“I wonder, does Lucien keep one drawer of designs marked ‘Bloomingdale’s,’ and another marked, ‘Wal-Mart’?”
– Yo regular Jeff, from a recent comment regarding Lucien Lagrange‘s designs.
Few architects seem to elicit as many mixed reactions among the Yo audience as Lucien Lagrange. Maybe that’s because his firm is responsible for such a mixed bag of buildings. On the one hand, Lagrange’s firm has been responsible for some fairly modern-looking high-rises, like Smithfield Properties‘ Erie on the Park and Kingsbury on the Park (right down the street from the Yo office in River North). On the other hand, most of his towers on the Magnificent Mile, the Gold Coast, and the northeastern reaches of River North follow what he calls an “eclectic architectural style of the Second French Empire,”.
By our count, six active high-rise projects boast Lagrange designs. Perhaps by coincidence, the four that have seen the most progress over the past year all fall into the latter of Lagrange’s two styles, a sort of faux-traditional aesthetic marked with lots of limestone and mansard roofs. Two are going up on North State Street between Walton Street and Delaware Place, another is under construction on Michigan Avenue, and one more is planned for Lincoln Park. The two that boast his more modern designs – one in the South Loop and another on the Near West Side – have moved at a much slower pace and may not see the start of construction for quite some time?
Which projects are they? Find out with the help of NewHomeNotebook.com‘s newest feature, the user-generated list. Click the link below to see these six Lagrange-affiliated developments.
– Rate and review Lucien Lagrange-designed high-rises at NewHomeNotebook.com.