Forgotten Chicago
Clarke House, 1836
I do several local Chicagoland coach tours each year for the Art Institute of Chicago (as well as an international tour every year or two) and this fall we came up with Forgotten Chicago, which explored northern and southern edges of the city and I tried – mostly successfully – to find sites that most people didn’t know about – or forgot.
First, we went up to the northwest corner of the city near O’Hare airport and drove past one of two old farmhouses in the area, the 1850s Wingert House on Canfield before stopping for a tour of Chicago’s oldest house. Now, most people think Chicago’s oldest house is the Clarke House, a heavy-timber structure built in 1836 and moved twice, most recently in the late 1970s when it was restored near the Glessner House Museum in Prairie Avenue, close to its original location. Continue Reading
San Antonio and my Myth of Eternal Return
Now is always better than Then. That might seem like an odd statement coming from a historic preservationist/heritage conservationist, but it is especially true in our field. The decision to rehabilitate, restore or preserve a building, structure, site or community is a decision about the future, not the past.
Our reasons include the past: past history, past cultural achievements, even past architecture and design and art. But the decision is always about the future: we imagine the future will be better if we retain these elements of the past. And we are usually right. Now is better than Then because the best elements of the past are with us, enriching the Now, humanizing the Now, and making Now more beautiful. Continue Reading
Marfa, Texas
Marfa, Texas is a town with one stop light named after a character in a Dostoevsky novel and a far drive from just about everywhere else in the world. But its isolation hasn’t prevented it from becoming a destination and famous place for longer than I have been on earth. You can begin with the lovely Second Empire Presidio County Courthouse in the center of town, preserved as part of the great courthouse preservation program of the Texas Historical Commission.
The courthouse square seems unfinished, with most of the buildings on one end of it, closer to the intersection two blocks away with the road that matters, the one that connects to Alpine, at 5700 people nearly thrice as large, and El Paso, 3 hours distant. Marfa has some great buildings from the early 20th century, most notably the Hotel Paisano, with plaques aplenty describing its architectural landmark status and shops dedicated to the Marfa’s first great film, James Dean, Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Burton’s GIANT (Dennis Hopper also appeared). Continue Reading
Age Value and the 50-year rule
Field memorial, Daniel Chester French, Graceland Cemetery, Chicago
The latest issue of Forum Journal (from the National Trust for Historic Preservation – you can join here.) has an article questioning the 50-year rule. The National Register of Historic Places was created in 1966 and shortly thereafter the Park Service promulgated policies for listing properties on the National Register. Eight categories of properties have to jump some more hurdles to become landmarks: birthplaces, gravesites, cemeteries, memorials, relocated buildings, reconstructed buildings, houses of worship, and buildings less than 50 years old.
Now, first it should be noted that I can name properties in each of those categories that ARE on the National Register of Historic Places, but they had to prove extra significance. Continue Reading
Duisburg
A month ago I was in Duisburg, the Ruhrgebiet city in Germany that is today a scene of tragedy following the death of 19 attendees at the Love Parade, an event held in Berlin for almost twenty years after the fall of the Wall. A tunnel to the festival ground in a former railyard became choked with people and a stampede led to death and hundreds of injuries. The event will never happen again, and an inquiry is beginning. The human tragedy is paramount, but it also represents a setback for a city that was beginning to reinvent itself. The Duisburg I saw this June was very different from the city I saw in 1982 and 1986, when it was still in the throes of the loss of heavy industry, coal and smokestacks that built it. It was dark and plain, and even the commercial center had few felicities. In 2010 the center is marked by the city’s new icon, a Niki Saint-Phalle that is more colorful than anything I remember from the 1980s. Continue Reading
Lake Geneva
One of Chicago’s great architecture and preservation supporters has been kind enough to attend many of my public lectures over the years and become a good friend. He asked me to present a lecture to the Lake Geneva Conservancy this September for their annual benefit, and as a prelude gave Felicity and I a tour of Lake Geneva this past week. The lecture ruminates on the past and future of heritage conservation, and Lake Geneva presents excellent examples of the various facets of the history of preserving buildings.
We began at Black Point, the Seipp-Peterson house, built in 1888 by Adolph Cudell for the brewer Conrad Seipp as a summer vacation home. Its preservation over the past decade represents a fairly recent phenomenon dating to the early 1990s, namely the NIMBY house museum backlash, where nearby property owners, guarding their privacy, object to public tours of houses. Black Point responded, as Oak Park did in 1996, by limiting the tours and the accessibility – like the Seipps and Petersons, you must arrive by boat. Despite the limitations, the backlash has been strong. Continue Reading
Amsterdam School
Amsterdam is a wonderful city for architecture and urban planning. I was struck on a recent visit by the Burgess & Parsons nature of the place: like Chicago it is a series of concentric rings that neatly describe the city’s development over time. You can actually tell how far you are from the center by the style of buildings. Continue Reading
President Lincoln’s Cottage
We held the retirement party for longtime National Trust President Richard Moe at President Lincoln’s Cottage in Washington, D.C., one of the newest National Trust historic sites and a fitting place to pay tribute to a leader who helped transform the preservation movement into a vital, relevant force for how people decide the future of their communities in this country. Dick Moe took a collection of mansions and made it a representation of our multiple cultures, from Acoma Sky Pueblo to the East Side Tenement Museum, from Tuoro Synagogue to the Gaylord Building, from the Farnsworth House to the Hotel De Paris. He ushered the fight against sprawl and the struggle for sustainability into the heart of the preservation movement. You can’t posit a more transformative leader. Moe will remain involved at Lincoln Cottage, an 1840s Victorian cottage where the 16th President spent a full quarter of his Presidency.
I was intrigued by the interpretation of the Lincoln Cottage. First, a separate historic building, a lovely tile-roofed Renaissance Revival building from 1905 serves as the Robert H. Smith Visitors Center. This was one of the first LEED certified Gold historic rehabs, fulfilling the sustainability mission Moe set out for the Trust three years ago. Continue Reading
SAH in Chicago!
Well, it is finally here after years of planning. The Society of Architectural Historians, an international organization promoting the study of the built environment, is having its 63rd Annual Meeting in Chicago this week. I have the honor of being Local Chair and I am excited to welcome so many friends and colleagues to a city whose architecture has always been central to its identity.
Over 500 architectural historians from everywhere will be here, and many are taking tours of every kind of local landmark from the Gold Coast to the Farnsworth House; from Oak Park to Hyde Park; from the Reliance and Rookery and Marquette and Monadbock Buildings of the Loop to the grand mansions of the North Shore. I have Terry Tatum to thank for coordinating a dizzing array of tours led by local experts, and Sally Kalmbach for coordinating a medium-sized army of volunteers manning all of the scholarly paper sessions on Thursday through Saturday, as well as tours and special events. THANK YOU!
Pleasant Home
I have been involved with the Pleasant Home Foundation in some fashion almost since it was set up in the early 90s by a group that included former SAIC President Tony Jones. I moved to Oak Park in the later 90s and had a regular gig talking to groups there every May, offering insights into the relationship of Pleasant Home’s architect, George Washington Maher, and his more famous contemporary, Frank Lloyd Wright. Maher designed Pleasant Home in 1897 and you could argue he achieved many aspects of the Prairie School idiom a year or two before Wright. (The name comes from the streets – Pleasant and Home – whose intersection it occupies.)
The house has the broad eaves, overhanging hipped roof and decidedly horizontal massing of the Prairie School. It also has urns flanking the entrance and is centered on the hearth/fireplace, a device Wright also used.