Comments ( 51 )

• Come on, this is called architecture? Why is nothing being done to keep the buildings currently on site to be saved??? Instead we are going to get a very bland piece of architecture> A typical condo building with a huge base serving as parking for surbabans and surbaban folk trying to act like they love the city> I hope this one never gets built!!

• The parking podium is 6 floors. I seriously doubt that need that much parking for only 47 units.

  At most, I would say 3-4 floors are parking and the other 2-3 have active uses, like the health club mentioned above.

• Yep, it found its niche. The city is very lacking in overpriced generic condos, and luckily the Huron stepped in to save the day. What would yuppies do without them?

• The historic town homes on that site are to be demolished? How is it possible? A beautiful piece of Chicago history to be replaced by this horrendously bland pile. Where are the preservationists? Is there anything that can be done at this point to stop it?

• Yep- too bad the brownstones are going. That area is just one big high rise now. It’s a shame.

  Who else is laughing that they expect to be 60% sold by the spring? I’m sorry. I find this extremely funny given the amount of upper bracket units on the market.

  Also: is anyone else wondering what this will do to the views in the nearby buildings? Isn’t the Pinnacle right behind this building?

• Looks like a cheap knockoff of the Helmut Jahn Building 600 N. Fairbanks

• 19/47 = 40%. 60% by Spring isn’t that far a stretch. I like the building but agree the parking podium could be designed more efficiently to lower the height of the base. I would live here. It would be nice to see some more garage bases clad in Pilkington Profilit glazing systems to beautify via backlight a rather ugly use behind.

• The buildings on this site should really be preserved. That whole area is nothing but huge parking garages and these kinds of buildings are the only charming remnants of the past.

• How come those buildings are not code orange at a minimum. How can our city allow historic buildings to be demolished… Could we have a before and after shot? Sad.

• How can our city allow historic buildings to be demolished?

  Easy. You take a bulldozer and point it in the direction of the building.

  By the way I thought Paris was your city.

  If you don’t like it I suggest you all buy the buildings and then pay the difference in property taxes between what is there and what would have been there. I’m not aware of anything “historic” about those buildings. Outside being old.

  Now perhaps on a side street in Lincoln Park or another lowrise residential neighborhood buildings like that should be saved. In fact I would likely argue that very point. However, NOT in a neighborhood that is destined to be filled with highrises. Highrises mean taxes, which I know is a concept many of you high minded people don’t completely understand.

  Which reminds me of a prayer:

  Lord,

  Save us from the left wing know what is best busybodies.

  Save us from the right wing imperial moralists.

  Save us from those who would save us.

  Save our cities from those who claim to love them.

  AMEN

  The rant is ended go in peace. Thanks be to Pirate.

• No one comes to live in Chicago to see ugly concrete parking bases with cheap glass towers attached above them. The reality is that these kinds of buildings can be saved while vacant lots or underutilized sites are developed for highrises. You could even build around the older buildings on the same block. We are not land starved like New York or London or Paris. However, developers cite cost everytime there’s something worth saving and the city never seems to challenge them.

• Apparently my wisdom has fallen on deaf ears. Like John the Baptist I am a prophet without an audience.

  I shall have to go to Jewel and buy chocolate items and wash them down with wine to alleviate the angst I now feel.

  Amen.

• irishpirate,

  Who would listen to a wino pirate?

  If you want to gain any respect you’re going to have to switch to rum with a grog chaser. And you’re going to have to stop shopping at Jewel for your chocolates – or at least stop admitting that you do so.

  Anon,

  We may not be land-starved, but we Chicagoans are starved for the quality and range of older architecture that you’ll find in New York and London and Paris. We don’t even stack up very well in this regard against Baltimore or Philadelphia.

  The fourth-rate buildings that will be pulverized to make room for this high-rise won’t be missed or mourned. The city needs the tax revenues for our mayor to …. build libraries with.

• I lied. I get my chocolates at the Uptown Aldi that Barry Pearce loves so much.

  As for why people come to Chicago it ain’t for he lowrise architecture. Shopping, museums, highrise architecture, food, sports and way down the list lowrise architecture. With the possible exception of some of the work of Frank Lloyd Pirate.

• irishpirate,

  I’m willing to bet that many of the people who so treasure Chicago’s low-rise architecture have never set foot in the neighborhoods that best exemplify it, and probably don’t even know where those neighborhoods are.

• Stokes: They need to have contracts on another 9 units in three months in order to meet the 60% . Given that 50 E. Chestnut has only sold 17 units in several years and that the building is now built and ready for occupancy and they STILL aren’t selling more of them, I like the odds that they won’t be able to sell another 9 of these in such a short period of time.

  Canyon Ranch, anyone?

  Oh, yeah, wait until “spring”. Sales will really pick up then.

• Irish, I now understand where your idiotic rants come from, they start with a cork pull. Wine from the Jewel though? You must be Irish.

  Zekas, have you been drinking too? “I’m willing to bet that many of the people who so treasure Chicago’s low-rise architecture have never set foot in the neighborhoods that best exemplify it, and probably don’t even know where those neighborhoods are.”

  Joe, let’s demo the Rookery while we are at it, we can build a 75 level mixed use high rise, think of all the taxes we are not capturing! Let’s build condos in Grant Park, think of the property taxes there with all those lake views. Next goes the Gold Coast with all of its selfish townhomes and 100 year old mid-rises…..

  I know the market is tough for you Joe, but how low can you go?

• paulj,

  So tell me where to find the Chicago low-rise neighborhoods with the best architecture.

  And did anything I said suggest I’d support demoing the Rookery or building in Grant Park? If one part were to go, though, Grant would be high on my list – a pretty sterile set of spaces.

• Thanks PaulJ,

  once again you prove that your IQ approaches room temperature…..on a good day.

  It must be so comforting not having a brain.

  From now on I shall call you: Scarecrow.

  Because life without a brain can have meaning.

  It is so much better to have “feelings” than actual coherent thoughts. It is so much better to believe than to actually question.

  You should really start a religion. Call Tom Cruise. Perhaps there are openings at the crazy conventions he hosts.

• Paulj, I’m with you. I don’t mind highrises but do we need block after block of them? It’s nice to have a mix of high, mid-rise and some of these nice rowhomes. Why do people like State Parkway and Dearborn Parkway? Those are lovely streets to walk down.

  This building is just another reason NOT to live in the “Cathedral District.”

• For an example of low-rise Chicago architecture at its finest, let me start the ball rolling with “Alta Vista Terrace.” You know, that charming block of rehabbed Victorians just a home-run away from Wrigley Field. (Perhaps Mr. Zell will tear them down for a parking lot…would that be “highest and best use” for that location?)

• So now we are comparing the two brownstones in question to the Rookery and Alta Vista Terrace. Wonderful. Any other significant buildings or “historic districts” which should be compared also.

  Just because they are old doesn’t mean they are worth saving. Quick, hold a rally and a march. Call City Hall. Call ABC7.

  Don’t forget to pontificate on the importance of the Lake Shore Club around 700 N LSD. That certainly set off some overwrought silly commentary.

  I hope I find out when they are going to tear down those two buildings. I will market some of the “dust” as “precious history” and see how much pretentious fools spend on it. Meanwhile I will forge a partnership with some Mayoral relatives to sell bottled history to the masses of critics.

• The landmark designation for Alta Vista is a significant barrier to tearing down the block.

  You can see our video of the “street of forty doors” at YouTube and a collection of our Alta Vista photos at Flickr.

• irishpirate,

  Easy on the Jewel juice.

  Local Realtor was responding to my challenge to name low-rise neighborhoods, and not comparing Alta Vista to the Huron townhomes.

• Ok,

  I missed that. No Jewel Juice yet today. Did have a shake over at the Southport Dairy Queen though.

  Must be sugared up.

  I blame Warren Buffet as he owns Dairy Queen. I should sue.

• Only someone in the real estate industry could be dumb enough to believe that Chicago’s lowrise architecture is insignificant and unimportant to the people who live and visit here.

  Hey Joe, come out to the real neighborhood sometime. The real neighborhood architecture either creates a wholly unique (not in that overused real estate huckster sense of the word) environment, like in Pullman or Pilsen, or is just plain solid, attractive, and built to survive anything weaker than a bulldozer–like those “insignificant” mansions along the Bronzeville boulevards or the greystones of North Lawndale or the homes of Irving Park or the Chicago bungalows–here ubiquitous, elsewhere unknown–in dozens of neighborhoods and suburbs. I’ve lived in architecturally unimportant places, and Chicago sure isn’t one of them.

  But no, all that stuff is just schlock that ought to be replaced with the kind of buildings that really set the tourists’ cameras aflutter and the architectural historians talking: a precast concrete box with a great painted conrete turd on top.

  That’s the kind of thinking that robbed us of a great swath of Boston’s downtown and that, yes, could have robbed us of Paris.

• Joe and IP,

  Would you suggest that just to the south, the Tree Studios Building and Macy’s Home store (Former Masonic) should be razed and replaced with high rise buildings in order to increase the tax base? They are now surrounded by towers, so let’s knock em down! Where do we draw the line?

  And folks, let’s not feed into the “”cathedral district” moniker, so ridiculous. I am not sure Chicago has a real cathedral…?

• Wow,

  now we go to Tree Studios and the old Masonic Temple building. What’s next? The original Water Tower.

  Two brownstones on State Street are now being compared to anything and everything arguably significant. How bout the horror of tearing down the last of the old frame newsstands that used to dot the city? I remember reading an article on the significance of those newsstands and the “author”(I use that term lightly) was aghast at their wanton destruction.

  Two brownstones do not equal the Washington Monument or the Lincoln Memorial. Two brownstones do not equal the Hancock. Two brownstones in that location are not worth saving.

  Now I have four brownstones rowhouses right down the street from me. 4100 Block of Kenmore. If someone wanted to tear those down to put up a McMansion(ain’t gonna happen around here anytime soon)I would say it was “silly, silly, silly”. Then I would dine with “da mare” and suggest that we were related and ask for some contracts.

  Those brownstones fit with the past and future of the neighborhood. They are of similar size and height to the other buildings in “da hood” and tearing them down would make little economic or aesthetic sense. The same can not be said for these two glorious brownstones that now grace State Street.

  Of course I could write endlessly about the significance of those two magnificent pieces of Chicago history, but then what do I know. I am merely a “provincial” living among my intellectual and cultural superiors.

  Now if you will excuse me I need to put some mustard and relish on my Vienna beef hot dog.

• IP you ignorant slut,

  The buildings in question are on Huron, not State.

  I find it laughable that you neither know what these buildings look like nor have you seen them in the context of the neighborhood.

  You are countering the preservationist argument because you are what – lonely?

  We are bored with you, please find another site to haunt.

• PaulJ,

  Huron and State intersect right there. Do you need a tutorial on the Chicago numbering system?

  State and Madison are the zero points for the city.

  State runs north and south.

  Madison runs east and west.

  On N/S streets everything on the west side of the street is evenly numbered. Oddly numbered on the east side.

  On E/W streets the odd numbers are on the south and the even numbers are on the north.

  Any questions?

  As for knowing what the buildings look like I refreshed my memory yesterday by looking at the Cook County Assessor website which has a photo of most properties in Chicago. They ain’t that significant. Sorta like your intellect and attempts at retorts and humor.

  They are interesting buildings which would be worthy of saving in other locations. Unless you, PaulJ, have changed the laws of physics they ain’t at another location. Let me know when they are being torn down so I can mock you some more.

  So endeth the lesson.

• Abner,

  You get the “putting words in my mouth and building up a straw man” award for today.

  Go to Flickr and YouTube and you can see some of the hundreds of Chicago neighborhoods I’ve spent significant time in before telling me I need to match your superior awareness of our neighborhoods.

  I’m fully aware of what we have and in no way diminish the extent to which Chicagoans value it. We do not, however, have all that much that’s significant in our low-rise neighborhoods. I can take you to uber-Pilsens in places you’ve probably never heard of in Pennsylvania and Virginia and NY and Connecticut and Massachussets and …

  I’m not recommending we knock down any of what we have – only saying that not everything any Chicagoan thinks is worth preserving is worth preserving, including some of our so-called landmarks.

  Ponder this: we wouldn’t have Paris as we know it today if the preservationists had kept Baron Haussmann from destroying Paris.

• For those of you who do not have the encyclopedic memory of my better, PaulJ, here are the buildings in question.

  4-8 East Huron. Right off State Street, that Great street.

  Got the pics of the assessor site. Can’t link directly, but you can do your own search at http://www.cookcountyassessor.com.

  4 E Huron.

  8 E Huron.

  10 e Huron.

• I posted a comment with pics of the buildings which is “awaiting moderation”.

  Please release it from the dregs of the Gitmo like “moderation dungeon” and let the pics bring light to the debate.

  I await with bad breath the glory of the comments to come about the significance of these magnificent pieces of architectural greatness.

• Joe,

  And I quote: “kept Baron Haussmann from destroying Paris.” Are you confusing him with Hitler? Haussmann is responsible for the classic beauty of Paris we know today. There are parts of Paris that were not rebuilt which date back to Roman times.. (parts of the 6th, 3rd and 4th)

  Perhaps IPpy can bring you up to speed on Paris since he is all knowing. Better yet, you two can meet at his place with a bottle of Yellowtail chardonnay and you can peruse the city via the internet.

  IPpy, the townhomes are still on Huron. You can try to spin it, but you are so very busted. Ha!

• paulj,

  Is it likely that I’d confuse Hitler with anyone?

  Why does everyone seem to be so reading-challenged today? Or is it my phrasing?

  I’ll rephrase and repeat: we wouldn’t have today’s Paris if the preservationists of his day had kept Haussmann from destroying Paris as it was and rebuilding it.

  Is it likely that I’d confuse Hitler with anyone?

• irishpirate,

  Look what you’ve done – you’ve reduced the opposition to busting you over an intersection and gloating over it! Shame. Shame.

• I’m still so impressed by Stoke’s discussion about backlit Pilkington Profilit that I can’t think of another comment…

  River North is in danger of becoming nothing but a canyon of blank parking podiums (don’t know the plural of that word–sorry). There are so few historic buildings left in that neighborhood that I tend to think each one is precious and in need of saving. The historic row-houses can easily co-exist with the high-rise stuff, so let’s stop tearing them down. That block of Huron is one of the few in River North that still give some sense of what the neighborhood used to be. And lets’ face it–brick row-houses have a much better relationship to the street than a massive six-story parking podium! It’s becoming a blank-wall maze for tourists and suburbanites over there!

• Hitler had instructed his general to destroy Paris on the way out as the allies approached. “Is Paris Burning?” was the question on the phone call to his Prussian general who refused to order the blasting of the city.

  Thanks UptownR for putting it succinctly.

• Thanks to IPpy for posting the photos of the charming buildings in question. I rest my case.

• Haussmann successfully executed a plan for Paris and that’s why Paris is admired today.

  Chicago has zoning that does not form a cohesive plan for the city.

  The juxtaposition of lowrise and highrise is visually interesting, however it often lends itself to the destruction of whole blocks. Developers cite cost everytime there is an old building in their way. Rather than building on the many vacant lots or incorporating the structure or building around them like in New York, Chicago developers get away with wholesale demolition.

  And for what exactly? Where’s the great architecture in the Cathedral District? Is it found in the penthouses plopped down on the Fordham’s ugly parking base? Or maybe in the Bernardin’s tacky and plastic ornamentation? How about the Pinnacle?

  Comparing Haussmann’s grand plan to Chicago’s current arbitrary zoning is useless. One produced a world class city recognized for its beauty yet is still economically viable. The other is replacing its beauty with plop architecture designed for cars and “tax revenue.”

• Exactly Paulj! And there are other homes in the area that have been preserved including those lowrise buildings at Erie and Wabash.

  There was a story a few years back about the guy who refused to sell his rowhouse to developers on either Huron or Erie (further west in River North) so there is a huge high rise that is now adjacent to his house.

  Or what about the owner of Sayat Nova who refused to sell his building to the 550 N. St. Clair developer? I guess we should have lost his four story building right off the Mag Mile too because that is progress. Nothing all that architecturally great about it (I admit that) but it gives the block character. It has more character than the hulking parking structure they’ve now built right next door to it.

• Everyone should stop lecturing us about the glories of River North past and confront the reality of River North past.

  It was a raggedy-ass collection of parking lots, obsolete manufacturing buildings and roach-infested rooming houses.

  Watch Al Friedman – Mr. River North – in our playlist at YouTube if you want to learn. If not, proceed apace with the spouting off and ahistorical gibberish.

• Wow,

  Hitler has been brought into the debate and PaulJ is “aroused” at the thought of having “busted” me. It is so easy to get under the skin of some people. Of course the Huron Club will be both on Huron and on State. I guess I was looking to the future and PaulJ was looking to the past. Not surprising. For me cities are about the future and for my betters, such as the aroused PaulJ, cities are about a largely mythical past.

  I was just over at the Home Depot on North Avenue. One day it may be declared “historic” as the first of the Home Depot’s to enter the city proper. The juxtaposition of the classic yet mammoth scale and the bridge over the river makes the heart sing. Fa la la la la la la la la…..Joy to the World…..PaulJ has come…..

  If PaulJ rests his case based on the “charming” buildings and the pics I posted then his “case” involves his “head” and not facts. I imagine some people making the wrong argument here had no idea what the buildings actually looked like until I posted the pics. They heard “brownstones” and immediately rushed into the defense.

  Those buildings would be worth saving on a side street somewhere. Not on Huron and State.

  As for River North in the 70’s it wasn’t much better than West Madison around Halsted. Life was nasty, brutish and short for many people who lived around there………ah the good old days.

  Watch Studs Terkel talk about the area sometime. He knew it well. Of course Studs would likely mourn the passing of the buildings, but he is old and inherently decent so I will give him the benefit of the doubt.

  Not every old building in this city is worth saving. One of the many mistakes preservationists make is to argue exactly the opposite and to make up BS reasons to try to stop any development.

  Some people fear change. Others welcome it.

  Those who welcome it own the future. Those who fear it pretend to be well traveled because they watch European travel shows on PBS at 2am while eating frozen fish sticks and singing “La Marseillaise” while watching “Casablanca”.

• Ze famous zeen from Casablanca featuring Nazis and ze zinging. Which goes nicely with the Paris and Hitler comments.

• Who cares at all if River North was once a gritty high-crime area? Does that diminish the historic architecture even a little bit? It is totally irrelevant.

  As far as Hausmann is concerned, I wouldn’t mind the gutting of historic Chicago so much if the result was some sort of comprehensive and well-executed plan, but the tower in question represents neither of these things. It’s not the worst new building I’ve seen proposed by a long shot, but it’s not exactly adding anything wonderful to the neighborhoood.

  I won’t touch that Hitler stuff. Why does it always come to that?

• By the way, when did the singer from KISS get into the real estate business?

• Ok now we have Hitler and KISS in the discussion.

  Time to flush this conversation………

• irishpirate,

  It was flushed long ago. Time to recognize that.

• >”It was flushed long ago. Time to recognize that.”

  Maybe so, but most of us ignored this site over the Christmas holiday.

• Joe,
  I know you know the neighborhoods well. I also know you either display willing ignorance, or are actually architecturally braindead, when you pretend there is nothing very interesting about Chicago’s lowrise architecture compared to New York, Baltimore or Philadelphia.

  Most urban dwellers see the value in the “regular” buildings of days gone by. Most people–people who aren’t in the real estate business–know perfectly well that buildings don’t have to have been designed by Sullivan to be worth preserving (I guess that’s a bad example since people in the real estate business are always willing to knock down a Sullivan). Lowrise preservation is what makes San Francisco what it is–you know, the city that’s renowned for its beauty.

  As for River North having an ugly past and blah blah blah, please. There is absolutely zero connection between a neighborhood’s architectural character and its criminal history, as I’m sure you know. I would agree with you if the buildings were shacks from the 60s, but for these buildings your comment is totally irrelevant.

  You’re dead wrong on Pilsen, by the way; those of us familiar with Czech ornamentation can see it in abundance there, on facades, gates, doorknobs, molding, you name it, in a more complete state than anywhere else in America, and probably anywhere outside Central Europe.

• Abner,

  Willing ignorance? Nope.

  Pretending? Nope.

  Architecturally brain dead? Perhaps. Certainly one of my weak points.

  Since you’re a Pilsen fan, check out my nearly 300 photos of Pilsen at Flickr.