Outline · [ Standard ] · Linear+ Chicago - Restoration/expansion Projects, current projects in Chicago

[Lukecuj]

article from Blair Kamin Chi Tribune:

DECO RESURRECTION
Striking $20 million Board of Trade restoration reveals Jazz Age skyscraper's inner beauty

By Blair Kamin
Tribune architecture critic
Published August 6, 2006


For years, the Chicago Board of Trade Building has been the lord of LaSalle Street -- a chiseled, perfectly proportioned Art Deco skyscraper that dominated the view down Chicago's prime financial artery.

Yet the Board of Trade lost some of its luster in recent years, not only because of competition from sleek new office towers on Wacker Drive but also from self-inflicted wounds that dulled the beauty of its interior.

Now, after a meticulous $20 million restoration, this Roaring '20s skyscraper (which actually was completed in 1930) has come roaring back.

Its Indiana limestone exterior has been repaired and carefully washed. And its interior public spaces have been brought back to their original grandeur, especially the stunning three-story arcade, where new lighting accentuates the jaw-dropping, Jazz Age drama.

Finished a year after the building celebrated its 75th anniversary, the project was directed by Chicago architect Gunny Harboe, whose credits include the exemplary restorations of such Loop landmarks as the Rookery and Reliance Buildings.

Harboe, who recently left Austin AECOM architects and engineers to start his own firm, did the job with his associate Douglas Gilbert and lighting consultants Schuler Shook. The original designers were the celebrated Chicago firm of Holabird & Root.

The Board of Trade thus becomes the latest Art Deco office tower in Chicago to get new life, following Lucien Lagrange's deft conversion of the Carbide and Carbon Building at 230 N. Michigan Ave. into a Hard Rock Hotel and Booth Hansen's equally skillful transformation of the Palmolive Building at 159 E. Walton St. into condominiums.

Style like this never goes out of style.

And it's a joy to have it back.

1. A LASALLE LANDMARK (see photo gallery for this and subsequent items)

Holabird & Root's design takes advantage of a special site, which results from a shift in the street grid at LaSalle Street and Jackson Boulevard and allows the Board of Trade Building to seem as though it is rising right in the middle of LaSalle. The stepped-back, 45-story tower was Chicago's tallest skycraper from 1930 to 1955.

In the restoration, crumbling limestone blocks were taken out and repaired. New steel anchors replaced deteriorated old ones. A water mist was used to loosen and wash the dirt off the facade after tests revealed that it would be gentler on the stone. New bollards and planters eventually will supplant the ugly Jersey barriers put up as a security precaution.

2. LIGHTING THE WAY

Before the restoration, the Board of Trade's Jackson Boulevard lobby was literally a dim version of its former self. Graceless can lights marred the ceiling, one example of how insensitive alterations had dulled the space's Art Deco dazzle.

Today, the lobby shines again. Reproductions of the cross-shaped Art Deco fixtures are back, with extra ones installed to make the lobby bright enough to meet modern standards. The new fixtures draw attention to stylized sheafs of wheat and other decorative flourishes above the main entrance.

3. AN ART DECO MASTERWORK


The most dramatic feature of the Board of Trade's interior, the three-story arcade set just south of the Jackson Boulevard lobby, stops you with its striking fusion of cool Machine Age efficiency and over-the-top Art Deco exuberance.

It's a space, not just a passageway, one that makes the Board of Trade entirely different from the elegant Art Deco street that slices through the old Field Building at 135 S. LaSalle St.

As the architecture critic Edward Keegan suggests in his fine little book about the Board of Trade, the arcade can be interpreted as a miniature version of the cityscape -- its black marble piers suggesting skyscrapers; its lighter cascading marble walls evoking clouds. Perhaps the most extraordinary feature is the sleek illuminated ceiling that wraps down the north- and south-end walls.

Now, like a city whose lights have been turned back on after being knocked out by a summer storm, the arcade's visual power has been fully restored.

Streamlined marble has been cleaned, nickel silver polished and lighting upgraded, including scalloped light sconces that were attached to the black marble piers in the 1940s. As a result, areas that were barely visible before, such as the delicate plaster ceiling, can be fully appreciated. So can the arcade's dazzling spatial complexity and its playfully designed terrazo tile.

4. MAILING IN STYLE

Harboe and his colleagues did some of their most extensive restoration in the east-west corridor that provides an alternate passageway to the north-south route that begins at the Jackson Boulevard lobby.

The architects ditched an old dropped ceiling for a new plaster one, revealing the original nickel silver crown molding in the process. They reproduced original beam-shaped light fixtures and restored the handsome old Art Deco mailboxes, even though they are too small to meet today's needs. (A new mail center has replaced them.)

5. JAZZ AGE FIZZ

Elevator lobbies and doors often get special attention in Art Deco skyscrapers and those at the Board of Trade are no different. Does the decoration on that elevator door represent a stylized sheaf of wheat or a martini glass? Maybe both. As part of the project, new elevator cabs match the historical look of the corridors.

Features such as these obviously are designed to attract tenants. But while it's tempting to say that the improvements are all about money -- this, after all, is the Board of Trade, a center of pure capitalism -- the restoration is also an act of enlightened stewardship, one that marks the resurgence of one of Chicago's great skyscrapers.

[Lukecuj]

Old Cook County Hospital while not yet on the path to restoration hopefully will soon.

From Chi Tribune:
County Hospital is worthy of historic listing, city says

By Johnathon E. Briggs
Tribune staff reporter
Published August 4, 2006

Survival prospects for the shuttered and crumbling Cook County Hospital took a turn for the better Thursday when the city Commission on Landmarks found that the 92-year-old building, site of the nation's first blood bank, met two criteria for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places.

The imposing terra cotta facade hospital at 1835 W. Harrison St. on the West Side is associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the nation's history and its Beaux-Arts/Classic Revival style possesses high artistic value, the commission found.

A listing on the national register does not guarantee that the hospital will be protected from demolition, but it would offer a significant financial incentive for developers: a tax credit for rehabilitation costs valued at an estimated $12 million or more.

The unanimous finding will be forwarded to the Illinois Historic Sites Advisory Council, a volunteer board of architects and historians, which next month will review the hospital's nomination prepared by Cook County Commissioner Mike Quigley.

If the council supports it, the nomination will proceed to the state Historic Preservation Agency which will forward its recommendation to the National Park Service. The Park Service will then decide whether to include the building on the nation's official list of nearly 79,000 cultural resources worthy of preservation. Backers of the nomination say a decision could come by the end of the year.

Speaking before the commission's vote, Quigley said that county commissioners recognize the "extraordinary historic value" of the building and the "historical firsts and human drama that took place" within its halls.

Jonathan Fine, president of the Preservation Chicago advocacy group, praised the city's finding, adding that saving the hospital has been "near and dear" to preservationists since 2003 when former County Board President John Stroger first sought to demolish the old hospital.

Interim board President Bobbie Steele supported saving the building from the wrecking ball.

In a letter submitted to the city landmarks commission, Steele said she supports the placement of the eight-story hospital on the register provided that it is considered without its four rear pavilions, which are scheduled for demolition.

The county is planning to reuse the main building, but those plans "will be compromised if the pavilions remain attached," Steele said in the letter.

"Having the building listed on the National Registry and providing for the demolition of the wings, Cook County government will be able to preserve the building's architectural and historic significance..." she added.

As part of their finding, city landmarks commissioners recommended that the nominators, Quigley and his senior policy analyst Jason Liechty, clarify the nomination to reflect that they seek only to preserve the administration building. The nomination briefly mentions the pavilions, which may have historic significance, according to the state Historic Preservation Agency, even though they were added years after the main building was constructed.

With or without the pavilions, commissioners agreed that the building should be saved.

Designed by German-born architect Paul Gerhardt Jr., the main building of Cook County Hospital was completed in 1914 with its pavilions added in 1914 and 1917. From the 1920s to the 1950s, the hospital was the largest medical institution in the world.

In the first decades of the 20th Century, so many immigrants were served by the hospital that it was dubbed by some as "Chicago's Statue of Liberty." It was home to the nation's first blood bank (1937), the nation's first trauma center (1966), the first female director of a major hospital, Dr. Rowine Hayes Brown (1974), and was where significant advances in the field of pathology and emergency medicine were made.

The old hospital, consisting of the main building, its four pavilions, the Receiving Building and other additions, closed in 2002, when a new county medical center-- Stroger Hospital--opened nearby.

In a March column, Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin described the hospital as "a sumptuous classical monument that symbolizes compassionate care for the poor."

[Lukecuj]

From GlobeSt


Oxford Lodging Buying 2nd, 3rd Downtown Hotel
By Robert Carr



Allerton HotelCHICAGO-San Francisco-based Oxford Lodging Advisory & Investment Group LLC is purchasing two hotels Downtown, including the 443-room Allerton Crowne Plaza Chicago on Michigan Avenue, between Huron and Superior streets, and the Holiday Inn City Centre at 300 E. Ohio. The company already bought the 357-room Inn of Chicago, also on Ohio Street, in February.
The company has partnered with Perry Capital of New York to buy the Allerton for about $70 million from FelCor Lodging LP, a subsidiary of FelCor Lodging Trust. Oxford plans to spend $10 million to renovate the property, similar to the property rehabilitation being completed on the Inn of Chicago.

“When we bought the property in February, we really exceeded our pro-forma expectations,” says Robert Kline, president and co-founder of Oxford. “The success of the property turnaround motivated us to take a look at others.”


He tells GlobeSt.com that another reason to make the purchases is that the convention center calendar is filling up very nicely in Chicago. “Mayor Daley has done a great job of promoting the city, and the convention center is expanding. They’ve also done a good job of reorganizing the convention authority. Meeting planners are considering Chicago in record numbers. You’ve got three legs to stand on in the hotel business, tourist, convention and business demand,” he says.
Kline says the company is buying the Holiday Inn from a pension fund in January, and may also consider a major renovation there. “Our plans are to renovate and reposition. Ultimately, our investors plan on selling to recapitalize on their investment, but we don’t have a timeline,” he says.

[editor]

I wonder if they'll do anything with that garish neon affair at the top. While i know the "Tip Top Tap" sign is a piece of Chicago history, I don't think it's anything to be proud of. I think it makes the whole building look seedy.

[Lukecuj]

I wonder if they'll do anything with that garish neon affair at the top.  While i know the "Tip Top Tap" sign is a piece of Chicago history, I don't think it's anything to be proud of.  I think it makes the whole building look seedy.

i kind of like that sign.... it's a nostalgic left over.

[Reaperducer]

I think it helps reinforce the sterotype of chicago as a beer and bowling town. Chicago is classier than that.

I really wish my construction company could get a large contract like some of these building projects. Generally we only work on NYC remodeling projects, but we've also worked in Chicago if the contract is large enough. When you work in construction sometimes you have to relocate to where there's work going on.