Tuesday Trivia: 10 Things You Probably Don't Know About Marina City

Yesterday we published a review of the new book Marina City: Bertrand Goldberg's Urban Vision.  Today, we present

Ten Things You Probably Don't Know About Marina City

1. You've heard of the retail and office complex at "Block 37" in the Loop.  Well, Marina City is on "Block One" of the City of Chicago plan.
2. The land Marina city sits on was formerly a rail yard.
3. Marina City was originally called Labor Center.
4. The original plan for Marina City called for two 40-story towers, and a third 10-story tower.
5. Marina City once had its own ice skating rink and supermarket.
6. Marina City's architect, Bertrand Goldberg, first experimented with curved concrete in the design he made for the city of Nashville's sewage treatment plant.
7. Marina City was built for the Chicago janitors' union.
8. Ten years before Marina City became a reality, its architect designed a smaller, but very similar, set of twin towers for a South Side motel that was never built.
9. The boatyard underneath the Marina City complex was once known as Phillips Pier 66, after the oil company.
10. What is now the House of Blues was called the Field Television Center at the time it opened, because WFLD Television had its studios there.

Review: Marina City: Bertrand Goldberg's Urban Vision

"The Corncob Towers." "The Pie Spires." "Aunt Flo's Curlers." People may not always know what the twin towers on State Street at the Chicago River are called, but they at least know them.  Bertrand Goldberg's penultimate architectural creation, Marina City (300 North State Street), has inspired and amazed a generation of tourists and locals.  Now a new book chronicles how the buildings we see today were shaped, and what went on behind the scenes.

The book is called Marina City: Bertrand Goldberg's Urban Vision (published by Princeton Architectural Press) and its 176 pages are packed with great information about the development of the buildings, starting from inspiration through construction and on to occupation.

Many people don't realize it, but Marina City was Chicago, and America's first downtown revitalization project.  It proved that if you built a city-within-a-city, you could attract people to the urban core where they would live, work, and thrive.  Since then the idea has been copied and expanded in Chicago and around the world.  Today a responsible developer wouldn't think of embarking on a huge project without considering the live+work+play model.  But in the 1960's, a time when suburban cul-de-sac developers and auto dealers were demonizing America's urban cores, this was considered revolutionary.

More than just the story of a building, this book tells the tale of the people behind Marina City -- the deals that had to be brokered, the challenges faced, the hurdles surmounted; with enough politics and intrigue to make this a truly Chicago story.

As someone who travels around the world frequently, whenever I mention Chicago to someone, I cringe in anticipation of the inevitable reference to Al Capone.  But did you know that Marina City was celebrated around the world as a new symbol of Chicago's renaissance?  It was influential enough to supplant Capone as the first notion people had of Chicago.  American Airlines published a guide to Chicago that featured Marina City on its cover.   Even in Cold War-era Moscow, Marina City was known and considered a symbol of the city.

As interesting as all the facts and background material are, it's the photos that really make this book.  Historic pictures and diagrams of Marina City that show it with the old TV tower still on top.  There are pictures of the skyscrapers when they were new and clean, and not festooned with twinkle lights and blow-up dolls as they frequently are now.  Perhaps if today's residents of Marina City read this book, they might treat their home with a little more respect and pride.

If you have even a passing interest in Chicago's history or architecture, I recommend picking this book up.  It's a quick and easy read and contains a lot of good information.

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Details:
Marina City: Bertrand Goldberg's Urban Vision
By Igor Marjanovic and Katerina Rüedi Ray
Published May 26, 2010 by Princeton Architectural Press
176 pages - Paperback
US $35.00, UK £25.00

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Note:
This book was sent to me unsolicited by Princeton Architectural Press.  I have received no monetary or other compensation for this review.  If you would like to send a book for review, contact me at editor@chicagoarchitecture.info and I'll send you the mailing address.

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If you're interested in the book, here's an Amazon.com link allowing you to buy it at a discount. By using this link, you help financially support this web site.

Chicago Architecture History Hidden In Plain Sight

There are lots of reasons people avoid hospitals.  Superstition. Fear of illness. Feeling guilty about one's own state of health.  But it should be stated that Northwestern Memorial Hospital's Lakeshore campus is among the most inviting medical facilities I've ever been to.

Even if you're feeling fine, there are still two good reasons to stop by Northwestern's Feinberg Pavilion at 251 East Huron Street.  First, it's because that is the location of the only 24-hour Starbucks in Chicago where you are actually likely to be able to get a seat.  And second, because it contains a hidden museum.

On the third floor of the Feinberg Pavilion is the Florence and Ike Sewell Museum. Or at least that's what a plaque in the lobby claims.  I haven't been up there yet, though it is supposed to be open to the general public.

If, like me, you don't make it past the Starbucks stand, you can still soak in some of Chicago's architectural history while enjoying your iced venti tuxedo.  The panels on the walls of the Starbucks seating area aren't just decorations -- they're artifacts.

The limestone panels are part of the museum's collection, and are all that remains of Passavant Memorial Hospital, named for the Lutheran saint William Passavant who founded a number of hospitals and orphanages across middle-America in the 1800's.

Passavant's Chicago hospital was the one of the predecessors of the medical monster that is now Northwestern.  Passavant Memorial merged with Chicago Wesley Memorial to form Northwestern in 1972.

The 325-bed neo-gothic building was designed by legendary Chicago architecture firm Holabird & Root in 1929 to compliment the design of Northwestern University next door.  It was built at 303 East Superior Street, which is now the location of Northwestern Universtiy's Robert Lurie Medical Research Center.

While the hospital is long gone, the panels remain.  They depict the leaves of the acanthus plant, which is often used in stylized forms for architectural details.  In this case, the panels are installed on the walls of the new hospital where they exist in plain sight, but most people don't realize they're there, or their significance.

330 North Wabash Renovation Complete

Got a press release today stating that the major renovations at 330 North Wabash are now complete.  You may remember 330 as the old IBM Building or One IBM Plaza, Mies Van Der Rohe's massive black slab along the Chicago river that used to loom so menacingly over the Sun-Times building before it was neutered by Donald Trump.

There have been complaints on the internet from people who think the treatment of the lobby has been rather ruthless, but for the 99% of Chicagoand who only see this building from afar, no damage has been done.

The building is interesting to watch at night because the top dozen floors form a black hole in the city's skyline while office lights tinkle and burn in other buildings around them.  It's because that section of the building is being redeveloped as a luxury hotel.  There is no opening date for that hotel yet.  At a public event about six months ago, the developer said he was in no hurry to complete the project, especially considering the state of the economy.

The full press release about the redevelopment of 330 North Wabash follows:

Slice of Life: 444 Colors

A few years ago the facade of 444 North Michigan Avenue got a minor facelift.  Mostly it was an angular translucent glass visor with the number 444 superimposed on it.  But the best part of this is the nightly LED light show that runs the visor through a riot of colors.  It's somehow both subtle and startling.  Entertaining without being obnoxious.

444 isn't the only building in the city with an LED light show.  Check out the office building next to the Goodman Theater Center at night and you'll see all kinds of shapes and designs light up on parade -- even the occasional American flag.

What Makes Two Buildings One Building?

What is it exactly that makes two buildings one building?  Usually it's some kind of structural continuity.  But in the case of Chicago's beloved Wrigley Building, it is this sliver of a skywalk and a slip of a breezeway at the base of the structures.  From most angles, you can't even see the skywalk connecting 400 North Michigan Avenue with 410 North Michigan Avenue and the two halves of the Wrigley complex look like one uniform structure.   But as is so often true -- life is more complicated than that.

And in spite of what any number of bad tour guides will tell you, NO the building is not named after the stadium, and NO, the Wrigley Building is not owned by the Tribune Company.

Slice of Life: Snowstorm - January 7, 2010

Walking around town in the snow today with my CrappyCameraPhone™.  It's very quiet in Chicago.  For a time, I was the only person at Caribou Coffee across from Millennium Park.  Normally, getting a seat here is impossible during daylight hours, let alone at lunchtime.

Could This Be Chicago's Nerdiest Starbucks?

In Los Angeles there are certain restaurants where one goes in order to meet the right people to do a movie deal.

In Chicago there are certain functions one must attend in order to do a high-level political deal.

In Seattle there are certain Starbucks one must visit in order to do a big dot-com deal.

Combining the last two items in that list -- it is quite likely that the Starbucks at 430 North Clark Street could be the nerdiest Starbucks in Chicago.

It's not because of the number of laptops in evidence on an average weekday.  There are far more at the one on Rush Street.  No, it's because it's the closest Starbucks to Google's Chicago office.

Google has the seventh, eighth, and ninth floors of 20 West Kinzie Street -- the same building that houses the Amalfi Hotel, and is across the street from Harry Caray's.  And while Google undoubtedly has top-notch coffee available in its Playskool-colored offices, there's something about Starbucks that makes it irresistible to hard core nerds.  And working for Google is the very definition of hard core nerd.


This is more than a theory.  On an average afternoon, various people can be heard discussing various computer-related topics far more often and loudly than is normal for a midwestern coffee shop.  If these be Googlers, they give it away by their discussion of such things as Feedburner, which was a Chicago-grown tech company that Google ate and is now part of the mini Googleplex at 20 West Kinzie.

Does this mean that your local blog will get "discovered" and you'll be able to do a big high-tech deal by schmoozing the regulars at the Clark and Hubbard Starbucks store?  I'm not promising anything; but save me one of the squishy chairs by the big bay window.

The Google sign outside 20 West Kinzie

On Track To The Past

Whether most people see them or not, railroads are still the lifeblood of Chicago's economy.  But there once was a time when train lines were far more intertwined with daily life in the city than they are now.

This old line runs along West Carroll Avenue -- a street in River North many people don't even know exists.  It carried newsprint to the old Chicago Sun-Times Building before trucks made the line redundant.  This was long before the Sun-Times building was torn down to make way for the Trump International Hotel and Tower (401 North Wabash Street).

Mayor Daley would like to use the tracks to run a trolley or light rail service from Union Station to Michigan Avenue.  But these days a lot of Hizzonor's dreams are going unfulfilled for reasons that are beyond the scope of this blog.

Interestingly, the reason the old Sun-Times Building was located along the Chicago River is the same reason the Chicago Tribune's current print house at the Freedom Center (777 West Chicago Avenue) is also located on the river -- so that newsprint could be brought in by barge.  I've never seen any old pictures of newsprint being unloaded at the Sun-Times site, and I've read that the Tribune has never used its barge unloading capability at the Freedom Center.

Use Any Old Phone For A DIY Architecture Tour

There are any number of applications that will help you explore Chicago with the help of your fancy shmancy smart phone.  Heck, we even have a web app of our own coming out soon (Shhh!  Point your iPhone at Towrs.com).  But you don't need the latest high-tech gadget to take an architectural tour of the Tribune Tower (435 North Michigan Avenue).

The Tribune Company now has a phone number you can call from your regular cell phone to get a tour of its magnificent building.  It's 312/222-TOUR.

WGN Radio talk show host John Williams narrates four different tours of the historic building -- one about the various stones embedded in its facade, one about the building's grotesques (the correct name for its gargoyles), one about the lobby and a fourth that is an overview of the entire building.

It's a clever way to promote the building to tourists and passers-by and since Tribune owns most of the 312-222 prefix, all it costs the company is the price of a fancy answering machine while generating valuable goodwill.

And don't feel like you have to stand around and gawk at the building with all the tourists.  The audio tours are just as interesting listening from the comfort of your office phone.

Status Update: Children's Memorial Hospital

This is probably the six zillionth status update we've done for the new Children's Memorial Hospital (225 East Chicago Avenue). But I happened to be in a hospital and managed to snap this picture of the back side of the new building.  Looks pretty good so far.  You can see the area on the left setback where the green roof and play area will be, and how the building cantilevers over its right side at the same point.

Slice of Life: Pools and Rivers

On this damp day (back in October), no one was interested in swimming in the East Bank Club's rooftop pools (500 North Kingsbury).  And no one in their right mind would think about swimming in the North Branch of the Chicago River just next door.  But the Hudson River is now clean enough for people to swim around Manhattan.  Maybe in our lifetimes, we'll see a beach in downtown Chicago like the one in Paris.  Maybe at Wolf Point?  I wonder what it would take to make that happen.

More on the Leonidas Chocolate Opening

A couple of weeks ago we noted the impending opening of a Leonidas chocolate shop at 59 East Chicago Avenue.

One of our readers wrote in to let us know that this isn't the first Leonidas in Chicago.  A Chicago Tribune article shows that there was once one on LaSalle Street back in the 1990's.  We haven't been able to track down why or when it closed, but at least it's coming back to the city.

Slice of Life: Streeterville Obelisk

In a scene vaguely reminiscent of 2001: A Space Oddyssey, the giant black monolith that is Lake Point Tower (505 North Lake Shore Drive) rises over the new park in Streeterville.

OK, maybe I'm the only one who sees it.  Maybe you see something else.

It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas (2009 Edition, Part 12)

Pop-up stores are the big thing in New York this year.  Chicago had a bunch of them last year, and a couple have shown up this year.  This one was run by eBay and positioned outside of the Tribune Tower (435 North Michigan Avenue), but only for a few hours.

Microsoft also had one nearby in the Tribune Tower annex (formerly the Hammacher Schlemmer store, formerly the WGN Building).  It was pimping one of those play-along-with-the-band games on the Xbox platform.

Chicago's Seven Storefront Studios

The banners promise that Loyola University's new $400,000 streetfront television studio in The Clare at Water Tower (55 East Pearson Street) will open in autumn 2009, but I think we can safely say that isn't going to happen.  Especially considering that Loyola only got its permit to build the studio on October 2nd.

Loyola's will be the seventh streetfront studio in Chicago.  WGN radio was the modern pioneer with this in Chicago (though it's been done in other cities since the 50's).  720 was quickly followed by WMAQ, WLS-TV and eventually WBBM-TV.   I always thought WFLD had a great opportunity to open one when the Bennigans at Michigan Plaza closed, but that opportunity was missed.

Of course, WGN-TV (2501 West Bradley Place) and WTTW are half-way to the suburbs, so there's no point in them even trying.

Sometimes these are called "storefront" studios instead of "streetfront."  In that case, WLUP and WKQX are actually the leaders, since they have had a storefront presence in the Merchandise Mart (222 Mart Plaza) for years.

Storefront studios in Chicago:

• Loyola University: The Clare at Water Tower (55 East Pearson Street)
• WBBM-TV (2): Block 37 (22 West Washington Street)
• WGN (720): Tribune Tower (435 North Michigan Avenue)
• WKQX (101.1): Second floor, Merchandise Mart (222 Merchandise Mart Plaza)
• WLS-TV (7): 190 North State Street
• WLUP (97.9): Second floor, Merchandise Mart (222 Merchandise Mart Plaza)
• WMAQ (5): 401 North Michigan Avenue

WLUP's storefront at the Merchandise Mart

WKQX's storefront at the Merchandise Mart

Chicago Brick of the Day: Alphabet City

We're not showcasing just one, but 26 bricks today.  These alphabet bricks are embedded in the facade at the newish office building at 405 West Superior Street.  They start with "A" at the roof, and progress down to "Z" at knee level.

The letter "Q" is unusually large, and echoed in the building's address plate as "4Q5."  It's the same style of Q used in the logo of the Quarasan company, an education company which is a tenant in the building, but the building's official name is still 405 West Superior.

Status Update: Staybridge Suites

It's been a while (April 9th to be exact) since we checked in on the new Staybridge Suites hotel going up at 127 West Huron Street.  And... it looks exactly the same as it did seven months ago.

Compare the then and now pictures:

April 9, 2009

November 9, 2009

I guess we'll try again in a couple more months.

Status Update: The Parc Huron

The Parc Huron (469 West Huron Street) continues to climb into the sky in the burgeoning former warehouse district that is River North.  Interesting use of balconies as texture.  Hopefully they won't end up festooned with tacky out-of-season Christmas lights like some trailer park in the sky.  You'd be surprised which brand new buildings that's already happened to.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas (2009 edition, part 3)

Inspired by our series of posts about Christmas in Chicago (1 & 2), one of the usual suspects e-mailed in a few photos of her own.  It looks like the Christmas train display is now up and running in the basement of the John Hancock Center (875 North Michigan Avenue).

If you haven't been before, you should make an effort to go this year.  Or even better, make it a family tradition.  

Each day (according to Google Analytics), thousands of people from the suburbs read this blog.  This is a good year to take the kids into the city for a day of holiday walking around.  Look at the trains at the John Hancock Center, then walk down Michigan Avenue and get some popcorn at Garrett's (625 North Michigan Avenue). Next, wander into the Loop to look at the display windows at Macy's on State Street (111 North State Street), swing by Daley Plaza to take in the city's official Christmas tree sharing the plaza with the massive Picasso statue (55 West Randolph Street), then grab some hot chocolate and enjoy the sights in Millennium Park.  

The whole thing will cost you less than ten bucks. Do it every year to teach your children the joys of the holidays, and that Christmas spirit doesn't have a big price tag or come from Wal-Mart -- it's just the joy of being with someone you love.

Need tips on getting in, getting out, getting around and things to see for free with your kids?  Just e-mail me at editor@chicagoarchitecture.info and I'll be happy to help you out.

Now -- more pictures of the trains.  And thanks to everyone who e-mails in their pictures of Christmas in Chicagoland.