CHICAGO | General Discussions

[pip]

Originally Posted by MakeChicagoGreatAgai

I don't get the hate for the parking podiums. Yeah, they may not be as pleasant to look at but no one really wants to live on the 2nd floor of a highrise.

Yeah bro I live at the new tower on Michigan Ave

Wow, is that the new 100 floor building?

Yeah.

Your view must be amazing. What floor are you on?

2nd.

Oh... well the location must be nice.

Walk around Boston and see how pleasant it is overall.

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by BWChicago

I wonder if anyone's done an architectural history of the Illinois Medical District. There have been a ton of very interesting buildings with very short lifespans that have come and gone as it has developed, re-developed, and re-ree-developed. I tried to figure out just the chronology of (Rush) Presbyterian buildings a few years ago and it was dizzying.

I've wondered this myself. Because all those buildings were intended to be institutions, the architects clearly took their jobs seriously.

For example, the Illinois Center for Rehabilitation and Education (1151 S Wood St) has echoes of Lou Kahn, Alvar Aalto, etc. I've been wondering the architect for awhile, finally figured out it was Harry Weese (thanks AIA Guide!)

There are countless other gems in the IMD as well.

[Ricochet48]

Originally Posted by pip

Walk around Boston and see how pleasant it is overall.

Wat. Why are we being compared to Boston? Walked around there plenty, the streetscape was decent, but the costs were insane to actually live there so it didn't matter. They don't have really any reasonable apartment/condo highrises (much less one with a pool deck on an ugly podium with a view of now 6 supertalls), hence one of the 9000 reasons they have crazy real estate costs. My place would cost literally 4x the price there, it's laughable.

Millennium Tower is the only high rise that is tall with decent amenities (real gym, pool, party room, etc.). On the 2nd floor you will still be at 1M+ for a 1BR there though at sub 800sqft. Want a decent view (still prefer mine), pay another $500K! Exhibit A a basic bitch box layout under 900sqft w/o a balcony, but w/ a $1200 HOA:

https://www.redfin.com/MA/Boston/1-F...home/112373646

[SIGSEGV]

I don't get why more developers don't wrap podiums with faux rowhouses (perhaps with retail at the bottom). I guess maybe it would look terrible, but they would be rowhomes with direct garage access in the back which might appeal to the type of person who can afford an urban rowhome.

[emathias]

Originally Posted by ardecila

I've wondered this myself. Because all those buildings were intended to be institutions, the architects clearly took their jobs seriously.

For example, the Illinois Center for Rehabilitation and Education (1151 S Wood St) has echoes of Lou Kahn, Alvar Aalto, etc. I've been wondering the architect for awhile, finally figured out it was Harry Weese (thanks AIA Guide!)

There are countless other gems in the IMD as well.

Can I ask, as a person who likes architecture but isn't particularly schooled in it, what makes the ICRE interesting? I look at it and see a low-slung brick building, nearly windowless on most elevations, with disproportionate smokestacks and surrounded by empty, lifeless, lawn. What would someone more architecturally sophisticated be looking at in that case?

[emathias]

Originally Posted by PittsburghPA

I'm not sure if this is the appropriate place for this post but I think it deserves to be mentioned somewhere on here.

Ken Griffin just closed on the penthouse of 220 Central Park South in NYC for $238Mil making it the largest single home purchase in US History. Wow.

And thus continues a long tradition of successes from the provinces showing off in Manhattan?

[emathias]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

Exactly.

I always hate having vacant apartments in the dead of winter, often very hard to fill. People just don't like to move when it's frozen tundra outside, not that I can blame them

Just pragmatically, and building where you have to use rear, exterior stairs to move in large items, you're taking a big risk in the winter of having dangerously icy stairs.

[ardecila]

^ Because it doesn't fit on most downtown sites. There are some design tricks to squeeze and manipulate parking structures, but really they are extremely inflexible buildings dictated by the bloated size of cars relative to people. Americans make it worse because we expect to easily park Suburbans and Escalades.

Townhouses are also somewhat inflexible, because developers expect to charge a premium for townhouses and buyers or tenants will demand spacious floorplans, so the townhouses will eat up space as well. When you do see liner townhouses, it's usually on extra-big sites with no constraints, like Riverline. Wrapping a parking structure with regular ol' apartments or office space can be easier.

BKL did a neat trick on MiLa where they concealed the podium behind a multi-story atrium with a light feature. That space is really too narrow to be useful for anything else, most architects would have just folded that space into the garage and slapped some fancy cladding on it, but with the atrium it feels worthy of Michigan Ave location...

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by PittsburghPA

I'm not sure if this is the appropriate place for this post but I think it deserves to be mentioned somewhere on here.

Ken Griffin just closed on the penthouse of 220 Central Park South in NYC for $238Mil making it the largest single home purchase in US History. Wow.

That took awhile. It was maybe 2.5 or 3 years ago maybe that it was reported he was buying it. Some NYC people were pissed that it was a guy from Chicago smashing their real estate record. They claimed a Chicagoan could never afford anything in Manhattan like that. He was worth I think $7B at the time (now he's worth $10B). Literally some of the most unintelligent stuff I've ever read online were from those people.

[LouisVanDerWright]

Originally Posted by emathias

Can I ask, as a person who likes architecture but isn't particularly schooled in it, what makes the ICRE interesting? I look at it and see a low-slung brick building, nearly windowless on most elevations, with disproportionate smokestacks and surrounded by empty, lifeless, lawn. What would someone more architecturally sophisticated be looking at in that case?

It's not nearly windowless if you look at it from Roosevelt and Wood. Kahn and his ilk (in this case Weese) were going through a period of not quite as restrained modernism which eventually evolved into post modernism. This building is interesting from that perspective when you consider the half Moon windows, the semi random fenestration along Roosevelt (a design theme that has come into it's own today), and the rounded brick corners used in a few spots. The building could be more urban, but it is really interesting none the less.

One interesting thing these buildings reveal, IMO, is that brutalism was actually the precursor to post modernism. Guys like Kahn and Weese worked on these monumental forms of brick and concrete. In an attempt to refine their monumentalism they started to grab classic forms and other shapes that strayed from capital M Modernism. These shapes became early postmodernism when the concrete was replaced by other materials like brick and stone.

In fact, my favorite feature of this building is the brick structure on the Wood Street courtyard with the large half Moon window. It's a glaring reference to Louis Sullivan's Jewel box banks, several of which feature nearly identical massings of nearly identical brick color with giant half moon windows like that. It's almost as if Weese is playfully saying "I'm using the same damn brick color, may as well give a shout out to my homie Sullivan" which is a very very Pomo thought. It's clearly intentional too because he puts it right on the entrance courtyard. You are forced to see it as you enter, it's not like this is just a random form surrounding a random room on the backside of the building. No, Weese puts it front and center for everyone to walk by and consider. It's even got a little corbelled brick cornice to boot. Very funny.

That's actually even funnier because how Weese buries the entrance of this thing is very FLW. He makes you circle the building to find the entrance and then the building swallows you and let's you enter with some degree of privacy. It's also very FLW to control your attention and force you to view what he wants you to view.

[LouisVanDerWright]

The more I look at the Wood Street Weese the more the Sullivan references come out:

sbnation.com

I mean come on, look at the little box on the courtyard and tell me it's not a blatant reference to the corner window of the National Farmers Bank. The window, the cornice, the brick.


Wikipedia

Or how about that row of square little windows along the base facing Roosevelt? Look familiar to the above Peoples Savings Bank in Cedar Rapids? The arrow slit windows Weese uses are also all over these banks.


God that's rich references especially when you consider that this building was constructed in 1965 meaning it would have been designed immediately in the wake of the demolition of the Garrick Theater at a time when folks like Richard Nickel were starting to raise a rukus over the issue. Even more interesting is that from 1960-67 Harry Weese was volunteering as the architect of record for the restoration of the Auditorium building. I rest my case, this is 1965 post modernism, Philip Johnson go to hell.

This is what I love about architecture, if you know what you are looking for, it's easy to go down the rabbit hole and discover things about a building that seem overwrought like an English class analysis of a novel, but actually have hard historical fact behind them. There is almost no doubt in my mind that this is a grand tribute by Weese to Sullivan's banks.

Edit: yet another Pomo feature I just noticed, there are Chicago school windows mixed into the random femestration along Roosevelt.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by marothisu

That took awhile. It was maybe 2.5 or 3 years ago maybe that it was reported he was buying it. Some NYC people were pissed that it was a guy from Chicago smashing their real estate record. They claimed a Chicagoan could never afford anything in Manhattan like that..

^ That seems like an odd thing to get your feathers ruffled over. I know people everywhere are ignorant, but that takes ignorance to a new low.

I mean, do people not realize that there are wealthy people everywhere? Hell, you'll probably find insanely wealthy people in Idaho. Why would it seem odd to them that somebody from outside of NYC would be able to buy its most expensive residence, especially a major commercial center like Chicago?

[ChiMIchael]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

^ That seems like an odd thing to get your feathers ruffled over. I know people everywhere are ignorant, but that takes ignorance to a new low.

I mean, do people not realize that there are wealthy people everywhere? Hell, you'll probably find insanely wealthy people in Idaho. Why would it seem odd to them that somebody from outside of NYC would be able to buy its most expensive residence, especially a major commercial center like Chicago?

We don't have "superstars." Are you out of the loop?

[emathias]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

^ That seems like an odd thing to get your feathers ruffled over. I know people everywhere are ignorant, but that takes ignorance to a new low.

I mean, do people not realize that there are wealthy people everywhere? Hell, you'll probably find insanely wealthy people in Idaho. Why would it seem odd to them that somebody from outside of NYC would be able to buy its most expensive residence, especially a major commercial center like Chicago?

Idaho's second richest person ($2.1 billion according to Forbes) is the Simplot heir to the man who made Idaho synonymous with potatoes by developing and selling McDonald's their french fries, and then investing in Micron technologies, at one time one of the biggest producers of memory chips in the US. Number one, relatively recently, is a guy named VanderSloot who made his billions ($3.4 billion) selling vitamins on the internet. Also doing well in Idaho are the Albertsons, the family who founded the eponymous grocery chain and were rich enough to essentially buy an accredited college in Idaho and rename it Albertson College. Then there are families who have wealth in the tens of millions from natural resources or construction or smaller internet plays but those are nowhere near the same league as billionaires.

[ardecila]

This is the Aalto building I was thinking of. If you're familiar with it, you will start to see echoes of Aalto's design moves in countless public buildings, especially the stairs up to a raised courtyard entrance. The brick here is very similar as well.


src

[SIGSEGV]

Does anybody know anything about the current state of the Chicago Tunnel Company tunnels? It'd be nice if we could have a downtown-wide Pedway for days like tomorrow!

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

Does anybody know anything about the current state of the Chicago Tunnel Company tunnels? It'd be nice if we could have a downtown-wide Pedway for days like tomorrow!

They're chock full of various utilities. Data/fiber optic lines, chilled water lines, etc. Part of the reason downtown Chicago is such a hub for business is the great data connections afforded by the tunnels. The whole downtown area can be wired up with the fastest speeds at relatively low cost and no disruption to the streets.
Even if they were totally empty though, they'd barely be big enough for two people to pass each other walking. And they're full of blind corners, so have fun dodging the muggers.


Thrillist

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by ardecila

They're chock full of various utilities. Data/fiber optic lines, chilled water lines, etc. Part of the reason downtown Chicago is such a hub for business is the great data connections afforded by the tunnels. The whole downtown area can be wired up with the fastest speeds at relatively low cost and no disruption to the streets.
Even if they were totally empty though, they'd barely be big enough for two people to pass each other walking. And they're full of blind corners, so have fun dodging the muggers.


Thrillist

I bet guided tours of these would be an awesome tourist attraction.

[Tom In Chicago]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

I bet guided tours of these would be an awesome tourist attraction.

The tunnels have been vaulted off and, it's my understanding, require Department of Homeland Security notification any time they need to be accessed. . .

. . .

[moorhosj]

Data from Crain's today on hot markets in the city. Almost all of them are on the South Side. Looking at the stripe running down the southwest side, I wonder if this is a result of gentrification on the north/northwest side pricing Hispanic buyers towards the South Side, along with growth of the Chinese population:

These are places where three key indicators of a real estate market's health were all good: more homes sold, at a higher median price and in a shorter average time on the market, than the year prior.