You Can't Go Home Again?

36 w i n t t I I 1 0 0 4 I C i t 8 S 9 « * 1 You Can't Go Home Again? ' BY TERRENCE DOODY One of Chicago's favorite buildings: Fourth Presbyterian Church IN EARLY JuNf, I w e n t on t h e R i c e D e s i g n of big experience on our first after- buttresses that pay homage to, of all Kenilworth in Oak Park at Wright's Alliance tour to Chicago with three things noon. After lunch at the Arts Club, things, the Tribune Tower. Does this kind limn Temple. I grew up in Oak Park, on in mind. I wanted to see the city through another place I'd never heard of when I ol ironi/.alion. I asked, now make the Kenilworth, have friends who bought a the eyes of our professional guides. I lived in Chicago, we took the Chicago Tribune itself Postmodernist? And make Prairie-style house, have been in Wright's wanted to gauge my affection and under- Architecture Foundation's cruise on its nostalgia prophetic.' home studio and in I ailing" atei I had standing of it against their expertise. And the Chicago River through much more My more serious question of Rolf not been in Unity Temple, however, and it I wanted to learn about those things I familiar territory. The cruise starts at Achilles was: Is there another American blew my little mind. To enter it, you are didn't know. Great architecture is not the Michigan Avenue bridge, where the City that has a comparable concentration turned away from the world and into the simply self-evident. Its meaning and value Wrigley Building and Tribune Tower of fine buildings across so many histori- building, perhaps into yourself as well, to are couched in history, in the tradition of stand as j gateway. ! had always liked the cal styles? I know that it you stand in the the sanctuary, which is a cube filled with forms, in theories and arguments. They Wrigley Building, with its white facades center ol Boston I ominous, you can light. Irs flat ceiling makes no gesture arc also couched in our personal experi- and the gap in it that now brings to mind see, starting with Bulfinch's statehouse, toward transcendence, so as you look into ence and expectations, as well as in neigh- Pennzoil Place; and I seem to have always about two hundred years of architecture, tin s.inctuary's center, you look across it borhoods we don't even know about. All known that the Tribune is a second-best but I am not sure all of it is as distin- as well to the other congregants: you see these different contexts came to bear on building, an idea of architecture commen- guished .is Bullitu lis. i In the old iu\\ n yourself in them as they see themselves my big moment as we stood in front of surate with Col. McCormick's idea of his square of Prague, you can see in a long in you, and in this relationship Wright I I.H. Richardson's Cilessner House. own grandeur. glance examples of Romanesque, Gothic, defines the sacred. Our guide, Rolf Achilles, said we But from the river, in the slow track- Renaissance, Neo-classical, Baroque, (Later that evening, I said to my could see the corner of the old R. R. ing shot the boat provided, we could see Beaux Arts, and modernist building brother Dan, who lives in Oak Park, Donnelly printing plant down Prairie in a long single glance about a hundred standing hip to hip, but that's another that Unity 'Temple was the most moving Avenue. In high school I had a summer years of very distinguished building: from neighborhood altogether! Roll couldn't church I had ever been in. He asked if I job as a messenger that took me to that the neo-classical London Guarantee and think oil-hand til another place, and had even been in the Duomo in Florence, plant many times. I had no idea then that Accident Building (Alfred S. Alschulcr, there's a lot of classical Chicago School Very good question. I had been. And 1 am Prairie Avenue was a historic district; 1 19231 on the river's south side; then architecture you can't see from the river. I prepared to do further research on this knew it only as a neighborhood where north and just to the west, Mies's last was pumped with pride. matter when the RDA mounts its Oak I felt uncomfortable. And I am not sure skyscraper, the beautiful IBM Building After the river tour, we were taken Park-Fircn/.e trip.) that if I had seen the Cilessner I louse (Office of Mies van der Rohe with C. F. into two of Mies's apartments at 860-880 The moral of my story, therefore, is by accident, 1 would have noticed it or Murphy Associates, 1971), which stands North lake Shore Drive. The first one yes, von can go home again. It's great. known what I was looking at. For in fact across the street from the towers ol had a northeast corner view, looking And it is even more fun if you try to look I wasn't even aware of its existence until Mann i < ity. In Mies's student B< i n md up the Drive and out onto the water lis at it as though it were someplace else. l^'- , when I read about it. Because my Goldberg, the coolest address on the plan- window-walls made the outside-inside From my window in the i lotel Burnham, in-laws live in Pittsburgh, I had encoun- et when u opened in T'I,"'. I hen back distinction seem trivial because the view looking north, I could see on my right tered by then his overpowering Allegheny on the river's south side, the spectacular was — delicately put — not unstiblime. Bumhain's Marshall Field building, where County Court I louse and. subsequently, curved tower of Mi Wacker Drive iKohn All my adult life I had wanted to see I went as a child to sec the real Santa had sought mn Trinity Church in boston. Pedersen Fox, 198?). whose wall ol green these apartments Ironi the inside, and it Claus; on my left, the great Picasso in The Cilessner I louse was not .is big as I glass holds the river and sky in constant was worth the wait. They were, in every- Daley Plaza, which I was lucky enough thought it would be Iroin the pictures I'd equipoise. way, perfect. Consequently two days later, to see unveiled at its dedication in 1967; seen. Its proportions contained and even IV? Wacker was exactly the kind of the Farnsworth I louse, which I hadn't and straight ahead, my favorite of all, refined the niassiveness of the stonework, newer building 1 wanted to hear about. learned about until much later, didn't the John Hancock Center. This view is and I began to understand how propor- The kind of older building I wanted have the impact on me it had on one ol nothing like the one from my bedroom tion is much more important than any to discover was then the cruise's IH-SI the other pilgrims, an architect \\ li>> said window on kenilworth. And 1 had just pure value we assign to size. A basic les- surprise: the Montgomery Ward & Co. she had studied pictures of it forever. I learned something too cool about the son, to be sure, but not one you can learn warehouse (Schmidt, Ci.irden & Martin, li h ill.II, (in lis lull cllt 11 i" take hold, Fourth Presbyterian Church, which stands from reading. This intuition about pro- 1908), which also follows the river's the Farnsworth I louse had to be lived across the street from the Hancock. This portion had affected me when we were in curve and is as elegant as an Iowa barn. in rather than merely visited. It is deeply is one of everybody's favorite buildings Mies van der Robe's Farnsworth I louse Back at the other end of the river and ol peaceful because its artlessness makes it and probably the first one I ever respond- and Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple, our trip, east ot Michigan, I recognized seem inevitable; and like all great art, it ed to, in my messenger days, as architec- but it was only here I became really con- this warehouse's perfect counterpart: the fulfills at once the need it creates. ture. What I learned is, it was designed scious of it. NBC Tower (SOM, 1989), with its use- Ninety minutes later that Saturday by Ralph Adams Cram, who also did 1 had a completely different kind less, orthogonal, perfectly Po-Mo flying morning, we were at Lake and Rice. Made me feel right at home. • .

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