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.

What's Going On At the Corncob Towers?

If you happen to live in an area served by the tiny Skyline newspaper ("News of Lincoln Park, Old Town, River North and Gold Coast"), try to pick up a free copy before the next edition comes out Thursday.

The front page story is about the wackiness going on at Marina City.  We've heard in the past that the people running the residential portion of the building were imposing illogical, illegal, and draconian rules on folks, but this is the first article in print we've seen.

Skyline's article (online here ) details some of the unusual goings on in the building.  Apparently, if you want to record what's going on at the HOA meeting (which is your right under state law), you have to sign an agreement giving the HOA ownership of your recording.  Don't want to give up your rights? Then pay a $10,000 "fine" to the association.

More troubling is that the HOA is asserting something its calling "common law copyright" over all photographs of Marina City.  First, let's be clear -- there is no such thing as "common law copyright."  The notion of "common law copyright" was struck down by U.S. Supreme Court court in  its first copyright case back in 1834 (online here ).  Moreover, you can't copyright a building.  You can trademark it.  But even if you do, you cannot restrict other people from taking pictures of it.  That's federal law.  Allow us to quote United States Code, Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 120.

Scope of exclusive rights in architectural works

(a) Pictorial Representations Permitted. - The copyright in an architectural work that has been constructed does not include the right to prevent the making, distributing, or public display of pictures, paintings, photographs, or other pictorial representations of the work, if the building in which the work is embodied is located in or ordinarily visible from a public place.

This is a battle that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland lost in 1988.  It sued to stop a photographer from selling posters of the museum.  The museum lost that case.  The Sixth Circuit court reaffirmed that photographers have a right to photograph buildings and sell those buildings.  You can read the federal court's ruling here .

One resident has already been fined $1,000 for crossing the HOA's line, and his landlord was dinged another $1,000 for violating the HOA's fictional copyright.  Maybe when the ice melts, Marina City will set up a toll booth in the river and collect money from all the tourists going by with cameras on the tour boats.  That should go over well with the city.

The real tragedy about all this is that it's been going on for so long.  We heard the rumblings about two years ago, which means it's been going on far longer than that.  There's nothing in the Chicago Tribune's deep archives about the Marina City antics.  Hopefully it or the Sun-Times will look into this as well.

Not surprisingly, no one from the HOA would talk to the Skyline newspaper.  Even the HOA lawyer wouldn't talk, and get this... he referred questions back to his client!  As a former journalist, I can tell you that may be an unprecedented move.  Maybe the Chicago Journal's lawyers (Skyline is owned by the Chicago Journal) can put Marina City in its place when it tries to collect money for the picture of the building on the front page of the newspaper.