead, here’s what Hood wrote:

“…the exterior should be big enough to cover the inside of a building, and thick enough to keep out the weather.”

He wrote more that that, but essentially tossed the assignment aside.  With only two skyscrapers to his credit–neither of them actually finished, he claimed to have no meaningful opinion.  An editor’s note made it clear that they’d expected more; perhaps to mollify the joural, Hood threw in this useful disquisition on his design process:

“…take the exterior of your building, divide it into the proper number of stories, make an arrangement of windows that is dictated by the renting and lighting conditions, and then proceed to make the resulting mass attractive, by one means or another.  This is the only way to go about it.”

Not bad for one of the supposed villains of the post-Sullivan years.  I suspect Raymond Hood would have been good company at the pub.

Old Chicago skyscraper of the week–Straus

Chicago’s 1923 zoning ordinance was passed in the wake of controversy surrounding the Chicago Temple, a venture of a downtown Methodist Church that received a variance from height restrictions for its 556-foot spire.  The previous code had set a limit of 260 feet for occupied floors, with loopholes for towers or spires up to 400.

The 1923 ordinance, however, specified setback requirements above the maximum for the basic building block.  Past 264 feet (a slight uptick reflecting typical floor to floor heights of the time), the new ordinance only required that towers be set back at a 1:10 slope from surrounding streets.  It made no mention of whether these towers could be occupied, or rented, and it placed no absolute limit on their height.  The “lid,” according to one writer, had been quietly “ripped off.”

Skyscrapers of the 1920s, therefore, start to look very different from those built under the old code.  The first of these, the Straus Building by Graham, Anderson, Probst, and White, was the first to test the City’s appetite for taller spires.  Though its central tower only rose 475 feet (under the setback limit, it could have gone as high as 560), it was the first to offer rental space above 264 feet since the mid-1890s.  The tower floor plates were small, hard to access, and crowded with elevators, stairs, and toilet rooms, but their views over Grant Park and the Lake were spectacular.

Straus was a real estate finance company that took pride in its record of conservative investment, and this building, which served as their headquarters and a speculative investment, was no exception.  Midway through the design process they hired a consortium of building owners and managers to audit GAPW’s plans, looking for further cost savings and plan efficiencies.  Among other things, the group suggested using the dead space between express elevators for additional offices, a trend that has continued in buildings with similar elevator services.  Today’s architects will recognize this process as a forerunner to the dreaded “value engineering” that, in the words of one of my former colleagues, is often “two lies in one.”  Straus meticulously scheduled the project, hiring contractors and construction consultants to work with GAPW throughout the design process–again, foreshadowing today’s ‘fast track’ construction.

Straus did not skimp on finishes, however, making a calculated effort to provide the “atmosphere” that would attract first class tenants.  The leased banking hall on the second floor had its own entrance from Michigan and was elaborately styles with Roman Corinthian columns–appropriate, one critic noted, since the Romans likewise used their management skills to achieve grand buildings.  On top, in a rather un-Straus like flourish, GAPW designed an electric beacon, a ‘beehive’ that capped the setback tower and firmly announced the project on the Michigan avenue skyline.

Light Courts

People's Gas Buildng, D. H. Burnham & Co., 1911. Michigan & Adams.

In addition to looking at building structures and enclosures, the project I’m working on also looks at building planning, in particular the extents to which architects and clients went to ensure access to outside light and air.

John Wellborn Root’s essay, “A Great Architectural Problem,” written in 1890, said that skyscraper design was, at its most basic, the provision of adequate daylight to as many areas of the building volume as possible.  Any areas without daylight, experience proved, would be otherwise unlettable.  Several basic plan types emerged from this.  Long, narrow lots produced slabs of offices, usually organized around a single double-loaded corridor.  The Monadnock is a good example of this.  Corner lots often produced L-shaped plans with the internal corner left open, sometimes with a skylit lobby or small banking hall below.

If the lot was large enough, though, architects tended toward a donut-shaped plan, wrapping two layers of offices and a double-loaded corridor around a hole in the middle that allowed interior offices access to light and air.  The walls of these courts were typically clad in enameled brick, which reflected light and helped illuminate offices on lower floors.  Burnham and Root used this type of plan most extensively, beginning with the Rookery in 1888 and continuing through the electrification period of 1908-1912.  People’s Gas, shown here, is a good example of the type.

Light courts remained, however, even after electricity became a viable, economical alternative to daylight after 1912.  In addition to illumination, light courts provided cross-ventilation.  Office doors typically included transom panels at their tops that could be opened, permitting air to flow through relatively narrow floor plates.  While mechanical ventilation was used in theaters and stores by the turn of the century, air conditioning did not arrive in Chicago until the early 1930s.  Light courts, with their heavy penalties in loss of rental area, disappeared quickly and buildings like the Merchandise Mart ushered in an era of vast, electrically illuminated and mechanically ventilated floor plates.

828 meters (2,717 feet)

Officially announced today as Burj Dubai’s height.  And, just like Sears, it’s had a name change, to Burj Khalifa.

Burj Dubai

As of tomorrow, there’s a new tallest building on the planet.  When Petronas Towers, and later Taipei 101, opened, there was a good bit of arguing over what constituted the “tallest building in the world,” since both of those were, arguably, shorter than the Sears Tower in Chicago–by a fair margin.  Once Burj is open, there won’t be any arguing.  Its exact height remains a closely guarded secret, but it’s at least 800 meters tall (2625 feet compared with Sears’ 1454), or just about half a mile.

The headlines, of course, are whether anyone is left in Dubai to move in, and the economics of the tower raise important questions about resources, functionality, and whether buildings this tall are really just exercises in ego.  The short answer is that no, no tower really needs to go that high, the economics of mega-projects like this have proven toxic in almost every case, and the functionality of elevators in particular means that towers this tall don’t work in ways we’ve come to expect.  While apartments near the top sold for almost $1900 a square foot in the midst of Dubai’s boom, buyers today are being courted with prices half that amount, and whether anyone has the cash or the desire to stay in the ’seven-star’ Armani hotel is a question that seems likely to answer itself.

But, the client in this case was the one who, for whatever reason, pushed SOM to explore the limit of what was possible, and there’s no question that the engineering feat here is pretty remarkable.  Burj Dubai has redefined what happens at super-tall heights, as the design team discovered that their primary structural mission, after making the thing stand up, would be shedding turbulent wind vortices that might otherwise have set up disastrous vibrations.  So, while the publicity will talk about the ‘floral’ shape of the tower’s plan, the engineers will sit back and chuckle, knowing that the lobes, asymmetries, and cladding fins are all about making sure the thing doesn’t shake itself to pieces.

As for Sears?  It can comfort itself knowing that it’s still the world’s tallest commercial office tower.  And it seems likely to hold that title, as the shapes of the new generation of supertalls almost require small-floorplate apartments near the top to be lettable.

1909-1910

Happy (almost) new year! As things kick over, celebrate the centenary of these Chicago skyscrapers:

1909-2009

La Salle Hotel, Holabird & Roche (La Salle and Madison Streets, demolished in 1977)
Moser, Holabird & Roche (621-631 S. Plymouth Court)
Blackstone Hotel, Marshall & Fox (Michigan and Balbo)
University Club, Holabird & Roche (Michigan and Monroe)

1910-2010

McCormick, Holabird & Roche (332 S. Michigan)
Kesner, Mundie & Jensen (Madison and Wabash)
Brooks, Holabird & Roche (Franklin and Jackson)
Studebaker III, William E. Walker (Michigan and 21st)

The third Studebaker building is almost completely unknown, but there are good reasons to add it to the list of truly innovative Chicago construction. It included a shallow concrete beam system that approached a flat slab in its structural performance. The beams seem to have been added to comply with a young Chicago code section on concrete, but if they had been eliminated, as the engineer thought possible, it would have given Chicago one of the first truly flat concrete slabs in the country.

old chicago skyscraper of the week–Fisher Building

Less heralded than its sister building, the Reliance, the Fisher was one of the last completed designs by Charles Atwood.  Atwood had joined the office of Daniel Burnham after the untimely death of John Wellborn Root in 1891.  He was something of a mysterious presence, hired from New York on the recommendation of several architects there.  He was a gifted draftsman and stylist, and many considered the Fine Arts building at the Columbian Exposition (now the Museum of Science and Industry) to be the best building at the Fair.

By 1895, plate glass prices in Chicago had plummeted, the result of overeager production in the gas fields of Indiana.  ”Plate glass,” the Tribune reported, was “cheaper than bricks,” and Dankmar Adler, among others, publicly noted the “rage for glass surfaces” that marked skyscraper design at mid-decade.  The Reliance was among the more extreme examples of this trend, with windows six by eight feet.  But Atwood’s design for the Fisher was not far behind.  Though it used more conservative double-hung windows instead of the Reliance’s large, fixed panes, the surface of the Fisher is well over 80% glass, a spread that would have been decidedly uneconomical just a few years before when glass production could hardly keep up with the city’s demand.  The Fisher was thus able to offer bright, daylit offices, an important consideration in times when electricity was still expensive and light bulbs were inefficient, short-lived, and costly.

The Fisher also employed the latest structural technology, using riveted steel connections to provide resistance to wind.  While this technique had been used on the Reliance as well, the unique site of the newer building–in a narrow block between Dearborn and Plymouth Street, and adjacent to a very short neighbor–meant that it required none of the masonry fire walls that bordered the Reliance on two sides.  It stood very much alone, with four open sides above the fourth floor.  Inland Architect breathlessly announced that it was the “first building…without walls,” and that it had used less brick than any skyscraper yet built in the city.

A building “without walls” neatly describes what later generations would see in the Fisher and Reliance–prototypes of the mid-twentieth century ‘glass boxes.’  Atwood, of course, intended no such thing, but the Fisher is a good early example of the potential for thin, largely glass skins coupled with lightweight, skeletal frames.  This formula would quickly die out as glass production in Indiana collapsed around the turn of the century, and as electricity prices dropped shortly thereafter.

Atwood died in December, 1895, before the Fisher was completed.  While attributed to overwork, Burnham’s letters show that Atwood was actually fired just days before his passing, and Burnham would later say privately that Atwood had been addicted to opium.  The Fisher, with Atwood’s ingenious sea-related neogothic ornament, remains well-restored and has been converted into apartments.  It will be home for the next five months while I spend a sabbatical term working on the book.

“Chicago to have World’s Tallest Building…”

Santiago Calatrava’s “Chicago Spire” is in the news this week as local unions have suggested their willingness to help back the stalled project.  The design, for a site next to Lake Shore Drive and just north of the River, would be some version of the world’s tallest residential tower.

Recently I came across this image, from June, 1928, of an unbuilt “tallest” that was planned for a nearby site.  Variously called the Crane Tower or the Apparel Mart, this design by Walter Ahlschlager was the subject of one of the first air rights deals for a commercial structure.  It would have risen above the Illinois Central’s passenger rail lines, providing a new terminal, parking for 1200 cars, a 1000-room hotel, and exhibition and office space for the City’s fashion industry.  Three professional club quarters and a rooftop swimming pool were also mentioned as amenities for tenants and guests.  The tower was to have been 75 stories, which would have been fifteen stories higher than the Woolworth in New York, which held the record at the time.

The project’s timing, of course, could not have been worse.  While it was announced in 1928, changes in both the program and the site extended the design process through 1929.  Various schemes show the tower on what is now East Wacker Drive (where the Hyatt Regency is now), or on Randolph, on the site of the Standard Oil building (later Amoco, and now Aon).  While the clients dithered, the financial crisis of 1929 hit, drying up funding and tenants.  The project died quietly.

Ahlschlager seems never to have recovered the standing that made him a logical choice for such a large project.  While he had executed a number of small towers in the Loop and the more complex Medinah Club (now the Intercontinental Hotel) on North Michigan Avenue, he did not design another large building in Chicago after this project.  The site took decades to develop, though the air rights lease that the Apparel Mart syndicate had arranged ended up playing a role in the development of this entire area, including Illinois Center.

Old Chicago Skyscraper of the Week–City/County Building

 

“A practical building that will be an ornament to the city as well,” according to Inland Architect, the Cook County Courthouse (shown left) and its later conjoined twin, Chicago City Hall, were commissioned and built in the wake of the Post Office debacle.  Determined not to repeat the cost and schedule overruns of that building, and to avoid the functional problems that plagued it, Cook County held a nationwide competition in 1905 to replace its crumbling courthouse, built in 1885 to designs by James Egan.  That building, along with the twinned City Hall by John Van Osdel, had been constructed on experimental mat and pile foundations, which had failed in the intervening decades.

Perhaps understandably reluctant to hire designers from out of town, the County awarded the grand prize to a St. Louis firm, but gave the commission to Holabird & Roche, whose scheme had come in a distant third.  Their plans, however, cleverly split up the half-block mass with a single, C-shaped corridor on each floor, thus avoiding problems of daylighting that had plagued other entries.  The scheme also contemplated that the City would eventually build a mirror image structure on the western half of the block, and allowed for corridor connections and continuity in elevations as and when this took place.  Extensive structural problems were alleviated by complex steel trusswork that allowed large, column-free courtrooms to slide in underneath upper stories of office space.

Work was finished on the County building in 1908, but due to a later start and labor problems during construction, City Hall itself was not complete until 1912.  For a very brief time, the County Building stood alone against the older City Hall structure, as shown above, showing the evolution of the City in its scale, and of changing tastes and technology.

In particular, the gargantuan Corinthian colonnades were heavily critiqued at the time, both for being insufficiently rigorous in their use of the Classic language, and in their pretentiousness.  Holabird & Roche had scaled and spaced these columns to permit daylight in to the offices behind–both buildings were finished well before electric light became cost-effective for daytime illumination–but the result did not, in critic Montgomery Schuyler’s view, adequately express the nature of the spaces behind.  Likewise, the choice of classical language was not universally popular, though it reflected general tastes for civic buildings throughout the country.  Harriet Monroe, sister-in-law to the late John Root and still his champion more than twenty years after his death, decried the complex as “a pretentious building of a heavy squareness,” which it undoubtedly was.  Elsewhere, the technical achievement of its 21,000,000 pounds of structural steel found a warmer reception.

Perhaps the building’s greatest achievement was to have been built with no evidence of corruption, graft, or nepotism–no small achievement in Chicago at the time.  Holabird & Roche cemented their reputation for honest dealings with this project.  It stands as an example of the fairly successful wedding, in their work, of classically derived language and functional requirements, and with the completion of the Daley Plaza across the street, it is the visible symbol of the City and County governments–pretentious, but at 200 feet no longer dwarfing its neighbors.