The Babuk Report

Category: Pop Culture

  • The North Avenue Architecture Photo Party

    North Avenue, the border between the north side of Oak Park and the Galewood neighborhood of Chicago, is relatively newer than many surrounding neighborhoods. While the buildings along North Avenue post date Frank Lloyd Wright, he golfed here with friends and clients. Many used the area as a place to get away and hide from the City.  It was one of the first automobile oriented commercial strips in the Chicago area. A favorite location for drive-in restaurants, the road west of Oak Park and Galewood – known as State Route 64 – was a renowned teen hangout for street races. 

    Architecturally, the area is rich in 1920’s storefronts with highly decorative terra cotta cladding and details. Later buildings were exuberantly mid-century modern. 

    Experience the world renowned architecture of our town, which is just a scant eight miles / twelve kilometres from another equally world renowned and architecturally significant place, the Chicago Loop.  

    And besides –North Avenue has lots of great restaurants, stores and cultural attractions to discover and enjoy once you’ve completed the North Avenue Architecture Photo Party.

    Instructions:

    By walking along public sidewalks and right-of-ways contained along North Avenue between Austin and Harlem Avenues, and for an area one block north and south along Harlem Avenue; locate these architectural features and details, noting their location. 

    Oak Park is a living museum containing many private homes that just happen to be world renowned masterpieces.  No private residences are featured in the North Avenue Architecture Photo Party.   However, please respect the homeowner’s privacy and remain on the public sidewalks for the hunt.

    Here’s a sampling of the program:

    The Jetsons’ probably get their teeth fixed here.
    Terra Cotta TV
    A monumental building

    An additional feature of the scavenger hunt is the North Avenue Historical Photo Party.  This may be the most enigmatic image of them all:

    North Pole Drive In, River Forest, Illinois

    While historians agree that this was the North Pole Drive In, located in River Forest, Illinois.  It’s also agreed that its architect was Bertrand Goldberg.  No consensus exists on where this was located.  However, I have my theories….

     The entire program is on display in the lobbies of these banks on North Avenue, who have supported the North Avenue Architecture Photo Party:

    ABC Bank, North Avenue, Chicago

    Charter One Bank, North Avenue, Chicago

    Midwest Bank, North Avenue, Elmwood Park

    US Bank, North Avenue, Oak Park

    June 2010 North Avenue Architecture Photo Party is a production of:

    North Avenue Business Association

    Oak Park Architectural League

    This edition has been made possible by:

    Visit Oak Park

    Oak Park River Forest Historical Foundation

    www.3planets.com / www.shopoakpark.com

    Heitzman Architects

    Babuk Presentations, Inc / www.TourAboutChicago.com

    Keep following this event anywhere in the world at www.OakParkArchitectureParty.com

  • The Scottish Motor Club – 2010 Calendar of Events

    There have been some inquiries regarding the Scottish Motor Club’s Calendar of Events this year.  An abbreviated version:

    2009 Heartland International Tattoo & 1991 Lotus Exige

    Heartland International Tattoo, Sears Center, Hoffman Estates, Illinois

    Saturday, 10 April, 2010

    www.heartlandtattoo.org

    This event is being in conjunction with members of the British Car Union, Lotus Corps Chicago and the Rolls Royce Owners Club / Lake Michigan Region.

    2008 Highland Games and 1954 MG-TF

     

    Illinois Saint Andrew Society Highland Games, Oak Brook, Illinois

    19 June 2010

    http://www.chicago-scots.org/24th-annual-scottish-festival-a-highland-games.html

    We will probably make an appearance at the Scottish Home Picnic on Saturday, August 7.

    The British Home / Daughters of the Empire have requested that we appear in September, but we’re trying to understand if there are any scheduling conflicts. 

    2007 British Car Union & Triumph Herald Cabriolet (timeless)

    British Car Union, Oakton Community College, Des Plaines, Illinois  

    12 September 2010

    www.britishcarunion.com

    2009 Downers Grove "Import Night" & rainstorm

    We may also be making an appearance at one of the regularly scheduled car shows in the area when they hold “British Night” or Import Night” if we can round up dancers and a bagpiper.

    1957 "Hot Rod" MGA, Oak Park Avenue British Car Show 2009
    2009 Oak Park Avenue British Car Show & 1957 "Hot Rod" MGA

    Aye!

  • More Poetry

    In response to a recent musing about William McGonagall, friends from Vancouver have since brought to my attention Sarah Binks, the Sweet Songstress of Saskatchewan.  A regular feature on a CBC Radio broadcast, her works included poetry like this:

    “My Garden”

    A little blade of grass I see

    Its banner waving wild and free

    And I wonder if in time to come

    ‘Twill be a great big onion

    Would anyone be upset if they learned that Sarah Binks was simply a fictitious fabrication of a University of Manitoba professor? 

    http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0007148

    I shall never attempt to write about a snowy winter day in Oak Park ever again.

  • Happy New Decade!

    Happy New Year.  It’s surprising to see that we’re already a decade into the new century.

    Previous posts have spoken about vacant storefronts and even vacant buildings, all from the aftermath of the latest economic turn.  There is so much vacant space out there that based on current absorption rates, some markets have several years supply of some building types like… condominiums.  It could take several years to recover to get back to where we were. This empty space in empty buildings simply sits and waits.  No one has really caught on to the idea that this space could be re-adapted to different uses.

    In the meantime, one may deduce a similar “oversupply” of the people who design and build. In this case, many of these people have “re-adapted” out of necessity.  While this is good for them, it has left an enormous void of talent, skill and expertise that has left the marketplace.  A colleague (formerly) in the print publishing business suggested that it may take as long as twenty years for the architectural profession to make up lost ground, lost to a “brain drain” caused by the current economy.

    There are fascinating opportunities coming out of all this.  While cities that best depicted the late twentieth century – the Sunbelt – have stalled from an oversupply of built space that led to sharp drops in real estate prices; many cities of the early twentieth century – the Rust Belt – are retreating. 

    It’s like Las Vegas vs. Detroit.

    Las Vegas just opened an incredibly huge hotel complex; its economic viability is yet to be seen.  Residential housing prices in the Las Vegas area are still depressed, though many feel this reveals some “great buys” in the real estate market that services retirees.  The retiree market doesn’t depend on finding employment to sustain housing costs.

    Detroit has even better deals – well, lower prices – in residential real estate.  At first glance, Detroit may seem to be unsustainable and unaffordable: although prices are low, the potential market is people who work.  In a city without jobs, housing at any price is unsustainable and unaffordable. 

    I’ve heard many a seminar presentation about cities like Detroit recently, and Detroit is the oft-cited example. It was a much larger city in its heyday a few decades ago: having shrunk in population but not geographical area, it’s saddled with much more infrastructure than it needs and can support.  Many are projecting Detroit to be a very viable city if it trimmed its infrastructure and broadened its economic base to support a city of its current population levels – still one of the largest cities in the United States.  Some are even proposing urban agriculture for Detroit, a very novel “reuse / re-adapt” concept.

    Michigan Central Railroad Station, Detroit
    Michigan Central Railroad Station, Detroit

    Speaking specifically about Detroit as a precursor and example, it has the potential to be a very vibrant smaller city; the buildings that supported a larger city have been left behind.  Several buildings buildings have been left in ruin – the former Michigan Central Railroad Station, various hotels and office buildings, even industrial complexes where automobiles were once assembled.

    In archaeology, we know of classical ruins, of medieval ruins and the like.  Here, we have a new category:  modern ruins. Quite fabulous modern ruins, at that.

    Regardless, it’s still a decade into the new century. Just as the nineteenth century economy was different than the twentieth century economy that followed; the nineteenth century set up the twentieth century’s economy.  The same may be true of the twentieth and the twenty first century’s economies.  The economic structure of the new century hasn’t revealed itself.

    Yet.

  • Departing Chicago?

    A recent editorial cartoon depicted Illinois as an airport. In the departures gate were the 2016 Olympic Games, a variety of major trade shows that recently announced leaving Chicago, and Oprah Winfrey.    In the arrivals gate were prisoners being transferred from Gitmo.  Much of this is directed at Chicago specifically:  the “departures” noted are all from the city of Chicago, while the “arrival” denotes a town downstate.

    Throughout mankind, cities have come and gone.  Only a few – Rome and Athens come to mind – have endured the Millennia.  Now I’m not advocating a viewpoint that Chicago has completely folded and turned into a pile of ashes, far from it.  As for this economic doldrum – maybe it can resurrect from the “ashes”?  Let’s take a look….

    This is a vibrant – dare I say global – city. Chicago is located in a commanding geographical position that as long as North America is populated, it will never go away.

    However, I’ve always thought of Chicago as being the epitome of the twentieth century – the early twentieth century.  It embodied the Industrial Revolution in the United States: its economy was a product of mechanized industry.  Yes, Chicago’s industry produced machines which created a sizeable market in itself.  Chicago’s machines cultivated an agricultural industry which was brought to the city’s markets by machines produced in Chicago.  The city’s physical layout – the skyscrapers and garden city suburbs fed by transportation devices – were shaped by machines.  The transportation devices brought people to Chicago; it became a crossroads of the world – a title that still holds true today.  Machines and industry brought people in Chicago together to socialize and do business – it became an organism of interurbanity.

    The latter part of the nineteenth century put the foundations in place for the twentieth century.  Chicago’s economy truly made it the epitome of a twentieth century city.  For the first half, anyway.

    To zero in on the garden city suburb reveals a clue as to what happened in the latter twentieth century.  The garden city suburb worked best when people moved back and forth between city and suburb by mass transit.  When the automobile supplanted mass transit, people didn’t socialize as they once did.  Further, by that time, GI’s returning from the Second World War had been exposed to warmer climes with beaches.  Those returning GI’s migrated to and established homes in places like… the Los Angeles Basin.

    So, Los Angeles – built around freeways that serviced suburbs and all of the same kinds of inventions that built Chicago in addition to a new industry of motion picture entertainment – came to be one endless suburb.  Decidely individual, built to control and even limit social interaction.  Not what the garden city suburb had intended, but then, the garden city suburb never realized the extent of proliferation of individual motorcars.

    So Chicago became old hat.  All at once.  Chicago was left to be an absolutely fabulous living museum of the early twentieth century.

    Los Angeles eventually outgrew its own makings as well.  For quite some time, I was quite determined to believe that the prototypical US city of the twenty-first century was going to be Las Vegas – completely manmade and artificial; exceptionally self indulgent to boot.

    The current real estate bust may not support the notion of Las Vegas becoming much more than an overgrown gambling and retirement mecca.

    Which brings us back to Chicago.  It has the infrastructure to pick up where it left off and grow back.  One may even compare Chicago to Detroit, a city that has become a “doughnut” with very little left in its core.  Detroit has left behind some fabulous ruins in its wake.

    But that’s another story.

    DSC00588

     

  • Ferris Beuhler’s Day Off in November

    It seemed like a simple enough request – appear with my daughter on a float in the North Michigan Avenue “Festival of Lights Parade”.  North Michigan Avenue is the most exclusive shopping district in Chicago and to start the Christmas holiday shopping season, they have a large night time parade – bathed profusely in brilliant light.  Sponsored by a variety of organizations including Disney and the Harris Bank it was well organized and professionally staged.  Our float, sponsored by the Museum of Science and Industry commemorating their “Christmas Around the World” display, was staged next to the Newberry Library under and archway of searchlights rotating about the sky.  The float was kind of reminiscent of the “beauty parlour” scene in “Grease”, with ladies cascading symmetrically up vertical tiers to a proscenium – the ladies in this instance being girls from the Thistle and Heather Highland Dancers, their fathers strategically stationed onboard.

    The Parade Getting Staged
    The Parade Getting Staged

    We proceeded down Oak Street before the official parade start on Michigan Avenue – the storekeepers at Prada and Coach seemed impressed with our float. Spectators from the Dining Room at the Women’s Athletic Club to the window offices at Illinois Center were all watching and waving, and we waved back at them.  We even passed by the spot where Oprah Winfrey filmed her TV show on the day when Michigan Avenue was closed; we could not find evidence of any pilgrims paying homage or erecting shrines to commemorate that event, though one would imagine that there still is time for this to occur.  On a dark night under bright lights with cheering audiences, it was a festive experience for all of us onboard. 

    It kind of seemed like the parade scene from “Ferris Beuhler’s Day Off” albeit North Michigan instead of Dearborn Street, and sun down instead of noon hour, but hey…  You know, this is Chicago, and stuff like this seems to happen all the time.

    Now about Ferris Buehler – the house that was portrayed as a garage that housed the infamous Ferrari Daytona (a fiberglass replica) that slipped out of a window and down a hillside is up for sale.  In real life, it is a house and was designed by a student of Mies van der Rohe.  Its asking price is $2.3million. 

    For me, I’m just fine with the Ferris Buehler parade experience instead.

  • Convenient Access by Car

    While early industrialists had grand visions of mechanized buildings and cities that walked, many of those ideas were whimsical at face value.  Mind you, when applied as small parts, they were very useful – like the passenger elevator.  One of those side concepts probably came to be applied to personal transportation – the automobile – which I argue is a highly popular form of architecture.  Unfortunately, it’s a half baked idea of the original concept, and a half baked idea that has turned tables on traditional architectural and urban planning principles.

    Original El Rancho Hotel, Las Vegas
    Original El Rancho Hotel, Las Vegas

    What got me going on this topic was a recent assertion that the original El Rancho Hotel in Las Vegas was planned specifically to be only accessible by car, not on foot.  At the time, the Las Vegas Strip had some seemingly seedy elements to it.  The thought was to start a brand new “strip” away from the original Strip.  The new Strip would be elegant and – controlled. It was a specific tourist destination. To keep the new hotel a “controlled” atmosphere, the easiest way to do this was to limit the patrons only to those who had cars.  It mitigated the seedy element.

    At this point, one can easily imagine the sorts of gated subdivisions and target market power centres that populate suburbia.  All too often, getting from one’s house to do shopping, go to work or school, or even to go to a neighbour’s house is virtually impossible on foot in a cul-de-sac’d subdivision.  It’s all designed to be accessible by car only, leading to all sorts of social / economic ills.  Maybe even obesity.

    Back to Las Vegas – the new Strip grew.  Eventually, it became larger than the original strip, all of the new hotels modeled after this “accessible by car” concept.  Robert Venturi even wrote a book “Learning from Las Vegas” that looked at the intricacies of this new type of planning and the sort of spaces that just happened around the hotels.  I thought that it was written tongue in cheek, but apparently he was serious.

    Since then, Las Vegas has built sidewalks up and down the new Strip, and offered transit service along the road.  The scale of the street is still built around automobile speeds, rather than pedestrian travel.  Now, the automobile scale can be exciting in a way – think of Dan Tana driving up and down the strip in his classic Thunderbird.

    West of Chicago, along Roosevelt Road – it has a highway designation, though I can’t recall the number – there is an endless suburb that stretches some twenty miles or so – so mind numbing that I can’t even convert the distance to metric measures.  My daughter refers to it as the “Land of Parking Lots”.

    “they paved paradise, and put up a parking lot….”

  • Everyone wants to be called an Architect

    A recent television news series spoke of development of a new electric automobile.  It appeared odd that the person interviewed wore the title of “Product Development Architect”.  Many in the software industry also wear titles denoting some sort of “architect”, though they’ve never been exposed to issues dealing with public well being, building envelope issues, and professional licensure by a public entity or even (irk!) liability. 

    We tend to think of architects as trained and licensed professionals who work with stone and concrete, and who understand builders’ lien laws.  Architecture is regulated in some fashion by governing jurisdictions, and only certain individuals – usually distinguished by education, experience and examination – may wear the title “Architect” or practice “Architecture”.

    Although one side of me is elated that this person wore the title “product development architect” as opposed to “product development engineer”; still, how would someone who designs software or leads a product development initiative think that they could be called an architect?

    Perhaps, in taking one portion of the practice of architecture – visionary project leadership – and forgetting about the legalese, one might craft a definition of ‘architect’ that could describe this position.  But that’s just dealing with the people who want to wear this title, what about the practice of architecture?

    Architecture historically has been rooted (no pun intended) in solid buildings with form foundations tied to the earth.  While many professionally licensed architects have been responsible for designing and producing items ranging from tea kettles (Michael Graves) to aircraft interiors (Cambridge Seven) to farm tractors (Clifford Wiens), those actions have never been termed “architecture”.  Mind you, at its introduction, the design of the current Volkswagen Beetle led many to describe it as an “architectural” car.

    Is this architecture?
    Is this architecture?

    However, in describing architecture as a machine for living, perhaps the object isn’t to limit who may be an architect.  Rather the object may be to expand the definition and scope of what is architecture, allowing architecture to move beyond structures rooted in the earth built of masonry or steel. 

    And that may be good for society’s overall growth and advancement

  • A Change in the Weather…

    Last year at this time, the weather in Chicago seemed practically like summer.  It gave rise to theories of global warming. But it was absolutely beautiful weather.

    Parade Marshalls - and the Hilton - against a cold, grey sky
    Parade Marshalls – and the Hilton – against a cold, grey sky at noon

    This year, it has come to be very chilly, very suddenly.  No global warming this year.

    Take this year’s Columbus Day Parade – which actually celebrates Canadian Thanksgiving, but no one has caught on to that.  It was downright chilly.  At least it wasn’t windy.  It was a very grey, urbane looking day, with the kind of sky and sunlight that make Mies van der Rohe’s buildings sparkle.  And Chicago has a lot of Mies buildings.

    2009 Fiat 500, in white
    2009 Fiat 500, in white
    2009 Fiat 500, in black
    2009 Fiat 500, in black

    Through the marching bands, the floats, the people and whatnot, what caught my eye were two brand new Fiat 500’s, brought in from Detroit by Chrysler, now owned by Fiat.  They may have been shorter than my Mini – quite a feat!  Definitely higher, though.

    After the parade, as everyone from the Thistle and Heather Highland Dancers sought to collect their odds and ends out of the Mini, a parade of vintage Italian cars passed by.  They were the best! Low and behold, what happened to be in the middle of the Italian car parade but…  a vintage Fiat 500!

    Vintage Fiat 500, in yellow
    Vintage Fiat 500, in yellow

  • One Last Bit about the Morning Commute

    Just to wrap up the past couple posts:

    When North American cities were first developing, we commuted on foot.  It had its limitations, was endured during inclement weather, but gave us exercise.

    Various forms of mass transit came to be, which allowed for a larger commute area.  The commute in to work became something social: one could converse with their neighbours and colleagues, perhaps read the morning newspaper. Eventually, some trains had “commuter cars” so one could enjoy a cup of coffee on the way in.

    Eventually, public transit systems were allowed to decline, in favour of individual transit – the private automobile. This mode of transportation had a sense of excitement about it, because of its newness, and giddiness.  One could propel themselves along a “freeway” type of road –previously unseen – in a vehicle that looked more and more like a spaceship with chrome and fins. And one didn’t need to share it, this was theirs to display.  At first, it made even longer commute times enjoyable.

    But, like all things new, the private motorcar on the freeway experience came to be old hat. Commute times lengthened, we were living further and further away from work.  And the private motorcars themselves came to be, well, monotonous. They lost their imaginative zeal and came to look the same.

    Which describes a modern-day predicament.

    Transit systems seem to be on the way up, however.  Maybe we’ll go back to the day of travelling en masse and getting to know our neighbours on the way in to work.