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.
A colleague described a project in Atlanta years ago. It was a building sited off of an expressway. Although the building was envisioned to have the typical sort of menu of architectural experiences – approach, enter, inhabit – it was noted that most people would experience this building differently. Most would experience this building while in motion – at a high rate of speed while travelling along the expressway. They would never experience the interior spaces of this building. My colleague described a new software program that simulated this experience while travelling in either direction down the expressway.
My previous post questioned the sensation of the morning commute, it was an argument based on the mode of conveyance being architecture in itself. This post, however, is describing the sequence of events that experience architecture, and describing that experience in motion as being architectural in itself.
The Seattle Monorail travelling through the Experience Music Project
Take the Seattle Alweg Monorail as an example. In itself, the Monorail may be “architecture’, the Monorail in itself has that sort of exuberant giddiness that makes a dreary commute quite special. Its glassy rail cars take a route from the Seattle Center going Downtown that travel through a succession of differing spaces of differing sizes and scales, a kind of spontaneous architecture. Recently, the Experience Music Project, designed by Frank Gehry, was built along the Monorail route. Though the Monorail does not stop at the EMP, it travels through it, as a very conscious architectural experience. The Project is experienced in motion, and it was planned that way. The motion of taking the Monorail through the EMP becomes a musical experience in itself. Some believe that travelling through the EMP by Monorail is as important as is the more traditional experience of approach, enter and inhabit while on foot.
Our cities have individual “nodes” of architectural experience, but fall short of planning the path between the nodes as an architectural experience. Nothing superlative or the sort the usual arguments that get touted as the reason why an architectural experience can only consist of goobers stuck on a roadway, and that these goobers add another twenty per cent to the cost of a project, making everyone wonder – quite rightfully – why we should pay anything extra to have goobers on our roadways. What I’m advocating is to simply plan and arrange the elements in between to offer an architectural experience while in motion. We work with spaces that large, just plan them architecturally.
As an aside – sort of – Chicago is mourning the closure of an amusement park “Kiddieland”, located just beyond the edge of Oak Park. It had juvenile sized amusement rides, and even some larger attractions. No one is going to forget the Ferris wheel, the Little Dipper roller coaster, the Scrambler, the log flume, the Tilt-a-Whirl, the Flying Elephants, the antique Carousel and especially not the Kiddieland Express. No one will forget them because they made motion very amusing. Even the path these amusement rides took provided a structured sequence of experiences that provided a rudimentary “architecture in motion” experience. Few people are realizing that this structured sequence is what made Kiddieland so enjoyable, and so memorable.
Kiddieland: A place with tremendous experiences of spatial motion approached by a very dreary sequence of spatial experiences
Not at all difficult to achieve in our overall built environment.
Many early-modern architectural theoreticians were impressed by inventions of the machine age. Some, like French Architect Le Corbusier, promoted the concept of architecture as a “machine for living”. Still others, like Mies van der Rohe, spoke of the ‘machine aesthetic”.
From that same historical period, one may find many examples of “architecture as a machine” along Chicago’s waterways and railways. Many other towns and cities have tremendous examples as well.
Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe RR Grain Elevator, Chicago
Perhaps one of the earliest examples of a tall “skyscraper”, granaries – better known in North America as grain elevators – first appeared along canals. Canals introduced the idea of valuable “frontage” along waterway’s edge. In order to achieve maximum financial return when building a facility along a canal, the formula was to use as little frontage as possible while building as large a building as possible – the idea of stacking uses vertically. Grain elevators acted as a transition between transportation modes by way of a storage depot. Grains would be brought to the elevator, deposited, and stacked on top of other grains in storage. The act of transporting the grains upward caused great architectural drama; the economy of designing tall, vertical structures to store grains created sensations. Once stored, grains had to be deposited back down to earth on a means of conveyance that could carry a larger amount of goods; the path returning to earth also creating impressive architectural forms.
Coal Towers. Chicago & Northwestern Railroad, 40th Street Yards, Chicago.
Engaging materials along a similar sequence of path, coaling towers refreshed the coal bins of steam locomotives. Initially built of wood, they were round in shape; a circular plan being the most efficient use of materials. Later, when built of concrete, they were square in plan. Perhaps squares are easier to arrange on a site than circles.
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe RR Bridge over Bubbly Creek, Chicago
Architect / Engineer William LeBaron Jenney designed truss bridges during the Civil War. He observed that trusses could be mounted vertically, rather than horizontally to create a ‘”skyscraper” frame. While bridge trusses display breath-taking shapes and repetitions, the types of bridges that move – turntable bridges that turn around and drawbridges that go up and down -show an ability to move entire buildings. Apart from amusement park rides, modern architects have never found reason to do this, though devices that move within buildings – like passenger elevators – are very useful. The British architectural movement, “Archigram” had great, though fantastic visions of buildings that would pick up and walk, though none have come to realization.
Roundhouses were initially facilities where railcars would be stored, then eventually facilities where locomotives would be serviced. They were designed to fit into the tightest of spaces. A locomotive would drive onto a turntable that would turn, pointing the locomotive – or railcar as it was – onto a track that led to the appropriate service bay. Though most roundhouses were simply arcs, some roundhouses were near complete circles. The latter types surrounded the turntable with almost 360 degrees of service bays, the leftover being a ‘slot’ that locomotives would drive through to approach the turntable.
Many have looked at these buildings sitting empty and derelict, wondering why they can’t be retrofitted into some other use. True, a couple concrete grain elevators have been turned into hotels; square beds have a difficult time fitting into round spaces, and the walls can be so thick so as to create structural challenges in creating window openings. Likewise, finding ways to introduce horizontal circulation at every level takes away from the original form. However, as I’ve explained to others before, these buildings are not unlike my old, manual typewriter. Maybe its appearance could be updated by painting it a different colour, or replacing the strike pads with a different font. It wouldn’t make any sense to “modernize” it to be an electric typewriter, and it would make no sense to do an adaptive reuse on a manual typewriter to become a coffee percolator. A manual typewriter is a machine; its shape and form are intrinsic to its function. Same with a grain elevator. Or coaling tower. Or roundhouse.
Oak Park, Illinois is known throughout the world for its revolutionary architecture that defined the American suburb. From his Oak Park studio on Chicago Avenue, Frank Lloyd Wright and his entourage created the suburban home format on a basic grid-iron layout of streets; they developed an entirely new aesthetic order of clear geometry arranged in abstract compositions that reinforced sensitive spatial hierarchies. One would think that modern day Oak Park would attract attention as a world-class center of architectural research and innovation, no?
Chicago, Illinois
Well, Oak Park is located a short, ten mile ride along any one of an assortment of rapid transit, commuter railroad, expressway or surface streets from Chicago. Chicago, a much larger city, is the world class architectural attraction. Oak Park is just a neighbouring community. This, despite Frank Lloyd Wright’s practice that attracted world wide attention was located here. Not to mention that the Twinkie was invented in Oak Park.
Though the skyscraper was invented and developed in Chicago; its antithesis – the American suburb – is Oak Park.
After the Great Fire of 1871, Chicago grew on a clean slate. Horses were dirty animals to have around in a crowded urban setting, so the chief methods of transportation were walking, and trains. By walking, one could comfortably walk about half a mile – a kilometer – or so between places. From house to work, from house to church, and so on. Each of these destinations attracted a population from within a similar radius. Eventually, putting all the radii between houses and destinations together, one was faced with a large, seething urban mass that was too large to walk from end to end – certainly during bad weather. Now, a train could take people from this great urban mass through rural countryside to a station about ten miles (sixteen kilometres) or so to another station where the urban mass could start all over again. The new urban mass never seemed to attain the same size or prominence as the original city. This describes Chicago and Oak Park, or River Forest, or Evanston, or Riverside, or Pullman, or… this list goes one. This is the classic American suburb.
Once private automobiles began to proliferate, people weren’t bound to travelling from train station to train station. They could travel from point to point. They didn’t even need to travel from town to town; they could travel from a point in the countryside to another point in the countryside, giving rise to what we affectionately know today as “sprawl”. Some cities – like Los Angeles – became of a size after the advent of the automobile, so they academically don’t have suburbs, they only have sprawl.
There are only a certain few cities in North America that reached this critical mass of size to have classic American suburbs before the proliferation of the automobile brought about a different type of development – Chicago, New York City, Boston, and to an extent Philadelphia, Cleveland and Montreal (being Canadian).
Garden City Concept by Sir Ebenezer Howard
The British equivalent of the classic American suburb is the Garden City, whose format was developed by Sir Ebenezer Howard. His model saw a city grow to a certain size, then be surrounded by smaller cities that functioned through “interurbanity”, all connected by railways and separated by farmland.
Does the Garden City seem anything like the classic American suburb? It should. While Sir Ebenezer Howard grew up in Dickens’ era London, a little known fact is that he homesteaded on farmland in eastern Nebraska in 1871 or thereabouts. Dissatisfied with this, he migrated to Chicago, where his shorthand skills landed him jobs court reporting and reporting for newspapers. Riverside was being planned and developed at this time – while it’s thought that he knew of it, it’s not thought that he actually visited Riverside. He undoubtedly knew of, and may have visited, any one of a number of suburban communities surrounding Chicago. He returned to England in 1876. His Garden Cities concept is simply modeled after what he happening in Chicago.
The two extremes of twentieth century architecture – the skyscraper and the suburb – were invented and developed here in the Chicago region.
In the hunt for more unknown spots in Chicago; one such place covered during my “Secret Streets” presentation during Great Chicago Places and Spaces this year was 22 East Jackson Boulevard. At one time, it was better known as “Pickwick Place”.
Historical View, Pickwick Place (image from Dennis McClendon)
While seemingly a public right-of-way, Pickwick Place dead ended just north of Jackson, flanked by substantial buildings on either side. The building on the eastern side currently has a dazzling array of fire escapes hanging over Pickwick Place, reinforcing the theory that this was a public street of some sort.
The commercial concern on Pickwick Place was Ebson’s English Chop House – a restaurant. There were a couple floors above the main door.
22 E. Jackson Boulevard, as current
The site sits forlorn, waiting for a new owner. While many things could be developed within the existing building, it’s doubtful if this could be combined with any adjacent properties. The prospect of buying a tiny, three storey building in the middle of one of the world’s best financial districts without any enhanced development prospects appear dismal.
We are quick to look at post war development and wonder why this exact model isn’t happening anymore. The spirit of postwar development was that it was based on future potentials and prospects, not on cramming everything into a zoning envelope that has been maximized and then some, just to seek immediate returns.
When Chicago was initially laid out in the mid 1800’s, it was surveyed with relatively shallow lots meant to support smaller, wood frame houses. There were no alleys, since there were lots of streets around. After the Great Fire, every second street was widened; the narrower streets came to be known as “addressable alleys”. They still exist today; Arcade Place (at William Mundie’s former YMCA Association Building) and Couch Place are among my favourites.
Portland, Oregon is an interesting city. It’s laid out on a series of “half blocks”, that make it very walkable. It also gives the impression of passing over multiple “thresholds” that lead to “transitions” between smaller, pocket neighbourhoods.
The New York City borough of Manhattan has short blocks running north and south up the island, with much longer blocks going east to west. Because of all the streets, or thresholds that one crosses, it’s very easy to sense passage through different neighbourhoods.
On a much smaller scale, the length of downtown Calgary has long blocks. The effect of shorter blocks defining many different boundaries between neighbourhoods cannot exist. I often contemplated a project exploring a theory like that – growth patterns for downtown Calgary if the long vs. short blocks ran in directions opposite to actual – for my undergraduate thesis.
Though streets get to be known as passages, streets are important places in urban contexts.
Fan Tan Alley, Victoria
Victoria has “shortcut” streets known as Alleys – too narrow for vehicular traffic – that connect busier streets, they provide a more intimate street setting and endless possibilities for more street frontage – important to support retail frontage.
Oak Park has a few examples of alleys, which exhibit great potential.
Alley, Medical Arts Building, Oak Park
The owners of the Medical Arts Building recognized this long ago, as the alley behind their building was a convenient shortcut for pedestrians, even if it backed onto a parking garage. Simply by decorating their alley wall by opening storefronts onto it, the amount of retail frontage has been doubled: a leftover space in a sideyard between buildings has become a pleasant environment for conversation over coffee.
Hunter Court, Oak Park
Hunter Court, running parallel to and in between Lake Street and North Boulevard has the opportunities of frontages on both walls. Although it’s quite well developed over two blocks; both of those blocks only have one side truly developed. Oddly, it’s the north wall east of Oak Park Avenue (a restaurant), and the south wall (art gallery and accountant’s office) west of the Avenue, though Scoville Square does have a doorway on the north wall. The right of way for Hunter Court continues almost as far as Kenilworth, though it dead ends prior to that street. If developed further, Hunter Court could provide important retail frontage and a very pleasant pedestrian environment.
1965 Chrysler Crown Imperial Convertible, obviously different than my Mini
Once, in a fit to buy an inexpensive though highly presentable company car for my practice, I came across a restored 1965 Chrysler Crown Imperial convertible. Trouble is, we live on that side of Oak Park where garages are accessible off of alleys; our alley surveys at sixteen feet (about 5.2) metres across. I thought that I’d wedge the thing in between neighbour’s fences. Something like that once happened to me on a trip into a McDonald’s near the New Jersey Turnpike, though that is quite a different story than what I’m presenting here. However, remember my previous posts about our cities being designed around the size of our automobiles – good example.
An alley in Oak Park
Otherwise, Oak Park has some very well kept alleys that could make great “mews” style lanes.
My previous post about Laneway Houses in Vancouver prompted a brisk walk to look at other coach houses in Oak Park. As mentioned, current Village policy has it that accessory spaces connected to garages are acceptable, water service to that accessory building is not. Further, anyone living in a building accessory to the main building on a parcel of land constitutes a second family on that parcel, or a “multi family” situation. Some very large parcels of land that historically were built with coach houses fronting onto the street have seen that land parcel subdivided over the years, so that the original coach house is officially a separate house on its own.
A recent, local newspaper story spoke of the first garage built in Oak Park. Only Oak Park would recognize such a thing, but it was built to house a fellow’s Locomobile Steamer in 1898. This was a very nouveau idea for a new fangled invention; larger houses on larger land parcels here in “distant” suburbs were more likely to have horse stables with haylofts.
Formerly stables, now a garage
There are a couple examples in Oak Park of former horse stables, with what would have been hay-lofts above. There’s undoubtedly some sort of Village ordinance in these modern times prohibiting people keeping horses on their property, though one may have as many three dogs. Fancy dog houses aside, former horse stables have either been demolished or converted into garages for cars.
An elaborate coach house, now a single family residence
There are several examples of large houses with separate “motor garage” coach houses that have access from a street. Many of these land parcels have been subdivided, so that the former coach house is a residence unto its own.
There are new garages being built in with accessory space. One client approached me about building a large garage in his backyard, an upstairs space to accommodate his 10,000 volume library collection. While it didn’t require water service, putting that much weight above a long span structure doesn’t come inexpensively. The project never got off the ground.
Within the last year, the City of Vancouver (British Columbia) recently amended the City’s zoning ordinance to permit coach, or “laneway” houses to be built along back alleys (rear lanes) in certain areas. In a nutshell; in specific single family zoned areas, on lots 33’ (about 10.8 metres) or wider that have a back alley or corner frontages, in the rear of the lot; with specific distance separation, lot size and on site parking requirements. The lot where the laneway house is to be built cannot be strata-titled.
Laneway Houses, image courtesy of Lanefab Development Company, Vancouver, BC www.lanefab.com
At least of couple different design / build companies have emerged catering specifically to this market. The “laneway housing” concept is an easy way to increase density in a neighbourhood without altering its visual character. It can bring a human presence to an area previously a “no-man’s land” and create safety within a neighbourhood. Laneway housing can increase add to the local tax base while providing a method of providing affordable housing, and more than likely catering to a different age and social group than currently resides in a community – an important feature allowing people to “age in place”.
An entire lane developed with "laneway houses", image courtesy of Lanefab Development Corporation, Vancouver, BC www.lanefab.com
It also supports my notion that our housing stock has come to be much too large, and that an easy to bring about sustainability in design is to simply build on a smaller scale.
As with other tiny house concepts, laneway housing may appear to have a higher construction cost per square foot than a conventional house. A unit-cost-per-square foot includes not just the foundation, floor and roof, but also walls and all systems contained inside those walls. A building with smaller rooms will contain more walls per square foot, so that makes sense. In order to conserve space, many features that would otherwise be store bought furniture are built-in. Frank Lloyd Wright used built-in features generously in his Usonian House concept – even the catalog bought “Sears House” of the US Midwest used built in features to increase living space. Paying for these features as part of a base building or as furniture from a store, well… It’ll all get paid for somehow.
Other municipalities in the Vancouver area are considering zoning amendments allowing laneway housing. Most municipalities in the Chicago area – including the City of Chicago itself – disallow new habitable “coach house” construction. Oh, how I wish that could change…
Years ago, the Chicago-born rock group “Chicago” had a sit single “Saturday, in the Park”. It described what was seemingly an idyllic weekend day in Chicago’s Lincoln Park. These kinds of days happen all the time in Chicago, witness this last weekend.
Cloud Gate, otherwise known as ‘The Bean”
Friends from Toronto called the night before. They had just flown in and hoped to meet up. Their plan was to take a leisurely morning stroll around Graceland Cemetery, completely unknowing about the Chicago Cubs baseball game next door at Wrigley Field, or even the Air and Water Show. I warned them, and they though that this was unusual. We agreed to touch base later in the day.
The Illinois Saint Andrew Society had their wrap up meeting of the Highland Games Committee, over breakfast. From my vantage point as Chairman of the British Car Show, we talked a lot about the weather, the flooded fields, and the success of the show despite nature’s wrath.
The Province of Nova Scotia invited me to attend their private reception at Irish Fest in Milwaukee. The Nova Scotians are awfully nice folks, even for a prairie kid like me. Though I really like Nova Scotia, I must admit that I’ve never been there. My parents were great fans of the CBC television show, “Don Messer’s Jubilee”, broadcast from Halifax, perhaps that counts. I hope that they’ll invite me back for their reception at Celtic Fest in Chicago.
More than a million people descended on the lakefront for the Air & Water Show. I kept thinking back to our visitors from Toronto, who were taking the same el line that those million people would be taking to the show, as well as all the crowds partaking the Cubs game; again, on the same el line. Game Day at Wrigley is kind of like a giant street party. Apparently, there’s a baseball game that happens during the party, the throngs are simply out having a good time.
Heard back from my visitors, they chose to spend the afternoon inside conditioned air at the Art Institute of Chicago. Good choice. They acknowledged my advice about the crowds at Wrigley.
It was one of the few dry days we’ve had in a while, and despite everything going on during a typical weekend (wasn’t it Lollapalooza last weekend?) the mundane things never let up. Yard work and my tomato plants were finally showing signs of ripening.
Zaha Hadid designed Burnham Pavilion
We managed to meet up at the Burnham Pavilions at Millennium Park. Last time I was there was at the dedication reception, coincidentally held during the nasty storm that reeked havoc on the Highland Games. Although the pavilion designed by UN Studio of the Netherlands was complete, the Zaha Hadid pavilion was not. It was now, and the time to see these pavilions are at night.
Crown Fountain at Millenium Park
Reynar Banham once described a concept of “the architecture of energy” – not counting every last watt or joule of energy and finding ways to conserve, but rather defining architecture by energy. The Burnham Pavilions at night – even the rest of Millennium Park – are great examples. The Bean was shining profusely in the dull light. Both Burnham Pavilions were kaleidoscopic in nature. The Crown Fountain was alive with shadows of children playfully running through the water on a hot, muggy night.
The city between the earth and sky
I’m still taken by the UN Studio’s Burnham Pavilion. Despite being designed in Europe, it’s a very prairie display of the earth and the sky, and the city that grew in between.
The current economic doldrums have brought out all sorts of vacant storefronts – not just a tell tale of the economy, but a fascinating take on urban anthropology.
At first glance, they would indicate that the economy is down, that the activity that previously existed at that location fell victim to a recession. Any retail leasing agent would be quick to point out that marginal locations die first, and that the economy is really in bad shape if the vacant storefronts syndrome were to hit the more sought after locations and properties.
At a deeper investigation, one may wonder if the types of commercial activity that went on in any given vacant storefront is sustainable economically, and if things picked up, would this type of activity resurface?
The concept of selling goods changes presentation and architectural trappings often. In North America, we’ve seen a progression of:
Open Air Markets
General Stores
Specialty Stores
Department Stores
Stores arranged along a main street, accessible on foot
Stores arranged along commercial highway strips, accessible by car
Open-air shopping plazas, approached by car, then accessed on foot
Mall-ified pedestrian street, which closed a street to all but pedestrian traffic, to recreate the open-air shopping plaza concept in an urban setting
Climate controlled, enclosed shopping mall in a suburban setting, with anchor tenants (usually department stores), approached by car but accessed on foot, where every day is always a pleasant 72° Fahrenheit (20° Celsius) regardless if it’s winter or summer
Midtown Plaza, Rochester, NY
The climate controlled enclosed shopping mall even saw an urban version, closing off streets and creating“superblocks” with inward focuses. While the classic examples may be Eaton Center in Toronto, the Galleria in Philadelphia or even the ZCMI Center in Salt Lake City; a more iconic version may be Rochester’s Midtown Plaza. Opened in 1963, it virtually recreated a controlled suburban environment in an urban setting, complete with a promotional “courtyard” featuring the “Clock of the Nations” that commemorated one of twelve different countries every hour and an elevated “kiddie monorail” made by the Louden Machinery Company of Fairfield, Iowa – also found in department stores like Kresge in Newark, NJ, Sears on State Street in Chicago and the Meier and Frank Department Store in Portland, Oregon. (Let’s save the kiddie monorails for another entry, I do write about transportation devices from time to time)
And I’m not even touching on further developments like festival markets (Faneuil Hall in Boston, the Inner Harbor in Baltimore), power centers (name your suburb) and big box retailers (even real cities are clamouring to get big box retailers).
Who knows what the next step will be. Web based e-commerce seems to be picking up, but my guess is that retail – as in going out and shopping – is too much of a social event to be relegated to a computer screen.
The bigger question is something like, who knows what will happen to all this vacant space, and what sort of impact will this redevelopment have on the visual image of our cities…
