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More news from the starter-castle market: Earlier today we alluded to the Chicago Tribune Magazine’s fun little weekend spread “Attack of the giant houses” in which various architects and psychiatrists had a go at the faux historic piles on Lincoln Park streets like Burling Street, and fawned over the modernist box that a member of the Pritzker clan is building (hey, don’t bite the hand that feeds you).
Yo’s truly is a little envious of the obscene wealth on display along Burling, as I’ve mentioned in a previous post. That said, I agree with much of what was said in the Trib. story. That is, some of these ostentatious homes forsake taste, and as a result come across as forbidding, slightly creepy giants that loom large over the street. When you have multiple city lots you can afford to set your house back from the street.
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Well, if they had set them back someone would be ragging on them for disrupting the street wall. There’s just no way to win if you’re rich enough.
All they have to do is set them back to the existing wall of the houses on the street. Don’t feel too sorry for them.
I have a different take on Burling Street.
I walked the 1800 and 1900 blocks of Burling St less than two weeks ago, and don’t find them any more vulgar than most blocks in the area.
Some of the homes were, I thought, strikingly attractive and a positive addition to the cityscape. The only home in the area I found outright offensive was the one on Orchard that Blair Kamin praises but that struck me as Fort Pritzker. Endow an architecture prize and you get a pass, I guess.
Just one person’s take: What’s going on is snotty, mindless rich-bashing – and nothing more. The architecture’s merely a hook for expressing sentiments that would otherwise be thought – well, vulgar and excessive are words that come to mind.
^ I agree with Joe. If these exact same houses were built in 1908, these blocks would be landmarked by now and considered some of the most charming in the city. Billionaires are going to be lavish in any era of time, so let it go.
Also, it’s enough with everybody and their setbacks. Personally, one of my favorite things about cities like NYC and Chicago is the fact that walls of brick and concrete are in your face when you walk around. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Setbacks are overrated–I think Naperville has a few..
Setbacks allow for “green space” and flower gardens. That’s why a lot of us like them. Is this just a “woman thing?”
Well Olmsted wasn’t a woman.
I like flowers and green space as well–that’s what parks and plazas are for. They are available for everybody to experience and enjoy. Some private garden in somebody’s front yard is of no use to me.
That’s what Chicago’s identity is–city. City means walls of concrete & brick with bustling activity interrupted by pockets of relaxing open space. Too many people are trying to privatize everything, thus bringing a suburban mentality into what should be thriving civic environment.
I don’t have that much issue with the houses that take up multiple city lots as long as they meet the street peacefully. How is this different from the historic homes in Kenwood on giant lots? I actually like most of the modern ones, especially the one on Orchard St. I think it blends in well. It is the homes suspended over a pit of a driveway with all that applied “historical bling� that makes me want to puke. This is an architecture that never existed. There never were homes that looked like that.
I side with Blair Kamin when he says; “Buildings should grow organically out of their eras, not seek to be overgrown recreations of their better-done architectural antecedents.�
Neighborhoods evolve in layers over time, and time and styles change. A big part of what makes a neighborhood interesting, desireable and livable is variety, not sameness.
Oh, and the gas lamps? Hello… It’s 2006.
I do believe that those homes are vulgar…….sorta like Donald Trump. That doesn’t mean I don’t want those homes and their owners in Chicago. Let them spend their money here. Let them pay ridiculous property taxes.
In the end it is good for the city.
ARRRRRRRRRRRGH
Gas Lamps, good god, I remember ComEd forcing buildings to remove them (they were ultra popular in late 70s vintage condo conversions, sort of the granite countertops of the era).
Some of these places are trying to be Parisian, but I find their look to be more Epcot Center.
I find the “Parisian” style of the mansions attractive… They fit in much better than any modernist or minimalist building would. Lincoln Park is meant for Classical architecture. Move the modern stuff to the South Loop.
aj aj aj
The architecture academics would tear you to shreds. Every time you build something new, you’re supposed to conform to the “idiom of the time”. Nobody knows what that means, but I looked it up, and it turns out that revivalism could be construed as the idiom of the time. So maybe you’re right.
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