Short Division

photograph: Bob Johnson (click images for larger view)

It stood for over a century, and was gone in an instant.

Constructed in 1903, the East Division Street Bridge over the North Branch Canal at Goose Island was the direct result of the investigations of Chicago City Engineer John Ericson to find an alternative to the city's traditional swing bridges, whose center piers had become navigational hazards as commercial traffic on the river intensified.   Inspired by London's Tower Bridge of 1894, Ericson and his team came up with what became known as the double-leaf bascule, with two movable segments raised and lowered by motorized equipment at each bank, leaving the center of the waterway unobstructed.

photograph: Library of Congress

The bridge at Division, designed and built by Jules E. Roemheld and John J. Gallery, was one of the first to follow this new design strategy, replacing a swing bridge that had been constructed in 1870.   240 feet in total length, each of the two leafs was supported by 101-foot-long steel trusses. (You can read more about the bridge's history on the indispensable  Historic Bridges website.) When fully opened, it freed up a clear channel 80 feet wide. Instead of the usual sharp-angled end structures, those on the Division Street were arched, resulting in the bridge being bookended at either end by graceful rounded curves.

photograph:Bob Johnson

The National Park Service's Historic American Engineering Record on the east Division Street Bridge noted how �since the movable leaves were counterbalanced, relatively little power was required to open and close the bridge . . . a single, direct-current, 75-horsepower motor mounted, along with the rest of the lifting machinery, on an inclined steel platform spanning the abutment and first pier beneath the approach roadway.�

photograph: Library of Congress

Work began on the bridge in June of 1900. Roemheld and Gallery had secured the right to build it with a $133,000 bid.  Problems with leakage resulted in the coffer dams having to be rebuilt, and additional excavation punctured a water tunnel under the canal.  The bridge was finally opened to traffic in February of 1903, at a final cost of over $194,000.

For much of its life, the area around the bridge was home to coal and lumber yards, and during World War II the bridge again proved its worth as river traffic boomed.  After the war, however, shipping entered a steep decline.  The coal and lumber yards closed down, leaving vacant land.  By the 1970's, the city called for closing many bascule bridges that were seldom lifted and expensive to maintain.  The East Division Street bridge rose for the last time in the 1990's.  $6 million has been budgeted to demolish the bridge and replace it with a �temporary� span.

I was at the bridge on the morning of May 16, 1992, when legendary Chicago author Studs Terkel was joined by Mayor Richard M. Daley, Mike Royko and others in dedicating the bridge to the author whose landmark book, Division Street: America chronicled the thoroughfare as a microcosm of Chicago history.  The bridge was re-dedicated in 2012, in what would have been Terkel's 100th year, and there's already a move afoot to make sure the replacement bridge also bears his name.

No one ever mistook the East Division Bridge for a romantic construction, but there was a surprising bit of ornament.  Along the steel of the bridge's overhead bracing, there were repeating punches of the Chicago �Municipal Device�, the Y-shaped civic symbol that represents the merging of the three branches of the Chicago River at Wolf Point.    Their use on the structure can be seen in Urban Remains Eric J. Nordstrom's documentation on the destruction of the bridge here, here, and here.

As has been a constant since the 19th century, funds for maintaining the city's infrastructure were often been sparse, and time had not treated the East Division Street Bridge kindly, with major renovations widely spaced in the early 30's, 1969, and then again in the 1980's. Recently, it's members had been painted pink.  In April of this year, trucks and buses were prohibited, and on June 30th, the bridge closed to traffic for the last time.

As can be seen at the photograph at the top of this post from our indefatigable correspondent Bob Johnson, the wreckers made quick work of it.  By the time I got there it little more than a week ago, the imposing metal structure that had dominated the view down the channel for 117 years had completely vanished.  You could almost imagine it had never existed, if it weren't for those giant concrete moorings on either bank, standing like some mysterious ancient ruin whose meaning still awaited deciphering.

Voyeur on the Roof - What was the Art Institute Thinking? And You?

Say what you will about those blockbuster exhibitions at the Art Institute, the folks behind AIC's marketing have become especially adept at finding imaginative ways to sprinkle their promotions throughout Chicago's cityscape.

click for larger view (recommended)

For Roy Lichtenstein: A Retrospective, the museum's school co-sponsored a competition that resulting in the entire upper reaches of a building along the Kennedy Expressway being transformed into a

giant mural of Chicago landmarks done up in the artist's signature Pop Art style.

For Impressionism Fashion and Modernity, entire double-decker buses were turned into canvases that drew you directly into a painting of turn-of-the-century society at play.

The Art Institute's current blockbuster is Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938, running through October 13th.  It was drawing big crowds when I took it in on Saturday.  I recommend it if for nothing else than the experience of walking through the maze-like circuit of galleries in which it has been installed.

To promote the show, Chicago ad agency Leo Burnett has come up with an �Unthink� Magritte campaign that includes a mobile app and links the word to a host of different values in different iterations of the theme.  In addition to use usual appropriation of tour buses and trolleys, there's installations like these at the Chicago Avenue Red Line stop . . .

One variation of the theme, however, has been a little-known secret, not in intention but by design.  We're grateful to our indefatigable correspondent Bob Johnson, who uncovered the secret for us in these photos.

photograph: Bob Johnson

Can you see it?  In the right side of the photo, right next to the Metra tracks?  Let's get a little closer.

photograph: Bob Johnson

The larger part of the roof of the Art Institute's Morton Wing has been turned over to a striking Magritte seaside portrait of a seriously abstracted nude, with the inscription  �Unthink Voyeurism�.  Visible only to people in nearby tall buildings, birds, and passengers in low-flying planes, this has to be one of slyest, most surreal adverts ever.

Model Chicago Engulfed by Water at CAF, plus AIC, Maggie Daley Park: Thursday Updates Edition

Smokefall production still, courtesy Goodman Theatre

As we continue to work on the November calendar, and just in general take a breather (including taking in Noah Haidle's Smokefall, with the great Mike Nussbaum, at the Goodman Thursday night - closing Sunday), we turn to our indefatigable correspondent Bob Johnson to bring you this update, which begins at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, where its striking model of Chicago . . .

photograph: Lynn Becker

. . . now well into its fifth year, has seen even its tallest tower eclipsed by twin walls of water . . .

photograph: Bob Johnson

 . . .  that form the backdrop for CAF's new exhibition, Great Lakes, Great Cities, Great Basin: Bold Ideas for the Great Basin Park . . .

You know your neighborhood, but do you know your basin? Through this exhibition, the urban designers at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP issue a call to arms for all of us to think about our water, our boundaries and our identity. The Great Cities, Great Lakes, Great Basin exhibition depicts the Great Basin as one region defined by the watershed rather than political boundaries. Visit this exhibition and learn the impact you make not only in your immediate neighborhood or city, but in the basin in which you live.

Now open daily, 9:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

photograph: Bob Johnson

Meanwhile, Bob provides us this aerial shot of the progress at the $55 million Maggie Daley Park, which the Sun-Times' Tina Sfondeles reported  this week has reached the halfway mark towards a soft opening next fall, and a final completion in 2015.  Viewer drivable webcams here.

And that crane you see in the picture hovering over the Modern Wing of the Art Institute?  That was for the installation of the latest installation at the sculpture garden, Ugo Rondinone's we run through a desert on burning feet, all of us are glowing our faces look twisted, which runs through April 20 of next year, by which time the Picasso's and Matisse's should be back from Ft. Worth and the now closed Modern Wing third floor re-opened..

Now, back to the calendar.  Or maybe just a nap.

Activated Virgin

click images for larger view

For a time, rumors circulated that it had all fallen through, the plan to convert the Art Deco Old Dearborn Bank Building at Wabash and Lake into a hotel.  It was all the way back in 2011 when Richard Branson had announced that the 27-story property would become a 250 room flagship in his Virgin Hotel chain, a $89.7 million project aided by $6.5 in property tax breaks from the building's designation as a national landmark.  Then - nothing.  Even after street scaffolding sealed off the building at beginning of this year, one hospitality website described the status as �crickets, not construction.�

Then, late last month, beams started to poke out from the windows six floors below the roof . . .

. . . and now, the entire top has blossomed into scaffolding, shrouded in red like a raw spring blossom . . .

photograph: Bob Johnson

As seen in photographs from our indefatigable correspondent Bob Johnson, crews of workman can now be seen on moveable platforms clinging to the facades, stripping away brick from the corners . . .

photograph: Bob Johnson

According to the Landmark Commission's usual superb report, Old Dearborn is one of only two office buildings - the other being the Paramount Building in New York City - designed by the architectural firm of Rapp and Rapp, best known for ornate movie palaces like the Chicago and the Oriental.

The Old Dearborn Bank followed novelist Raymond Motley's famous line, �Live fast, die young, and have a good-looking corpse.�  The bank was founded in 1919 by the founder of Kraft cheese, boomed during the Roaring 20's, bought the lot at Wabash and Lake in 1925, spent $1.5 million on the new building, opened it in 1928, and was liquidated four years later.  The bank space became retail, while the office floors continued to cater to medical professionals and small businesses.

Flash forward to 2001, when an investor group paid $$9.5 million for the 186,000-square-foot building, and over the next decade let multiple deals worth as much as $22 million slip through their fingers.  Two separate hotel companies were interested at different times, and a third investor proposed converting the building to student housing.  In 2009, Old Dearborn, a/k/a/ 203 North Wabash went into foreclosure, and in 2010 the loan - and the property - was taken over Urban Street Group LLC.  By that time, as a result of the declining economy and non-renewal of leases to clear out tenants to make way for the anticipated residential conversion, occupancy had fallen to 38%.  Urban Street announced its attention to convert Old Dearborn to apartments, but just a year later, it sold the building to Virgin.

A super-slim 48 by 140 feet, Old Dearborn is today actually better suited to a hotel than to office tenants requiring larger floorplates.  The steel frame is expressed in piers of handsome brick that rise without horizontal interruption, emphasizing verticality in classic Chicago skyscraper style.

The facades are as restrained as a bank - until the animals get loose.  They're all over the place - massive strange birds, lions, griffins, human grotesques, dragons and . . . squirrels.  Lots of squirrels.

(As AIA/Chicago's Laurie Peterson has pointed out to me, squirrels - always burying their assets for later access - are a well-known symbol for banks.  They also figure prominently on such buildings as Halsey, McCormack and Helmer's Williamsburg Savings Bank Tower in Brooklyn.  Since the end of World War II a squirrel has featured prominently -if with increasing abstraction - in the logo of France's second largest bank, Groupe Caisse d'�pargne.)

You can admire Old Dearborn's clean lines, but, ultimately, it's the over-the-top ornament that is the building's glory.

. . . did we mention ducks? . . .

The cast bronze spandrel panels appear to be in good shape . . .

. . . but no small number of the terra cotta spandrel panels were apparently damaged, and are now being removed . . .

The Landmarks Commission Permit Review specifications from April of 2012 dictate that replacement masonry �match the size, color, profile, finish and texture of the historic masonry . . . The terra cotta base of the building shall be cleaned with the gentlest means possible.�  There is no reference to preserving the original coffered ceiling, complete with still more plaster animals.  Described in the designation report as �severely damaged�, it was  hidden from view by a  drop ceiling long ago.

Lobby Stair, from the Landmarks Commission Designation Report

When Virgin announced it was getting into the hotel business via a new website back in 2010, its stated ambition was to acquire half a billion dollars in properties over the following three years. Chicago was somehow missing from the published list of �major urban markets� targeted for hotels serving travelers in the �creative class,� yet its opening, now scheduled for the first quarter of 2014,  will be the new hotel chain's first. A second property in California remains an unconfirmed rumor.

Richard Branson was in Chicago this past January, touring the building and hitting the major sights - Rahm, the Pritzkers - while raising $800,000 for Branson's Virgin Unite foundation.  In a blog post, Branson wrote about talking to Emanuel on the importance of green energy.  There's also been discussion about making the hotel a high-tech mecca, but so far, few details. The original announcement in 2011 named John Buck as co-developer, but I could find nothing more than the original press release on Buck's website.

There's none of the usual promotional signage at the site with renderings and credits.  Who's doing the preservation work on the terra cotta?  Booth/Hansen has issued press releases announcing they are the architects for the project, but there doesn't appear to be any other mention of the project on their website.  Branson directed readers to watch Twitter under the #virginrumors hashtag for updates, but the latest Tweet, from February 1st, directs readers to a �Sneak Peak� post on the Hotels of the Rich and Famous website that's mistakenly illustrated with photos from the lobby of a completely different property, the Jewelers Building on Wacker.

There's an Apple-like aura of mystery about what's actually going on with at 203 North.  For a project scheduled to come on line in less than a year, a promotional campaign - no matter how spare and controlled - is past due.  If you've got any good info, please pass it on.  We're just hoping Branson lights up the angry birds along the roof line.  All those great, weird animal ornaments are ready-made branding devices.

All Quiet on the Wells Street Front

click images for larger view

It's around 8:00 p.m. Sunday. We are still eight hours from the scheduled resumption of Brown and Purple Line service across the Wells Street bridge, just in time for the morning rush.

Yet an eerie silence has descended at Wells and Wacker. Save for a solitary workman, there was no sign or sound of activity on a site that has been buzzing with construction for the last nine days.

Is everything already in place?  I guess we'll find out tomorrow morning around 4:00 a.m., when the first train is supposed to cross a bridge that is now halfway towards its reconstruction, with another 9-day shutdown coming up later in April to finish the job by replacing the northern leaf.

Already, however, the end of the first phase has been commemorated by the ceremonial draping of a large sized pair of men's pants on the Wacker Drive balustrade . . .

To end, here are a few great aerial shots of the construction from our indefatigable correspondent Bob Johnson.

Read (and see more pictures):  The Bridge Beside the River Wells

It's National Engineers Week! Full day of events for kids at CAF this Sunday

It's almost here: National Engineers Week, February 17-23, the annual event that bring engineers into the spotlight often hogged by their architect partners, reminding us that no matter how beautiful a building might be, it's a whole better when an engineer is on board to make sure it doesn't fall down.

This Sunday, February 17, the Chicago Architecture Foundation kicks it all off with a Studio for kids, ages 5-18, Engineering the 21st Century City, a free event from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., at CAF at 224 South Michigan.

at CAF, Bob Johnson (at microphone, left), Thorton Tomasetti's Joe Burns, far right

Our indefatigable correspondent and engineering ambassador extraordinare Bob Johnson provides a preview . . .

For all of you who have kids and grandkids, there's going to be all kind of presentations geared to showing kids how skyscrapers - and bridges - stand up and fall down.  Architectural student Rocco Buttliere is going to bring a whole collection of his Lego skyscrapers.  You name it, he's got it: the World Trade Center, the old one and the new one, Freedom Tower, Sears (Willis) Tower, Burj Khalifa. And then engineer Larry Novak, formerly of SOM and now of the Portland Cement Association, will be giving a presentation on the Burj Khalifa.  Believe it or not, we'll have kids designing bridges on a computer.

Sounds like a fantastic event.

The Chicago Architecture Foundation is actually devoted the entire month to engineers, including its Wednesday lunchtime lectures.  I attended a great lecture this week by Thornton Tomasetti's Joe Burns on what's below Block 37.  This coming Wednesday, the 20th, Krueck and Sexton's Tom Jacobs talks about Glass Engineering in Architecture, and on the 27th, Terry McDonnell of US Services discusses the engineering and design considerations behind the Willis Tower Ledge.  On Tuesday, the 26th, Dr. Shankar Nair discusses Skyscrapers - Past, Present, Future, including the surge in super-talls.  On Saturday, the 23rd, there'll be a Building and Testing Studio for teens, down at Crown Hall at ITT.  More information on all these events here.

Also on the 23rd, from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. the annual DuPage Engineers Week Expo will take place at the IIT's Rice Campus in Wheaton, with more family-focused events, including the ZOOM into Engineering and Design Squad, Lego Robotics, Mr. Freeze Cryogenics, and 4,500 Years of Structural Engineering Program.

On March 8th in West Chicago, Siemens will be holding its 9th annual edition of its Introduce  a Girl to Engineering  event, offered to 100 girls in grades 5 through 12 and hosted by women engineers.  Contact Jayne Beck via email to register and for more details.

And we couldn't leave you without this photo of the winners of this year's Chicagoland Future City competition, which brings together area students to put their visions of the future into built form.  This team of students from St. Paul of the Cross in Park Ridge go on to the finals in Washington, D.C., where the winner gets a trip to Space Camp.

Tabula Rasa: Daley Bi - Ready for its Makeover into Maggie Daley Park

click image for larger view (recommended)

Our indefatigable correspondent Bob Johnson provided the above photo of what was, for decades, Daley Bicentennial Plaza, an unexciting oasis of quiet on the other side of Frank Gehry's BP Bridge.
The site has been stripped clean of trees, shrubs and flowers to allow the repair of the sealant layer that has failed and was leaking water into the underground parking garage below.   After that, if all goes well, a striking new design by Michael van Valkenburgh for what will now called Maggie Daley Park will begin construction.