[Chicago Skyscrapers, 1934-1986, published by University of Illinois Press, is out now–available on Bookshop.org and Amazon.com, among other outlets.
Blue Cross/Blue Shield (C.F. Murphy, 1966-68).
If SOM’s Gateway projects seemed repetitive or formulaic, no such critique could be applied to C.F. Murphy’s riverfront statement Blue Cross/Blue Shield. The 15-story concrete tower then being built at Wacker and Dearborn, wrote the Tribune, in December, 1967, “may not be the biggest building around, but it has enough interesting facets to keep it from being lost in the crowd.”[i] Otto Stark, its designer, described it as a “piece of sculpture to be a focal point for the view along the Chicago River,” and with massive, solid concrete shafts exposed around its perimeter it was, on its opening a year later, a striking exception to Chicago’s Miesian rule, joining the U.S. Gypsum building in its stubby massing and distinctive approach. Stark, a University of Illinois graduate, had worked with Walter Netsch on the Air Force Academy at SOM, moving to C.F. Murphy with Stan Gladych to work on O’Hare Airport in 1960. In 1962, he had been on a team with Murphy colleagues Gertrude Kerbis, W.C. Wong, T.C. Chang, and Chan Sit that produced a steel-and-glass competition entry for Boston City Hall that had been one of eight finalists.[ii] Their scheme’s long, frontal plaza and dark bronze curtain walls bore comparisons to the Seagram’s Building but Stark was a self-proclaimed Paul Rudolph devotee, an influence that showed in his designs for student unions at DePaul and the University of Illinois’ Medical School.[iii]
Rudolph’s approach of turning a typical central core building inside out, expressing vertical services in concrete shafts on the exterior, suited Blue Cross/Blue Shield’s desire for open floor plates. Pressed to the exterior of the quarter-block site, eight shafts accommodated the buildings mechanical chases. Stark left the building’s elevators, fire stairs, and toilet rooms in a smaller central core, but a compact one that maximized floor depths around it. Symmetrically arranged, the exterior shafts also provided the building’s main structure, eliminating interior columns providing ducted air and chilled or hot water near perimeter induction units, eliminating horizontal duct and pipe runs. Upstand concrete sill beams spanning 60’ on the long, east and west facades and 35’ on the north and south accommodated induction units in cabinets under the windows, and the giant hollow piers allowed 20’ cantilevered corners that offered dramatic views up and down the River. The lobby was highlighted by a dramatic, rectilinear scissor stair, an exposed waffle slab ceiling, and sculpture by Louise Nevelson, all against a backdrop of dark teak furnishings, deep brown brick flooring, and lush plantings.[iv]
Stark sought help from I.M. Pei’s office in establishing mixtures and finishes for the building’s exposed concrete throughout; Pei had a global reputation for concrete expertise and Murphy’s office was coordinating with them on O’Hare’s control tower at the time.[v] Stark specified a bush-hammered finish for the building’s vertical elements, exposing aggregate and providing a deeply textured surface, while leaving girders and soffits with a softer, sandblasted surface. This delineated bearing and spanning elements, combining Murphy’s reputation for crisp, precise detail with a tactile sense and some of the Loop’s finest concrete. Its “muscular, positive architectural statement,” softened with overstuffed lounge furniture and a colorful palette of office furnishings, was unlike the “massive square glass structures of many new office buildings,” in the words of the Defender, but it was not entirely alien.[vi] Other concrete structures in Chicago expressed the plastic nature of this material—the haunched slabs of SOM’s first Hartford Building, for instance, or the voluptuous curves of Marina City (see Chapter 6) across the River. Blue Cross’ giant-order concrete shafts and story-and-a-half cornice had a Chicago pedigree, too. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Building in Buffalo (1904) owed its exterior massing to its vertical service cores, which wrapped a deeply articulated brick skin around air shafts and staircases. Inland Steel’s external service core was also a precedent; Louis Kahn acknowledged its diagrammatic power in his influential ‘servant/served’ parti of Richards Medical Laboratories (1957-1960), which in turn influenced Rudolph’s sculptural Art and Architecture Building at Yale (1963), Stark’s clear precedent.
[i] “New Blue Cross Building Promises to Stand Out.” Chicago Tribune, Dec. 24, 1967. B7.
[ii] in “Designs of the Other Seven Finalists.” Boston Globe, May 4, 1962. 17and Brian M. Sirman, Concrete Dreams: Architecture, Politics, and Boston’s New City Hall, (Dissertation, Boston University. Ann Arbor; UMI, 2014).
[iii] Otto Stark. Architect Otto Stark: Standing by Design. (Chicago: Stark Associates Architects, 2017).
[iv] “Strength and Cohesiveness for a Crowded Block in Chicago: Blue Cross-Blue Shield.” Architectural Record, Vol. 148, no. 1. July, 1970.122-125.
[v] Franz Schulze, Oral History of Carter Manny (rev. ed., Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2001). 380.
[vi] “15-Story Building Opened by Blue Cross, Blue Shield.” Chicago Daily Defender, Dec. 4, 1968. 4 and “New Blue Cross Building Promises to Stand Out.” Chicago Tribune, Dec. 24, 1967. B7.
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