Landmarks Commission's Eloquent Requiem to the Building it's About to Destroy

from the Landmarks Commission report

When I write about the Commission on Chicago Landmarks, I often make a clear distinction between the two parts, only one of which is useless, that make up this entity.

The first is the staff of the Commission, an incredibly dedicated group of knowledgeable professionals, whose work can be seen in the  Reports for Proposed/Designated Chicago Landmarks, which combines highly readable narratives with amazing scholarship in documenting each building proposed for landmark designation.  It is the job of the staff to preserve Chicago's architectural treasures.

The second is the actual Commission on Chicago Landmarks, a body appointed by the Mayor to vote on proposed designations and send them on to the City Council.  As much as it may appear otherwise, it is not the job of to preserve Chicago's architectural heritage.  The job of this body is to make sure landmarking never gets in the way of the whims of connected developers.  It is a job they do well, as illustrated in the case of the Farwell Building.  When the Commission, in an unprecedented show of backbone,  voted not to approve a cynical destruction of that designated landmark, Chairman David Mosena, a former chief of staff to Mayor Richard M. Daley, simply called a second meeting to reverse the vote.

from the Landmarks Commission report

The real function of the members of the Landmarks Commission will be on display again Thursday, when they will be called upon to ignore the evidence, abrogate their responsibility, and vote to destroy Bertrand Goldberg's iconic Prentice Hospital.  Right after they vote to save it.

The Commission staff has created a report thoroughly documenting how Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital qualifies for landmark designation.  To become a landmark, a building has to meet at least two of seven criteria.  Prentice meets four: historical value, "exemplary architecture", significant architect, and unique visual feature.  Once again, the report is great scholarship, including a biography of Goldberg, a history of hospital architecture and of the use of concrete in architecture, a detailed analysis of the building, its importance and its construction technique, and a fascinating account of Goldberg's pathbreaking use of computer-aided-design in creating the building.  It's a compelling, informative work, generously illustrated with photos and drawings, including those you see on this post.  Download the report here. 

from the Landmarks Commission report

Usually such a report is added to page of reports we've linked above.  As of this writing, the Prentice Report is not on that page.  It is available only at the end of the November agenda, which I have never seen done before.  It also concludes with a section stating the building 's concrete will - duh- probably require restoration work sometime in the future.  I don't recall ever seeing anything like this in a report before.  It's got the Department of Development's fingerprints all over it, and seems to be just another part of their script. 

from the Landmarks Commission report

In fact, the agenda and its attachments actually lay out the amazing farce that has been carefully scripted by the Emanuel administration.  The draft resolution decreeing Prentice's destruction already assumes that the Commission members will follow this script and vote in favor of landmark designation only minutes before . . . 

WHEREAS, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks (�Commission�) voted to approve a �preliminary landmark recommendation� for the (Former) Prentice Women�s Hospital Building (the �Building�) on November 1, 2012; and  . . .

It also assumes that the Commission will then accept a report by Housing and Economic Development Commissioner Andrew J.  Mooney  that looks like it was written by Northwestern, itself. Probably it was.  It regurgitates almost verbatim Northwestern's arguments that the adjacent two-block vacant lot is off-limits as an alternative, and that Northwestern's state-of-art medical lab can only be built if Goldberg's masterwork is destroyed.

Northwestern is about to surround that two-block vacant lot, which has already been gravel-surfaced and chain-linked for over three years, with a perimeter of flowers.  That is their highest use for the site at the present time, with a vague reference to new construction sometime in the next "several years."  You'd think that Northwestern, with some of the most brilliant minds in the world, could figure out how to make a plan that would integrate the new research lab into the construction on that two-block vacant lot, where it could link to the Lurie Center just across the street, just like a new facility built on the Prentice site.  But I suppose the Department of Development thought such a suggestion would be impolite.  Instead, they're recommending that Prentice be destroyed, to create still another vacant lot, so the two-block square vacant lot across the street won't feel so lonely.

The script's final lines for the members of Landmarks Commission?

Section 3.  The Commission hereby accepts and approves the Department of Housing and Economic Development report recommendation and rescinds its �preliminary landmark recommendation� for the Building.

From unprotected, to a landmark, to a corpse - all in about an hour.  The cynical audacity is breathtaking.  To general public, the Landmarks Commissioners are distinguished citizens, charged with protecting the precious architectural heritage that has made Chicago known throughout the world.  To Andrew Mooney, they're monkeys on a stick, expected to dance to the tune of the guy who brung 'em.

from the Landmarks Commission report

An open letter to Mayor Emanuel on Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital - a few truths versus one Big Lie

Dear Mr. Mayor:

I know it's probably down a bit on your crisis-du-jour list, but the issue of possible landmark designation for Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital appears to be coming to a head.  Word on the street is that the fix is in and Prentice is toast. 

This is no time for modesty.  The decision, ultimately, is entirely yours, and before your thumb proclaims final public judgement, I wanted to make one last pitch.

Some things about the debate are incontrovertible.  

• Northwestern University and Northwestern Hospital are both world-class institutions.
• Northwestern University wants to build an ambitious new Research Lab
• This project will employ thousands, and pump hundreds of millions of dollars into Chicago's economy
• The work done in this Research Lab has the potential of finding cures and treatments that will create better medical outcomes and save lives.

One key thing however, is quite controvertible: one astounding lie that Northwestern is working overtime  to couple with the truths listed above:

• There is a magic patch of land in Chicago.  It is magic because, although there are two vacant blocks directly across the street, and other opportunities across the large number of properties controlled by Northwestern, this patch of land is the only place in Streeterville, Chicago, or the universe on which Northwestern's Research Lab can be built.  It just so happens that this  patch of land is the site of Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital.  Northwestern would have us believe that if they are not allowed to circumvent legal process and destroy this landmark-quality structure, that new Research Lab, its thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in investment will vanish into thin air, never to be seen again.  And, if we are to believe Northwestern's more insidious intimations, many will die from cures never to be discovered.

The claims about this magic patch of land are so outrageously dishonest that any objective analysis would dismiss them without a second thought.  Except that Northwestern has committed millions to an increasingly desperate and meretricious campaign to influence public opinion and provide cover to its actions.  For this campaign, they have turned to a firm called Purple Strategies.

As someone who knows his way around Washington, Mr. Mayor, you know this kind of firm well -   beltway lobbyists that offer one-stop shopping.  They have Republicans.  They have Democrats.  They can argue one way, or they can argue other.  It just depends on who cuts the check.  Whatever you want to be true, no matter the reality, they will, for a price, create the appearance of it being true, through such tools of the trade as biased polls, astroturf support and misleading ads.   Key clients are Big Oil, Big Pharma, and Big Chemical.  According to The Nation, while Purple Strategies' staff may be cross-party, its activities are not.  Purple Strategies has received over $43 million to help Republican candidates foster the impression that Barack Obama is not the President who stopped America from falling into another Great Depression, who killed Bin Laden, and created the health care reform that had eluded all his predecessors, but a feckless, corrupt bumbler who hates America and wants to turn it into a socialist, Muslim state.  If you liked the kind of poison Joe Ricketts wants to bankroll, Mr. Mayor, you'll love what Purple Strategies has come up with for Northwestern.

Northwestern has come up with a handful of architects who support destroying Prentice. No need to demonize; they're good people.  But the Save Prentice Coalition  has come up with a coalition of many of the most distinguished architects, not just in Chicago, but throughout the world, all of whom are urging you to save Prentice.

And if you're tempted to dismiss their opinion because they've got no skin in the game, I would ask you to consider what these architects have created for Chicago . . .

Jeanne Gang:

Frank Gehry:

 

John Ronan:

Renzo Piano:

Krueck and Sexton:

Tod Williams and Billie Tsien:

.  .  . and compare it to what we've gotten from Northwestern:

 

 

From this physical evidence, I would leave it it to you, Mr. Mayor, as to whose judgement on matters of architectural quality are the more reliable.

I respect the judgement of people like Jeanne Gang and John Ronan, David Woodhouse and Jack Hartray, and their colleages, because, unlike Northwestern,  they have a proven track record of serving their clients while adding to the cultural capital of the city.  Northwestern knows only how to destroy and replace, with the kind of faceless mediocrity that sucks all the air out of the very idea of inviting, liveable urban space.

As someone who knows how the game is played, I'm sure you were amused by the press release where Northwestern promised they would do it right this time and hold an architectural competition  if they're allowed to destroy Prentice.  What - if they can't, they'll put up another piece of crap just for spite? And I'm sure you noticed that in the very next sentence, they took away what they had just given, proclaiming they wouldn't in any way be bound by the results of that competition.  But they promised to involve a Chicago architect no matter what.  Well, they've already had Chicago architects involved in most of their buildings, and the results are not reassuring.

I'm sure you've walked the streets of the Northwestern campus.  They're a depressing place, one anonymous building after another, often with dead-windowed walls facing the sidewalks.  It's a good thing most people being rushed to Northwestern are looking up at the ambulance ceiling, because the view of the unrelenting drabness out their window might convince them life wasn't really worth living, after all.

Along with the old Furniture Mart, Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital is the only architecturally distinctive marker in the Northwestern hospital district.   And those markers are essential. 

Marina City, the Wrigley Building, Sears (oops) Willis Tower, the Chicago Theater, Aqua, BP Bridge and Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, and many more like them.  These are the buildings that form the face of the Chicago - in newspapers, magazines, films, videos, books, on the internet, in vacation snapshots - all across the globe.  Out of necessity, there's seems always to be a new slogan for Chicago - "The City That Works", "Second to None".  They come and they go, but the images of Chicago make them almost superfluous.  The great buildings of Chicago are the pictures worth a thousand words.  They're the thing that builds and sustains the brand of Chicago throughout the world.  And Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital is a key component of that brand.


I understand politics.  (I once ran against Tony Laurino for alderman in the 39th, and I got more votes than any opponent he ever had.  [He still crushed me like a bug.  And then, to top if off, he mapped all the precincts I carried out of his ward.])  But it's wrong for Northwestern to hijack the legal process carefully put in place to consider landmark designations, simply because they are powerful and connected.  If I were Joe Schmo who wasn't happy about my house being in a proposed landmark district, I wouldn't be able to get the Landmarks Commission to yank consideration of that proposal from the Commission's agenda.  But that's exactly what Northwestern did, and they've kept it off, month after month for over a year and a half, to buy Northwestern more time to mount a P.R. offensive to counter the grass-roots campaign to save Prentice.

We are told this was to allow "talks" about Prentice to continue, but it's unclear how many and what kind of "talks" have actually taken place.  I know it's perceived to be the "Chicago Way", but frankly, it is disturbing that when you were quoted about ongoing talks on Prentice at a recent press conference, the only participants named were Northwestern and those already on record as opposing designation.  Bonnie McDonald of Landmarks Illinois has stated neither she or any other advocates have been invited to these closed-door meetings. 

You know the story of the Eiffel Tower.  How it was built as a temporary structure for the 1889 World Fair.   How a lot of the best people considered it a blot and an eyesore - just like Prentice - and relished the idea of it's being demolished at the end of its original 20-year permit.  It survived by the skin of its teeth, but could anyone today imagine Paris without it?  Paris is at the top of world-class cities because it doesn't trash its history.  When the Gare d'Orsay was no longer needed as a railroad depot, it wasn't wantonly destroyed. It was saved and renovated into one of the city's great museums, the Musee d'Orsay.

Prentice isn't quite as prominent as the Eiffel Tower, but the dynamic is the same, with the additional overlay of a great Chicago institution willing to blackmail an entire city to bend it to its will.  Allowing Northwestern to destroy Prentice is not good politics, and it's not good urban planning.

The explanations of why Prentice Hospital is a major work of architecture have been made many times, and very eloquently.  I'm sure you've read them, so I won't repeat them here.  Landmarks Illinois has already documented a number of ways Prentice could be effectively reused.  Drawing upon the expertise of Chicago's real estate community, a viable plan could easily be found. Northwestern is crammed to the gills with brilliant people, and it will have no problem finding an alternative path if Prentice gets the landmark designation it deserves.

The choice is between short-term expediency and long term vision.  Northwestern will always be able to take care of itself.  Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital, and Chicago's architectural legacy, which lack a $7 billion endowment, need a little help right now.  They need someone to run the kind of interference that keeps Chicago from becoming known as the city that lets its world-class riches slip through its fingers. 

Sincerely,

Lynn Becker