What’s left of Michael Reese Hospital
Demolition has started on the old Main building at Michael Reese Hospital, the 1907 Schmidt Garden Martin building which was the ONLY one that the city was planning to preserve, despite the presence of 8 Walter Gropius designs on the hospital campus. Then in the last few months, the city admitted that the building – which it has owned for over a year, was in severe disrepair and further endangered by squatters, which is a hell of a stewardship model if you ask me. With ownership come basic responsibilities. Check out Lee Bey’s recent blog.
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Chicago October 2009
1. Save Gropius Buildings at Michael Reese
Blair Kamin in today’s Tribune makes the case for saving the Gropius buildings at the former Michael Reese Hospital. He also takes to task the city’s spokesperson for an indefensible “we are proceeding” position. This is no longer an overnight development for the Olympics and it is no longer a job for the knuckle-dragging mouth-breathing sector of the development community. It is not that hard to reuse some or all of these buildings, and now that we needn’t follow the dictates of the Olympic village, we can use variety in height and scale (as Gropius did) to make the south lakefront more urbanistically interesting than it would have been under the previous plan. Continue Reading
Dumb Down
Well, the Public Building Commission is taking bids (RFQ actually) to demolish ALL of the Michael Reese campus for the Olympic Village, now that the IOC committee has been shown a lovely vision of loveliness that could only come from renderings and never from reality. This means not only the recently documented eight buildings by Walter Gropius (the only ones in Illinois) but also the Schmidt, Garden and Martin building that was shown as being preserved in the plans for the village. This is dumb, and both Landmarks Illinois and Preservation Chicago have said so. Continue Reading