We’ve enjoyed Lynn Becker’s architectural treatises in local rags and his entertaining Web site, Repeat, but we feel compelled to point out that the new residential highrise, The Bernardin, contains rental apartments, not condos, as Becker has written Repeatedly both online and in print. You would think someone might have noticed the eight-story banner draped over the building in the photo Becker ran with his story, proclaiming “Leasing office now open.” The Chicago Reader, which published the piece in print, also didn’t quibble about whether the units were for sale or for rent.
Apart from that oversight, we couldn’t agree more with Becker’s take on The Bernardin, a new tower at Chicago and Wabash: “What better way to honor the memory of a beloved spiritual leader than with a cheesy condo [sic] tower?” Becker astutely points out the silliness of “the classicists at the gate” while acknowledging that the building’s friendly if zany base softens the blandness of “20 stories of condos in the blankly modernist style that was all the rage 40 years ago in the anonymous towers put up along North Sheridan Road.”