19 S. Wabash/Jeweler’s Building

 by: chicago designslinger

 [19 S. Wabash/Jeweler’s Building (1882) Dankmar Adler & Co., Louis Sullivan, architects /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

If a building is over 100 years old it’s not uncommon for it to have gone through some changes. Often those changes include a series of names, and the structure located at 19 S. Wabash is now often referred to by its address. On the other hand, the building is also commonly known by a former name, the Jeweler’s Building, having once housed jewelry wholesalers and workshops since it is located in the city’s jewelry district. The only problem is that there is another prominent piece of architecture that appeared on the Chicago skyline in the 1920s which uses the Jeweler’s Building moniker. Some call the Wabash Avenue address the Iwan Ries Building, its current owner and occupant for over 60 years. Whichever name you use, what makes the building truly unique is that not only was it designed by a young Louis Sullivan for his then boss Dankmar Adler and is an example of the type of work the pair were turning out in the early years of their partnership, but it is the oldest surviving Adler & Sullivan building still standing – anywhere.

  [19 S. Wabash/Jeweler’s Building, National Register of Historic Places, Chicago /Images & Artwork: chicago designlinger]

If you’re at all familiar with the decorative laciness of Sullivan’s organic designs, you’d never guess that the facade of this building was typical of the architect’s work in the early 1880s. Built by Martin Ryerson as a speculative commercial structure, the building was leased to the S.A. Maxwell Company, a stationery, book and wallpaper retailer. The Maxwell retail store occupied the ground floor space and used the upper, open-loft floors for storage and office space. The interior plan was pretty straight forward, but the young architect designed a facade that stood out from its neighbors, a streetscape full of Italianate columns, capitals, arches with some quoining thrown in here and there.

  [19 S. Wabash/Jeweler’s Building, Jeweler’s Row Historic District, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Sullivan’s name was not on the door of the offices of Dankmar Adler & Co. when Ryerson came to call in 1881. The young architect was still a few years away from joining Adler as a full partner in their so-to-be legendary firm, but he was already making his mark on the Chicago landscape. Together, and alone, the pair built over 100 structures in the city of which, shamefully, only 21 remain. Thankfully the Levi family, 5th generation owners of Iwan Ries and the nation’s oldest family owned tobacconists, have done their best in preserving Sullivan’s facade. Although the ground floor has been substantially altered since its original appearance in 1882, the upper stories are the oldest preserved remains of Louis Sullivan’s career.

Charles H. Wacker Houses

 by: chicago designslinger

 [Charles H. Wacker Houses (1873/1884 remodel) /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

The name Wacker is very familiar to most Chicagoans, and tourists often chuckle when they hear the word before realizing that there is no “h” between the w and a. But much of Chicago wouldn’t look the way it does today without the resolve of Charles H. Wacker’s implementation of the Burnham & Bennett Plan of 1909.

  [Charles H. Wacker Houses, 1836 & 1838 Lincoln Park West, Chicago /Images & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Although Charles became famous as a result of his 17 year tenure as the first head of the Chicago Plan Commission, and therefore having the double-decked street named after him, he became wealthy running his father’s brewery operation. And it was papa Frederick Wacker who built the house that only child and son Charles, would grow up in and eventually own.  

 [Charles H. Wacker Houses, Old Town Triangle National Historic District, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Frederick got into the Chicago brewery business in the 1850s, but he was plagued by ill health and frequently left the city on extensive European rest cures. In 1873 after the Chicago Fire, Wacker built a house in the northern section of the burn district, but left in 1876 when he took his wife and son on an extended three year trip to Europe. Since he was not a healthy man, rest cures on the Continent were not uncommon in those days for the people who could afford them. Charles was only 20 years old when the journey began in his father’s homeland of Germany, with a long stays in Switzerland, Vienna and Paris. By the time the family came back to their Lincoln Park home in 1879, Frederick was on the mend and Charles was off to a career as a grain merchant with a Chicago trading company.
Frederick died in 1884 and Charles took over the brewery business. He remodeled the house on what was then North Park Avenue as well as the small cottage that originally stood behind the main house but had been moved from the rear of the lot and into the property’s side yard. He took-up residency in the big house with his wife and children and his mother-in-law moved into the cottage next door. As the neighborhood changed and original owners moved on, both homes were sold. In 1950 Otto Forkert bought Charles’ ornately carved and decorated Italianate dwelling and spent nearly 20 years preserving what was left of the original. In 1964 he purchased the house next door and once again the entire property was under the same ownership. Forkert eventually sold the big house, and in 2008 Amy Forkert sold the former mother-in-law cottage.

Citigroup & Ogilvie Transportation Centers

 by: designslinger

 [Citigroup & Ogilvie Transportation Centers (1987) Murphy/Jahn, Helmut Jahn, architects /Images & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Back when passenger railroad service provided the best way to travel long distances in this country, Chicago was the hub of the nation’s rail network with a group of spectacular terminal buildings. One such station stood where Helmut Jahn’s glass sheathed tower was constructed in the mid-1980s. With its post-Modern nod to Art Deco in undulating curves and alternating colors, the building was one in a series of designs that brought Jahn lots of press attention, and the title of architecture’s new Wunderkind.

  [Citigroup & Ogilvie Transportation Centers, 500 W. Madison Street, Chicago /Images & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Built on a site occupied by a grand, classic, Renaissance Revival train station owned by the Chicago & North Western Railroad, the old building was not without its supporters. Preservationists urged the C&NW to refurbish the old terminal and include a new income producing tower which could still serve as a portal to the 50,000 people a day who passed through the building on their way to regional commuter trains, but city power brokers would have none of it. The Landmark’s Commission voted to declare the 1911 Frost & Granger depot a landmark, but were rebuffed in their efforts by the city’s Planning chief who felt that the aging building was a detriment to the city’s efforts to revitalize the area. The City Council, who has the final say in the landmark designation business, voted against the Commission’s recommendation and demolition began in 1984 Among the doors, hardware and marble salvaged from the old building, the C&NW clock was saved and now sits up high in the ceiling of the new building’s atrium entry to the commuter train shed.  

 [Citigroup & Olgivie Transportation Centers, West Loop, Chicago /Images & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

The portion of the old station that housed the train shed escaped destruction but was left to rust and peel until a $150 million rehabilitation effort was undertaken in 1993 and completed 4 years later. Today the former North Western Atrium building is called Citigroup Center, and the refurbished 1911-era train shed is known as the Olgivie Transportation Center with its recently opened, and hard to find, Chicago French Market. And Helmut Jahn, at age 71, may have aged beyond his youthful wunderness.

Champlain Building

 by: chicago designslinger

 [Champlain Building (1902) Holabird & Roche, architects (2010) facade restoration, Brush Architects, Holabird & Root, architects /Images & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Holabird & Roche have the distinction of designing two buildings in Chicago that eventually bore the same name, the Champlain. This version started life in 1903 as the New Powers Building and bore all the hallmarks of an H&R high-rise commercial structure. The team had come up with a formula of taking a skeletal metal frame, covering it with a minimal amount of fireproofing masonry while leaving room for large expansive Chicago windows, and completing the entire project quickly and economically, making them a popular choice with commercial real estate developers. Although they’ve been often marginalized as designers who compromised decorative details to lower per square foot costs, their buildings are quite masterfully detailed.

  [Champlain Building, 37 S. Wabash Avenue, Chicago /Images & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

The building was built by a consortium of investors on a piece of property that already had a building standing on it. The architectural firm was so good at what they did that their 13-story tower opened for occupancy in December of 1902, just 8 months after demolition had begun on the old building. The new structure was named for Orville M. Powers, president and founder of the Metropolitan Business College, which offered a range of classes from bookkeeping, steno, dictation, Spanish and German, to law. The school took over floors 8 through 12, with an option to expand as needed, and occupied the building until the 1930s when the Gregg shorthand school took over the space and the building was renamed the Champlain. Ironically one of Holabird & Roche’s early, groundbreaking designs was also called the Champlain Building which stood at the corner of State and Madison for a very brief 22 years, from 1894 until its demolition in 1916.

  [Champlain Building, Jewelers Row Historic District, Chicago /Images & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

In 1938 after the Powers name change, the building underwent a “modernization” which stripped   the first two floors of their original facades. The corner at Wabash and Monroe was changed again in 1945 when TWA moved in and Skidmore, Ownings & Merrill gave the airline a very sleek, and what we would now call “mid-century modern,” design. It was also in this year that the Illinois Institute of Technology architecture department moved their classes out of the Art Institute and into the Champlain. Department head Mies van der Rohe also set-up set up his private practice in the building at the same time, which must have made for a very convenient commute from the school to the office where Mies was working on his plans for the future architectural marvel, the IIT campus at 35th & State.
By 1988 the School of the Art Institute itself was outgrowing their studio building at the museum and purchased the nearby Champlain for additional class and office space. The building recently had its lower levels returned back to the original H&R design, replicating the ornate terra-cotta decoration surround at the Wabash Avenue entry and duplicating the original ground floor window openings, as well as rewrapping the structural steel in brick which was recreated to match the existing masonry. The building was renamed for donors John and Alice Sharp, so although there are no more Holabird & Roche Champlains left in Chicago, there are still a number of very sharp looking H&R designs still around.