Two Tales of the City: Chicago - History to Rubble, Ice to Glass

One day, we will probably get around to writing a major post.  This is not that day.  Instead, a couple of updates . . .

158 years of Chicago History, Quick Reduction.

click images for larger view

Above is a photograph of the 1855 John Russell house at the time we wrote it about it this past May.  Below is what it looked like last Saturday.

Eric Nordstrom of Urban Remains obtained the salvage rights to the property, and spent many hours exhaustively exploring and documenting the historic structure, even discovering the original western gable all but perfectly preserved in the attic after an addition extended the house. 

photograph courtesy Eric Nordstrom

Eric wrote more on his discoveries here, here and here, and he has a photo gallery on the house's erasure from Chicago's built fabric here.

Skin Transplant at Fulton Market Nears Completion

For a very different trajectory than that of the Russell House, we give you 1K Fulton.  It began as this . . . .

The massive Fulton Cold Storage building, which dominated the Fulton Market food processing district since its construction in 1920.  Things began to change, subtly at first, as Randolph Street west of the Loop began evolving as a strip of trendy restaurants, and residential, art galleries and boutiques began to infiltrate the rough, working-day environment of the Fulton Market District.  Then the dam broke when the owners of Fulton Cold Storage saw the writing on the wall, moved their operations to the suburbs and sold their massive building to Sterling Bay, the developer that is acquiring more and more property in the district.  In a bold stroke, Sterling Bay announced the rebirth of the building as 1K Fulton to design by architects Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture.

rendering: Hartshorne Plunkard

After defrosting decades of accumulated ice within the cold storage warehouse's interior, the original facades were demolished as the building was stripped to its concrete skeleton . . . 

 . . . and a completely new annex builing was constructed to the south.  Last Saturday, the new facade was almost completely on the original Fulton Cold Storage, looking not dissimilar to the old, except that the original brick was now half-brick fused into a precast-panels.

The old terra-cotta ornament was replicated in a special concrete mix molded into the new panels.

The south wall of the old building has no middle piers, but is instead a continuous glass curtain wall, giving a clear view into the interior and the columns of the original structure, and mirroring the glass walls of the new annex building just to the south.  (Inexplicably terminated on the ground floor with incongruous, Prairie-style brick piers.)

When over 500 Google employees will move to 1K Fulton next year, it will mark a tipping point of what is now a booming and rapidly changing Fulton Market District.  In June, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks passed a proposal to make many of the approximately 125 buildings in the area a protected historic district, a move that is being fought by the district's long-term landowners, who appear torn between seeking to continue their businesses amidst a district in which they are increasingly outliers, and wanting to make sure no landmark restrictions lower the price they will get if a developer wants to knock down their building for another high-rise.

click for larger view

In July, the Chicago Plan Commission approved the Fulton Market Innovation District plan, designed to provide guidelines for ongoing development that preserves the area's historic elements within the high-tech Boom Town that is also �the city's last remaining market district.�

 

Read More:

Preservation Scorecard: Wreckers 2, Violinists 0

Strippers Attack, Heat Up Fulton Market

A Kinder Future for Jenney's New York Life?

click images for largber view

In the current edition of Crain's Chicago Business, Alby Gallun is reporting that Kimpton Hotels intends to turn William LeBaron Jenney's landmark New York Life Building, at LaSalle and Monroe, into a 200+ room hotel.  Just to the east, 100 West Monroe is already in process of being turned into a Hyatt.

Reliance Building/Hotel Burnham

Kimpton is no stranger to landmark buildings, being the current manager of Hotel Burnham, a/k/a Burnham and Atwood's 1894 Reliance Building, as well as the Hotel Allegro, long known as Eitel's Bismarck.   Their other local properties include the Hotel Monaco and the new Hotel Palomar.

If the New York Life plan goes through, it means that the building will have evaded a poison pill that the ever compliant Commission on Chicago Landmarks pushed through as part of its 2006 designation.  It would have allowed much of the landmark to be gutted for a 51 story office building next door at 29 South LaSalle to be  constructed partially within its footprint.  This was amended in 2009 with a revised proposal that would have infringed on only about a third of the landmarked site.  Thankfully, neither of those plans came to pass, and the Kimpton proposal appears far less intrusive.

The Commission's reliably comprehensive and informative report on New York Life details why multiple additions made the top of the building seem to stutter, saying essentially the same thing three times.  Originally completed as a 12-story structure in 1894 at a cost of $800,000, just five years later a thirteen-floor addition was built just to the east, with the 13th floor extended over the original building to help tie them together.  Just another five years down the road, in 1903, a 14th floor was added, and there things have stood down to today, except for the original cornice bring replaced with the usual brutal blank brick wall long ago.

from the Landmarks Commission designation report

Beginning to affix the curtain to a building under construction long before it's even topped out is common practice today.  When Jenney did it at New York Life he was a pioneer in realizing how skeleton construction differed from buildings with bearing walls, mounting the terra cotta on the upper floors even as the lower remained open steel frame awaiting the arrival of granite facing.

New York Life's monumental lobby remains remarkably close to the original . . .

from the Landmarks Commission designation report

Note to Kimpton:  If you really want to make your hotel stand out among the competition, take the money to replicate those original electroliers (and call Gunny Harboe to restore the cornice.)

Happy Ending for Little Egypt?

click images for larger view

[Update, December 9th, 2013: On Thursday, December 5th, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks voted unanimously to confer preliminary landmark status on Nick's Uptown.]

Nick's Uptown, the Egyptian-styled Hupmobile showroom that was previously the Cairo Supper Club, is on this Thursday's agenda of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks for Preliminary Landmark Designation.  The bar recently closed and the building acquired by Thorek Hospital, which has a record of demolishing and landbanking. No designation report posted yet, although there is one - reflecting the commission staff's usual excellent work - on the 1890 former James Mulligan School on Sheffield, currently undergoing rehab as housing after a long period standing empty.

photograph: Commission on Chicago Landmarks

Read our original story, Little Egypt on Sheridan Road, here.

Grossman and Kent's Final Word on how Chicago's Good-Old-Boys network rallied to Wreck Prentice

click images for larger view

It's the Chicago Tribune story that the Chicago Tribune would rather you not read.

The paper's Ron Grossman and Cheryl Kent have done a bang-up summary of the clout-ridden process that doomed the landmarking of Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital.  If you're one of the Trib's pathetic handful of digital subscribers (half that of the Sun-Times), you can read it.   For anyone else, it's carefully stuck behind their paywall.

Even if you don't read the Trib, it's well worth picking up  a copy today. (Try not to be shocked by the fact that the Trib just raised the price a whopping 50%, to $1.50.)  When politics get in the way doesn't really include anything we haven't written before in our own copious coverage of the battle for Prentice, but it fleshes out the details and mechanics of how the good-old-boys-network that runs the city - of which the Trib, which shilled relentlessly for Prentice's destruction, sees itself as a key member -  circles the wagons to support its own, in this case  Northwestern University, who has turned their substantial chunk of Streeterville into a kind of high-tech colonial plantation where the rules that constrain all the rest of us don't apply and truth is whatever they want it to be. 

Grossman and Kent document how Chicago's Department of Housing and Development simply dumped facts and figures they got from Northwestern into their report calling for Prentice's demolition.  Nothing was vetted or substantiated.  The Commission willingly became part of Northwestern's propaganda machine.

from left: Rafael Leon, Ernest Wong, Andrew Mooney, James Houlihan

In its portrait of Landmarks Commission Chairman Rafael Leon, the article is especially damning. �I personally don't know all the details,� Leon told them, �We believe Northwestern.�  Leon was part of a cynical remaking of the Commission by Mayor Rahm Emanuel that dumped four commissioners and stuffed the body with connected associates, none of whom were architects, in direct violation of the directives of the Landmarks Ordinance.  Among them was former Cook County Assessor James Houlihan.  According to Grossman and Kent, he's also a senior consultant with a firm that brags about lobbying the city on behalf of over 25 clients.  Christopher Reed, the only commissioner to vote against demolishing Prentice, quit. �I was disgusted,� he told Grossman and Kent, �The process was hijacked by City Hall.�

Grossman and Kent underscore the uselessness of these appointed bodies.  As with the Plan Commission - which began as independent entity - the concept is that they provide an essential check on city government, representing the larger public in objectively vetting important city actions.  That role has long since been abrogated.  They have become rubber stamps that never - and I emphasize never - do anything other than follow the scripts they've been handed by the mayor.  At a time when the city is closing schools for lack of money, a Landmarks Commission that is nothing more than an expensive extension of the mayor's PR office is a pointless luxury we can no long afford.  Keep the staff; abolish the Commission.

Read:
Landmarks Commission Unanimously Votes Itself Completely Useless
A Modest Proposal: Abolish the Commission on Chicago Landmarks
An Open Letter to Mayor Emanuel on Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital

The Big Con Closes: Northwestern Wins the Battle to Destroy Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital

click images for larger view

 Today, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and Landmarks Illinois moved for a voluntary dismissal of their complaint in Cook County Circuit Court, signaling the end of their legal challenge against the City of Chicago and the Commission on Chicago Landmarks. 

At the end, even the members of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks were coming to the realize they were just part of a scam.  �I have this suspicion,� said commissioner James Houlihan, �that Northwestern has placed before us a false question.�

The false question at the bottom of Northwestern University's Big Con was simply this:  that there were two - and only two - choices.  One, you could have a new billion dollar research lab, state-of-the-art science, thousands of jobs, and countless lives saved.  Or, you stop Northwestern from demolishing Bertrand Goldberg's landmark Prentice Hospital, and find all of that  - the billion dollars, the jobs, the science, the healed lives - �melted into air, into thin air.�

Or at least that's what Northwestern's Eugene Sunshine told Houlihan when he asked what the university would do if Goldberg's building were landmarked.  �We don't really have an alternative,� was Sunshine's reply.  That's right.  One of the most distinguished institutions of learning in the world, home to cutting edge research and some of the most brilliant people on the globe, just couldn't figure out a way to keep from demolishing Prentice to create a vacant lot across from another massive two-block lot that's been vacant for five years.  When it came to finding an alternative to wrecking Prentice, all that brain power turned to quivering jello.

Hard to believe, no?  Well here's the thing.  It's not important that you believe; it's only important to appear to believe, and act accordingly. The only true catechism was acceptance of Northwestern's position atop the foodchain of clout, and a droit du seigneur that can never be questioned, only rationalized. 

Seigneur to seignuer, this is the world which Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel inhabits and understands, so it's no surprise he found himself, almost as soon as he was inaugurated, counseling Northwestern on how to mount the kind of clever PR campaign that would provide cover to its actions.  When that campaign finally bubbled to maturity, Rahm went public with a thumbs-down  op-ed in the Tribune, and the game was over.

But not before the Save Prentice Coalition mounted one of the most active and creative public interest campaigns I have ever witnessed.  Yes, I know - the patient died, but the coalition kept Prentice's heartbeat going long after Rahm's heavy pillow would have sent it flatlining.  All recognition is due to the coalition's partners, including Landmarks Illinois, Preservation Chicago, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, AIA/Chicago, DoCoMoMo Midwest, The Chicago Architectural Club, and more, and to individuals such as Lisa DiChiera, Christina Morris, Jonathan Fine, Stacey Pfingsten, Gunny Harboe, Jim Peters, Eric Herman, Zurich Esposito, Brian Strawn, Karla Sierralta, Bonnie McDonald and so many others.

Lest this appreciation, given the final outcome, seem little more than sentimentality, we should keep in mind that Save Prentice did achieve: creating a textbook model of how to run a public advocacy campaign.   It appealed to excellence, in the way it brought many of the world's leading architects to lend their voice to saving Prentice.  It appealed to creativity and practicality, in how it enlisted the best of both established and young architects and engineers to come up with a dazzling array of compelling, thoroughly-researched alternatives in which Northwestern's needs could be met while preserving Prentice.  They went to court and got a judge to question whether the way the Landmarks Commission signed off on destroying Prentice really met legal standards of due process.  (When they lost, it was not the the merits, but matters of jurisdiction.)  They found a capable partner in ASKG Public Strategies, and engaged social media in a creative and compelling way.  They encouraged and organized a broad range and expert and citizen testimony at public hearings whose results had already been pre-scripted.

Even if Save Prentice was not successful in its ultimate goal of keeping an indispensable piece of Chicago's architectural legacy in place for future generations, it revealed clearly the mendacity beneath so much of Northwestern's efforts, and it set a new standard for advocacy in the architectural preservation realm.

Every few decades, Chicago allows the powerful and connected to destroy a great masterpiece - the Garrick Theater, The Stock Exchange, and now Prentice.  Every time we say, �We won't let this happen again.� and each time, we've been proven wrong.  The Save Prentice coalition has built a strong foundation that makes it more likely that the next time may be different.  And that is no small thing.

Read the full coalition statement after the break:



Statement from Save Prentice Coalition

Chicago � February 14, 2013 � Today, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and Landmarks Illinois moved for a voluntary dismissal of their complaint in Cook County Circuit Court, signaling the end of their legal challenge against the City of Chicago and the Commission on Chicago Landmarks. The Save Prentice Coalition issued the following statement:


Only months ago, it was uncertain whether the landmark status of historic Prentice Women�s Hospital would be considered in a public forum. Thousands of people in Chicago and around the globe helped bring the conversation about Bertrand Goldberg�s Modern masterpiece to Chicago�s Landmarks Commission, which unanimously declared Prentice worthy of landmark designation.

We continue to believe there were significant flaws with the process that granted and then removed landmark protection for Prentice. However, we feel that the landmarks process has run its course. When challenging issues come before the Landmarks Commission, all parties share an obligation to provide honest input, consider reuse alternatives and respect the ordinances and procedures. We continue to support the practical reuse options available to Northwestern University that will grow Chicago�s economy and preserve its world-class architectural and cultural heritage.

At its core, preservation helps cities grow and prosper. It creates jobs, boosts local economies, helps reduce our carbon footprint, and makes cities more dynamic, appealing and attractive. Members of the Save Prentice Coalition have a long history of working in partnership with the City of Chicago on a wide range of preservation issues, and we look forward to continuing this work.

A Modest Proposal: Abolish the Commission on Chicago Landmarks

Hear me out.

In November, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks was presented with a report calling on them to rescind the preliminary landmark designation they had given

Christopher Reed

Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital earlier in the same meeting.  Then, the Commission had voted unanimously to designate Prentice.  Only minutes later, all of those same commissioners completely reversed course and voted to de-designate.  All but one, Commissioner Christopher Reed.

Well, we can't have that, can we? Reed is now gone.  At the beginning of yesterday's monthly meeting, Chairman Rafael Leon announced that Reed had resigned, along with long-time Commission member and Chicago real estate legend John Baird.  Baird was also the Commission's Secretary, and it was announced, in a rare display of honesty, that the new Secretary will be Andrew Mooney, an ex officio Commission member who, as Commissioner of Housing and Economic Development, is actually the person calling the shots.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel thinks so little of the Commission's importance that he could only be

bothered to fill one of the two vacancies.  The sole new Commissioner is Victor Ignacio Dziekiewicz, whose name is misspelled �Dzlekiewicz� on the Commission's own website. If you were a cynic, you might be tempted to suspect that the primary attraction of the appointee was a name that placates two of the city's key ethnic constituencies - Hispanics and Poles - in a single person.  (Actually, Dziekiewicz was born in Argentina.)  To Emanuel's credit, Dziekiewicz is an architect, which makes him a lonely exception among the mayor's appointments to a Commission whose mission is all about architecture.  Dziekiewicz's firm DesignBridge, has done work on four schools for UNO, the politically connected - and increasingly controversial - operator of Chicago charter schools.  (Six degrees of Juan Rangel?)

continue reading A Modest Proposal . . . 




Judging from my brief observation of him at yesterday's Commission meeting,  Dziekiewicz, despite designing his firm's website in Flash, seems to be a good guy.  This is underscored by the fact he has also volunteered to take on serving on the Commission's Permit Review Committee, which is real grunt work - a time-consuming, often thankless commitment.

Really, male or female, they're all good guys, those who serve as Landmarks Commissioners, and I'm not just saying that in a Shakespearan Marc Anthony kind of way.  Every Commission member is a distinguished professional in their respective field, with a long, proven record of achievement.  But while this may be why they were chosen for appointment, it's ultimately not why they are there.

They are there as window dressing.  They are there, ultimately, to lend their public reputation to provide cover to any controversial decisions the Mayor may make.  It doesn't happen often.  Most usually, there's a routine basking in the general good feeling of affirming proposals unstained by controversy.  But once every great while, the Mayor asks the Commission to take an action that betrays their primary job description of protecting Chicago's priceless architectural legacy.  And then they're expected to take the bullet, and find a way to put a good public face on the Commission on Chicago Landmarks destroying a Chicago landmark.

Edward Torrez

Other than this, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks serves no purpose.  It has never - as in, not once - saved a landmark building that the Department of Development, or a connected developer, wanted destroyed.  Once, just once, in the case of the Farwell Building, the Commission failed to provide a majority for demolishing  a designated landmark.  The Commission simply called another meeting, of dubious legality, to reverse the vote.  Only one Commissioner, Edward Torrez, had the courage not to reverse his earlier �No� vote.  At yesterday's meeting, Torrez - surprise, surprise, no  longer a Commissioner - was on the outside, arguing for Prentice's preservation.

It's a long-standing truism that when a project has two people who always agree, it's time to recognize that at least one of them is probably unnecessary.  In government, unfortunately, the impulse is often the exact opposite.  Those at the top of the power chain tend to want to convert everything below them into an infinity of mirrors, perfectly reflecting each other reflecting whatever images the ruler wishes to project.  It's called message control.

the lighted ceiling of the Cook County Board Room, which was a lot more
interesting than my testimony there during yesterday's meeting.

A Modest Proposal:  Revising the Chicago Landmarks Ordinance.

1.  Abolish the Commission on Chicago Landmarks. 
2.  Create a three-person appointed Permit Review Committee, to work with staff to approve or reject permit requests.
3.  Have hearings on preliminary landmark designation go directly to the City Council's Landmark Preservation Committee.
4.  Create the position of Chicago Commissioner of Landmarks, appointed for a two year term.  Although chosen by the Mayor, this would be a quasi-independent position, like an Inspector General, which, while closely co-operating with both the Mayor and the Commissioner of HED, would be expected to be, not merely a perpetual echo of Mayoral whims, but chief advocate for Chicago's priceless architectural legacy.
4.  The staff of the Commission, which does all the incredible, invaluable work that the Commissioners pop in once a month to act on,  would remain as is.  The Assistant Commissioner/Director of Historic Preservation would continue to work closely with the HED Commissioner, but would be a direct report to the Commissioner of Landmarks.
5.  Update the Historic Resources Survey, which covered buildings only up until 1940, to incorporate potential landmark buildings through the close of the 20th century.

from left: Chairman Rafael Leon, Ernest Wong, Andrew Mooney, James Houlihan

What would these changes achieve?
1.  It would eliminate a Landmarks Commission that has been a deliberate body that does no deliberation, a rubber stamp serving no purpose. 
2.  It would streamline the landmarking process.
3.  It would create something that is completely missing from the landmarks process, something that is needed desperately:  a recognizable public face for the process of landmark protection, and an ambassador and persistent advocate for the city's globally renowned architectural heritage.
4.  It would address the current imbalance in HED's effective hijacking of the landmarking process.
5.  It would update a Historic Resources database that will soon be two decades old.

I expect these proposals to be universally unpopular.  To those on the winning side on the battle to destroy Prentice, it will just seem like sour grapes.  To preservationists, it will be upsetting the apple cart (to keep the fruit metaphor going)  of a process that has become, if not satisfactory in results, at least consistently familiar.  Preservationists keep telling me the value of keeping Landmarks firmly tied to HED is that it is not marginalized but closely aligned with the true root of power.  But I have to suggest that at this point, believing  that the current alignment does anything other than make it easier for HED to crush sound preservation policy has become, given the history of recent years, akin to believing in the Great Pumpkin.

Each time an essential Chicago masterpiece is lost - the Garrick Theater, the Chicago Stock Exchange - we say, �never again.�  And a decade or so later, the nightmare is repeated.  I can't say that the changes I propose would have saved Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital.  I can say that, as the Landmarks Ordinance and the Commission near the half-century mark, we should be taking a long, critical look at how they have functioned, and how they can be improved.

Got a better idea?  Let us know.

Landmarks Commission Unanimously Votes Itself Completely Useless

from left: Rafael Leon, Ernest Wong, Andrew Mooney, James Houlihan

Thursday's monthly meeting of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks, dominated by the battle to save Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital,  was an shared exercise in the theater of the absurd.  Across nearly four hours of testimony from dozens of speakers on both sides, Commissioners pretended to be considering the testimony of the preservationists, and the preservationists pretended to believe that the commissioners might actually be listening.

Commissioner Andrew Mooney acknowledged that Northwestern University, which owns and seeks to destroy Prentice, has no plans to break ground for new construction on the site until 2015, at the earliest.  Commissioner James Houlihan was one several commissioners who seemed to suspect that the biggest snow job of the day wasn't the one that had just started to fall outside the County Building, where the meeting was held, but the dishonest and evasive campaign Northwestern waged to gut Prentice's landmark protection.  �I have this suspicion,� said Houlihan, �that  Northwestern has placed before us a false question.�

No matter.   You dance with the guy who brung you, and for the landmarks commissioners, that guy was Mayor Rahm Emanuel, to whom they all owed their appointment.  And Rahm's intentions were never a secret.  He was working with Northwestern to evade landmark designation for Prentice almost from the moment he took office.  Last October he went public with the imperial thumbs-down.

 �Will no one rid me of this troublesome building?� Rahm asked, almost off-handedly, to no one in particular. But the commissioners heard.  They bellied up to the barre, and danced the dance that was expected.  They first voted, unanimously, to accept an economic development report that called for  allowing Northwestern to demolish Prentice, and then, for good measure, voted unanimously to rescind the preliminary landmark designation that they had voted for, also unanimously, just last November.

Northwestern Senior VP of Business
and Finance Eugene Sunshine

The intended audience for this charade was not even in the room.  The object of this afternoon's performance was to persuade Cook County Circuit Court Judge Neil Cohen that his concerns about the perversion of due process in the November meeting, when the Commission first voted for designation and then rescinded it only minutes later, has now been made all better, so can he can finally lift the stay he put into effect last December and let demolition proceed.

The Save Prentice coalition issue a quick response:

We are disappointed that the Commission on Chicago Landmarks voted to again reject its unanimous preliminary landmark recommendation for Prentice. By the standard of Chicago�s Landmarks Ordinance, the Commission made its decision based on improper considerations in an improper forum.

Jim Peters

The Coalition's attorney Michael Rachlis indicated in his testimony that the validity of the Commission's actions will continue to be contested in court.  Former Chicago Director of Central Area Planning and preservationist Jim Peters - who had authored dozens of the same kind of  �HED� reports himself - testified that the economic development report submitted to the Landmarks Commission inaccurately addressed the key questions of Prentice's relation to the city's Comprehensive Plan, as well as Prentice's effect on its surrounding neighborhood.

If Judge Cohen lifts his stay, all indications are that Northwestern will proceed swiftly to smashing Prentice into dust.  The result will not be their much heralded new billion-dollar research lab, but a vacant lot, right across the street from two huge blocks that have also been vacant for over five years, with no definite plan for construction yet in sight.  In a burned-out neighborhood, vacant block after vacant block would be considered a major planning failure.  On the empty wastelands of the Northwestern campus, where the very gravel is marbled with insider clout, it's just business.

Reminder: Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice on Landmarks Agenda Today

click image for larger view.

Just a quick reminder that the Commission on Chicago Landmarks will again be considering the issue of landmarking Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital at their regular monthly meeting today. 

To put it honestly, if cynically, the Commission will vote a second time to rescind the preliminary landmark designation it granted in December in the expectation it will provide enough of an appearance of due public process to persuade Cook County Circuit Judge Neil Cohen to lift his stay on demolition.  (In December, the Commission had both unanimously granted Prentice preliminary landmark designation and then rescinded that action only minutes later.)  Preservation advocates will be out in force, and the meeting is open to the public: Thursday, February 7th, beginning at 12:45 p.m. in the County Board Room of the County Building, 118 North Clark.

Let's Kill it Twice! Chicago Landmarks Commission Set to Vote (Again) to demolish Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital

click images for larger view

[Update: Monday, January 28, 10:20 a.m.] Read the Save Prentice Coalition's response to the DHED report seeking the demolition of Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital, at the end of this post.

As I've written before, most people think that the job of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks is to safeguard Chicago's precious architectural legacy, and if you look at its long history and list of protected landmarks, as well as the outstanding work done, day in and day out, by the Commission's superb staff, you could be forgiven that conclusion.

In actually, however, the most fundamental role of the Commission is to make sure landmarking never gets in the way of connected developers.  Once upon a time, the Commission fought a long and ugly battle with developer John Buck over the destruction of Mies van der Rohe's Arts Club building for the marzipan nightmare that is 600 North Michigan.  The Commission lost. And it learned its lesson.

Farwell Building

Ever since, whenever there's a true battle for preservation, the odds are the Commission will find some way to be MIA, whether it be the case of the landmark Farwell Building, where the Commission just kept taking votes until it finally did the Daley administration's bidding of allowing the structure to be razed . . .

. . . or the Walter Gropius, Bauhaus inspired buildings of the Michael Reese Hospital campus, which the Commission willfully refused to even consider as Richard J. Daley executed a desperate scorched-earth demolition for a Chicago Olympics that would never be.

Kaplan Pavilion, Michael Reese Hospital

As the battle to save Bertrand Goldberg's landmark Prentice Hospital raged, the Commission did the bidding of new mayor Rahm Emanuel and yanked the matter off of its agenda, and kept it off, for over a year.  During that time, Mayor Emanuel actually counseled uber-connected, ultra-powerful Northwestern University on how to best counter a pesky, increasingly effective grass-roots campaign to save Prentice, guiding them to a former Emanuel operative who launched an astroturf campaign on Northwestern's behalf.

Then, in an act of truly dazzling cynicism, the Commission suddenly scheduled Prentice on its December agenda and in a matter of minutes unanimously granted preliminary landmark designation to Goldberg's masterpiece, and then gave its blessing to the building being destroyed.

A current exhibition at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, Reconsidering an Icon: Creative Conversations about Prentice Women's Hospital, includes a large number of often incredibly detailed alternatives for re-using the hospital building and integrating it into the University's need for a new Research Lab, and architect Jeanne Gang came up with still another compelling proposal for re-use.

image courtesy Studio/Gang, Jay Hoffman

[Update: Monday, January 28, 10:20 a.m.] The Save Prentice Coalition this morning issued its response to the DHED report seeking demolition of Prentice Hospital.  Read it at the end of this post.

They clearly give the lie to the claim that Prentice and future needs can't co-exist in a mutually beneficial way, but Northwestern can't be bothered.  Why should they, when they have the Mayor of Chicago firmly in their back pocket, cheerleading their fervent but ultimately specious mantra, �Goldberg must be destroyed!�

Court challenges have resulted in a stay in demolition, with preservationists having to refile their lawsuit - and have it accepted by Circuit Court Judge Neil Cohen - by a date in early in February to keep the bulldozers at bay.  

In preparation for that event, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks is set to again vote for Prentice's demolition at their next regular monthly meeting February 7th.  �God is in the details�, someone once said, probably while puffing on a good cigar, and it's telling that while the Commission's agendas have always been signed by secretary and long-time commissioner John Baird, February's Prentice-killing agenda is signed by a new secretary, Ex-Officio member and Housing and Economic Development head Andrew Mooney, lest anyone be the least bit confused as to who's really running things over there.

The court has intimated that the Commission voting for landmark designation and then voting against landmark designation in immediate succession just might be a violation of what the landmarks ordinance intended when it talked about open public process, so now we have this new charade in which the Commission will vote to rescind designation again, this coming February 7th.  Zero public hearings have been held, but now there's an entire month between the vote to designate and a vote to revoke designation, so we've made it all look legit, right Judge Cohen?

As usual, the draft resolution re-condemning Prentice to the dust reads as it were written by Northwestern itself.  You can check it all out for yourself here.

The Save Prentice coalition's response, after the break . . .


Statement from Save Prentice Coalition Regarding the Commission on Chicago Landmarks� Feb. 7 Agenda

Chicago � January 27, 2013 � The Save Prentice Coalition issued the following statement today in response to the Commission on Chicago Landmarks� agenda for their February 7, 2013 meeting:
The City has acknowledged that the November 1, 2012 meeting of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks was deficient. Indeed, the presiding judge found that the amount of time and notice given for the Nov. 1 meeting was �arbitrary and not transparent.�

The Save Prentice Coalition has presented four detailed reuse plans that meet the research needs of Northwestern, create 1,560 more jobs than Northwestern's plan, and preserve a vital piece of our city's architectural heritage � Bertrand Goldberg�s Prentice. Regrettably, the University has refused even to discuss these options. Instead, the institution that owns 44% of Streeterville claims that options do not exist.

Meanwhile, the City�s revised DHED report, released Friday, merely rejects the Coalition�s economic projections with one paragraph, while parroting Northwestern University�s unsubstantiated assertions throughout the entire five-page document.

Currently, the meeting and proposed rejection of a preliminary landmark recommendation for Prentice violate the Landmarks Ordinance. The Landmarks Commissioners must hold a full hearing on Prentice, allow the Coalition to present evidence regarding the architectural value and integrity of this unique architectural milestone, and base their decision on the criteria set forth in the Ordinance. The Coalition encourages the Commission to keep this process transparent and non-preordained, to base its decision on the proper considerations, and to follow the letter and spirit of the Landmark Ordinance with respect to this important and historic building.


SAVEPRENTICE.ORG
About the Save Prentice Coalition
Save Prentice is a coalition of organizations that includes AIA Chicago, DoCoMoMo, Landmarks Illinois, The National Trust for Historic Preservation, and Preservation Chicago. Our mission is the preservation and reuse of the iconic � and now threatened � Prentice Women�s Hospital designed by noted Chicago architect Bertrand Goldberg in the early 1970s.

Striking new images of Save Prentice's latest proposals and analysis to save Bertrand Goldberg landmark

click images for larger view

The Save Prentice Coalition is something like a cross between the Energizer Bunny and a reverse Joshua, intent on keeping Northwestern University from sending the walls of Bertrand Goldberg's landmark Prentice Hospital tumbling down.

They were at it again Thursday morning, with a press conference where architects and planners, led by former Chicago Deputy Planning Commissioner Jim Peters, refuted Northwestern's claims that - block upon block of adjacent vacant lots be damned - there was simply no alternative but reducing Goldberg's masterwork to rubble to create still another vacant lot for construction that it is - at minimum -  years away.

 �Northwestern's refusal,� said Peters, �to consider reuse alternatives for Prentice comes at a cost to the City of Chicago.  By reusing Prentice and building adjacent research space, Northwestern could support nearly 1,000 more permanent jobs and generate over $1 million in addiitional annual tax revenue for the citizens of Chicago.�

At the top of this post is a rendering presented by former Landmarks Commissioner Edward Torrez.  The BauerLatoza alternative would wrap Goldberg's structure in the curving embrace of a new, 25-story, million-square foot research lab building.   The old Prentice would provide offices and meeting spaces for the new facility.  The curve is the corridor that links the two structures.

 A second proposal, presented by Casmir Kujawa of Kujawa Architecture LLC . . .

. . . places a more angular research lab tower behind the current Prentice, to be be built in two phases to ultimately come up with the required 1.2 million square feet.  A bracket-like offset connects the new tower to the existing Lurie Research building.  Each floor includes the 25,000 square feet of space identified by Northwestern as an "intellectual critical mass" in size.  The 36-story would use air rights over Superior to provide a new visual marker for Northwestern's Streeterville campus.

Also on hand was Cyril Marsollier, to present the proposal he created with Wallo Villacorta that won the recent Future Prentice competition.  In this bold alternative, the two northernmost segments of Goldberg's structure are subsumed into a new research tower constructed behind it, but the entire building is made whole through reflection in the curtain wall of a new tower.

Common to all the schemes - and in stark contrast to Northwestern's own evasive statements - is the depth of analysis brought to both meeting Northwestern's stated requirements and envisioning Prentice as an integrated part of the Northwestern campus. In the case of David Urschel, Principal and Director of Healthcare Design at Loebl Schlossman and Hackl, this meant identifying a host of auxiliary functions that could be easily housed in a retrofitted Prentice . . .

. . . as well as coming up with a number of different planning schemes to integrate current buildings such as Prentice and the existing Lurie research building with needed new construction, both for labs, and for Northwestern Memorial's stated plans for expansion . . .

Lee Huang of the Philadelphia-based Econsolt Corporation presented an economic impact study documenting the potential benefits of saving Goldberg's Prentice in a way claimed to enhance property values of surrounding non-tax-exempt properties and increase property tax revenues by up to $820,000 per year.

You can download the study, as well as view all the other proposals and renderings presented Thursday, here.

It's no small irony that Northwestern's opponents seem to have put far more thought in meeting the university and hospital's future needs than the public evidence would suggest Northwestern has.  Ultimately, however, from Northwestern's perspective, this is not a battle about architecture or good planning, but about raw power, and about a bunch of good-old-boys at the top of the food chain bending the law to their own desires.

Marsollier and Villacorta alternative proposal

From the get-go, word on the street was that the fix was in and Prentice was toast.  But the Save Prentice coalition countered with a vigorous campaign that quickly enlisted many of the most respected architects - not just in Chicago but throughout the world - to decry Northwestern's civic vandalism.  Accustomed to their every whim being accepted without question, Northwestern was gobsmacked, turning to Mayor Rahm Emanuel for guidance.  The publicly neutral mayor had to show them how it was done, directing Northwestern to a Washington beltway lobbying firm whose Chicago office was run by a former Emanuel operative.

Known for covering over the misdeeds of Big Oil and Big Pharma, the lobbying firm came up with an aggressive - if meretricious  - counter-campaign that equated saving Prentice with throttling medical cures and killing jobs and patients.  And when their work was done, Emanuel was ready to pounce.  The issue of Prentice, which had been yanked from Landmarks Commission in June of 2011 and kept off for over a year, suddenly showed up on the November agenda for what Preservation Chicago's Jonathan Fine has aptly labeled a show trial.  Puppet-on-a-string commissioners dutifully followed a ludicrous but efficient Emanuel script in which Prentice was unanimously declared a landmark and then condemned for demolition, in the space of minutes within a single meeting.

floor plan, Marsollier and Villacorta alternative proposal

And that should have been that.  Instead, the Save Prentice Coalition went to court challenging the legality of the kangaroo court Commission meeting, and Cook County Judge Neil Cohen issued an injunction declaring that preliminary landmark designation remain in effect pending further consideration, a stay the judge continued in December.

With apologies to Monty Python, let us summarize the story so far . . .

City of Chicago, keeper of the demolition permits: Bring out your dead!
(a clover-leafed building is thrown on the cart)
Northwestern: here's one.
City of Chicago: that'll be ninepence.
Cloverleafed building on the cart:  I'm not dead.
City of Chicago: What?
Northwestern:  Nothing.  Here's your ninepence.
Cloverleafed building:  I'm not dead.
Circuit Court Judge:  'Ere - he say's he's not dead.
Northwestern:  Yes he is.
Save Prentice Coalition:  He isn't.
Northwestern:  Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
Save Prentice Coalition:  He's getting better.
Cloverleafed building leaps off the cart:  Look: I can be repurposed good as new!
Northwestern:  No, you can't.  You'll be stone dead in a moment.
Circuit Court Judge:  I can't take him like that.  It's against regulations.
Northwestern:  (glances furtively about to see if anyone notices the club behind its back.)  Can you hang around for a couple minutes? 

Next court hearing:  January 11th.