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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 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 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

October 13, 2009
The Single Level Largesse

In a quest to directly avoid any specifically Olympics related topics today…

Recently, the Oak Park YMCA recently announced cancellation of its plans to move from its older, multi level facility in the middle of Oak Park, to a sprawling single level facility in a nearby town. Fundraising in this economic environment wasn’t going as hoped. The comparison of both facilities provides an interesting contrast, and a lesson in city planning.

The existing facility was built in the late 1950’s, admittedly in need of repairs and upgrades. Like many YMCA’s of its day, it located a gymnasium on a second floor overtop a natatorium located on a basement level. Smaller spaces – meeting rooms, locker rooms and the like – filled in around the larger spaces. This layout allowed the overall facility to fit on a tight building site, surrounded by other buildings – a city site. It was common for athletic facilities to be juxtaposed in the heart of the towns in which they were located. Consider the 1893 YMCA Association Building in Chicago. It not only stacked a gymnasium over a swimming pool, but fit a 1000 seat auditorium in between the two spaces. Athletic facilities in the middle of the neighbourhood they drew from contributed to an overall public well being.

1893 YMCA Association Building, Chicago. Arcade Place elevation. Note the varying window heights above the "Burrito Beach" sign, indicating previous double height spaces over what was the ground floor natatorium

The proposed facility was spread out over a single level, requiring much more land. It had a parking lot that met village ordinances for providing parking facilities; the original building did not. To digress: I recall a friend attending grad school at a university in west Texas. He spoke of driving from the student dorms to go workout in the campus gym – an oxymoron, I thought.

Back to the subject: though the sprawling site had the advantage of playing fields, it drew on a wider spread population. The concept encouraged users to approach the new facility by car, not on foot.

These days, opinion is that athletic facilities must fit on one, maybe no more than two levels.

It’s like comparing the former Chicago Athletic Association with the newer Olympic Training Facility in Colorado Springs. Both produced successful Olympians, it very different settings. They also speak of how we live our lives in both eras: one being an extroverted part of a community, the other being an introvert, hidden behind suburban fences.

October 2, 2009
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.

September 30, 2009
Architecture in Motion

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.

September 29, 2009
Is your morning commute still fun to drive?

Time was, driving was a fun recreation. From a casual Sunday excursion, to a cross country trip, to something energetic like Nascar racing, the experience generated by being catapulted through ever changing scenery was exciting.

A happy way to commute…

Automotive design enhanced the experience. Swooping masses of sheet metal clad in bright colours, outlined in shiny chrome, housed behemoth power plants and sumptuous interiors swathed in deluxe upholstery.

It was a see and be seen experience. People actually drove with their windows down, weather permitting. That morning commute into work just didn’t seem half bad.

But then, the morning commute was far shorter then than it may be now. The US Census Bureau has since started to measure the number of “extreme commuters” who spend more than 90 minutes a trip commuting from home to work. Regardless how fanciful one’s wheels may be, that much time down the same roads in the same traffic day in and day out can’t help but become dreary.

And dreary may best describe current automotive design. Body styles are generated by current trends in wind tunnel testing; cars are distinguishable only by slight nuances in wrinkles or folds along sheet metal. Grey – or rather, silver – is a popular colour. Interiors offer much the same choice, perhaps with a cloth or leather option; higher priced cars sport two toned colour schemes.

Given parameters, powerplants have improved but that may signal the difference in concept. New powerplants exhibit engineering prowess, as does the styling. Styling – for the sake of styling – played a larger role when the morning commute was still fun.

Imagine the morning commute in this !

Still doesn’t say why we started living ninety minutes away.

September 26, 2009
Architecture as a Machine

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.

Chicago, Burlington & Quincy RR Roundhouse, Aurora, Illinois

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.

September 24, 2009
A Vacant Building in Chicago

In writing about vacant buildings and storefronts in Oak Park, one would think that I’ve neglected to mention vacancies in Chicago. Whenever I show friends the Crown Fountain at Millennium Park, they always ask about a darkened Venetian Gothic building across Michigan Avenue. It’s the former Chicago Athletic Association; opened in 1894, architect Henry Ives Cobb.

The Chicago Athletic Association Clubhouse

The Chicago Athletic Association was a gentlemen’s club, made up of the who’s who of Chicago at the time. Marshall Field was a member, the office building that bore his name was half a block north. At one point, there was a ten year waiting list to become a member, it was that sought after. It was to have opened in time for the 1893 Columbian Exposition and World’s Fair, but was just a bit late. Everyone’s human. In the mid 1920’s, a hotel wing was added to the building, the architecture firm being Schmidt, Garden and Martin – Hugh Garden being a transplant to Chicago from Toronto. To this day, the CAA clubhouse commands a breathtaking view of Lake Michigan.

A couple years ago, a friend brought me to have lunch in the Dining Room, introducing me to various members who were part of the 1960 US Olympic Team. They trained at the CAA. That was back when private clubs like this sponsored Olympians, and would-be Olympians trained in the splendour of very exclusive, very urban facilities.

To mark my own place in history, I believe that I may be one of the last few to have swam a mile in the pool. A friend was a member, who found a way to get me in before the Club closed. I swam in the same pool as did Al Capone and Bill Thompson, separated by a few decades.

The Former Illinois Athletic Club, now dormitories for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago

The exclusive gentlemen’s clubs of Chicago – and other clubs of that era – defined their members. The members of the Chicago Athletic Association were very different than were the members of the Illinois Athletic Club, just a block south on Michigan Avenue; those members were very different from those of the Union League, or the Germania Club, and so on. Modern day Chicagoans network differently – they live further away, and have a multitude of distractions and entertainment sources that didn’t exist a century ago. Most of the old clubs have withered away, remembered only in folklore.

The Chicago Athletic Association was affected too. Its membership shrank, the clubhouse became increasingly expensive to properly maintain. When a condominium developer offered a princely sum to the membership to purchase this building, they accepted. The building has sat empty ever since, the condominium market having taken a nose dive.

My bit of urban folklore to throw into the mix? The CAA sponsored various athletic teams around Chicago; they once granted permission to a fledging, northside baseball team they sponsored to use the CAA logo on their uniforms under the agreement that the CAA would never charge this team for the logo’s use or display. While the CAA has folded, this baseball team (to remain nameless) is wildly popular though its success is arguable; the team itself is fetching an even more princely sum to continue, even though it’s never won a title or pennant in memory.

September 22, 2009
A Tale of Two Cities – the Skyscraper and the Suburb

The Frank Lloyd Wright Studio in Oak Park

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.

September 20, 2009
A Courtyard Alley in Chicago’s Loop

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.

September 17, 2009
Walkable Alleys of Oak Park and Elsewhere

Arcade Place at LaSalle Street, Chicago

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.

The Accountants' office at Hunter Court, Oak Park

September 14, 2009