Chicago Avenue Water Tower & Pumping Station

 by: chicago designslinger

 [Chicago Avenue Water Tower & Pumping Station (1869) W.W. Boyington, architect /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

There are landmark markers, landmark moments, landmark buildings, landmark structures and landmark monuments. In a city known for its epoch-defining architectural landmarks, one building stands out from the crowd because of where it sits, its ability to survive, its unusual design, and its physical manifestation of Chicago's "I Will" spirit.

  [Chicago Avenue Water Tower & Pumping Station, 806 & 811 N.Michigan Avenue, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Back in 1850, no one could have believed that something as utilitarian as a water tower and pumping station would become one of the city's most beloved and recognized landmarks. One-hundred-and-sixty-years ago, the citizens of the close-to-water-level city had a love/hate relationship with their lake and their river. Water made Chicago - and almost killed Chicago. Most likely Mother Nature hadn't intended on 300,000 human beings living on a ground area located just few feet above the shoreline of Lake Michigan and the Chicago River, and then use those two bodies of water for transportation, sewage, and human consumption. Today it seems like a no-brainer.  But it took a devastating cholera outbreak in the early 1850s, culminating in the death of thousands of people, before government and business leaders decided it was time to take action.

  [Chicago Avenue Water Works Tower, National Register of Historic Places, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

In 1851 the city council decided to create a water board, and design a public water system. The Chicago City Hydraulic Company began laying pipe and a Board of Sewerage Commissioners was formed. The river and lake shore were floating cesspools. The Commissioners had to figure out how to get rid of human and industrial waste, and provide a source of clean drinking water. So in an attempt to keep the lake water as clean as possible, the Commissioners decided to funnel human and industrial waste into the river and build a reservoir at the edge of Lake Street, providing "cleaner" lake water to the citizenry through an extensive delivery pipe system. The sewers wouldn't drain however because they were so close to grade, so they had to be elevated 8 to 10 feet above street level. Then to fill-in the gaps, sludge could be dredged from the river bed, making it deeper, and forcing the water flow away from the lake and down into the new Mississippi River connecting canal. It was a good theory.

  [Chicago Water Tower, City of Chicago Landmark /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

But there were kinks in the works. Those who were connected to the pipes of the new reservoir system often found small minnows coming through the tap along with their cold water. The sewers removed effluence from streets, businesses and residences, but still dumped all the debris into the river, which in turn raised the river bed, which elevated the murky water, pushed it back into the lake again, and right into the nearby reservoir. Enter Ellis Chesbrough. He devised a system that would draw lake water from an intake crib located 2 miles from out beyond the messy, smelly shoreline, then deliver that far-out, fresh water into homes, businesses through massive hydraulic pumps housed in buildings constructed along the lake's edge. The simple frame and brick towered building of the North Side Chicago Avenue Water Works began pumping cool, fresh water to nearby consumers in the late 1850s. Just a few years later construction began on a new and improved water complex, and in 1867 a large public ceremony was held to lay a cornerstone into one of architect W.W. Boyington's crenelated castle-like structures.

  [Water Tower /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

The original Water Works tower and pumping station had been located in one building. This time around the tower, whose 138-foot tall standpipe regulated water pressure, would stand separate from the pumping house, located 100 feet to the east. They were joined together by a park, and stood tall and proud where a street once called Pine came to an end. No one could have foreseen that just two years after the rough stone duo were completed in 1869, the entire surrounding area would be flattened and destroyed by a raging inferno. The fire, however, didn't level the water works buildings. And although they were left roofless, scarred and without many of their Joliet stone embellishments - they were still standing, and the tower became a symbol of survival and a future. As the city rose-up again around the survivors, and the historic, symbolic, and beloved Water Works complex began to stand in the way of progress. Pine Street was extended through the little park at the turn of the 20th century, and the decorative stone pair were forever separated. In 1913 city planners actually proposed tearing down the no-longer operational tower as plans were being formed to turn 66-foot-wide PineStreet/Lincoln Parkway into 141-foot-wide Michigan Boulevard. Mayor Carter Harrison put the kibosh on those arrangements and in turn called for the tower's restoration. Then in 1916 the planners, not ready to throw in the towel and with a new mayor in office, proposed going ahead and widening Michigan Avenue to 141 feet, and moving the old tower 100 feet to the west.
It wasn't until 1928 that Michigan Avenue grew to its current 85-foot-wide size between the Water Works buildings. The the old tower was saved, without being moved, but the new thoroughfare came within inches of the building's southwest corner. The two structures are now open to the public, and serve as a gallery, tourist information center, and theater performance space.

Potter & Bertha Honore Palmer Mausoleum

 by: chicago designslinger

 [Potter & Bertha Honoré Palmer Mausoleum (1921) McKim, Mead & White, architects /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

In 1921, on a small rise in a relatively flat landscape, there rose a temple of Greco/Roman proportions, honoring the memory of one of Chicago's gods of commerce and wealth - Potter Palmer and his formidable wife Bertha Honoré Palmer. The pioneering merchant and real estate magnate had died in May 1902, followed by his wife in 1918, and were interred in a smaller Greek-temple-version of a resting place before this majestic structure was erected in 1921, designed by New York architects McKim, Mead & White. In a cemetery packed to the gills with some of the city's most prominent citizenry, the Palmer mausoleum may not have been the most architecturally significant tomb ever built, but it was certainly the most awe-inspiring.

  [Potter & Bertha Honoré Palmer Mausoleum, Graceland Cemetery, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Twenty-six year-old Potter Palmer came to Chicago from Albany, New York in 1852 because he saw potential in the prairie outpost. He opened a dry goods store, made a fortune catering to the needs of the city's female social elite, sold it, bought-up as much wool and cotton fabric he could get his hands on at the start of the Civil War, made a killing when the Union was looking for material to make uniforms, then invested in real estate, and made another fortune. In 1871, the 44-year-old bachelor married Bertha Honoré the the 21-year-old daughter of a prosperous Chicago businessman, and by 1875, two children had joined the Palmer household. When he died, Palmer left an estate valued in the neighborhood of $8 million, left in trust to his wife and their two sons Honoré and Potter, Jr. And for decades afterwards, a story made the rounds that went something like this: when Palmer was drawing-up his will leaving his wife in charge of the estate, his lawyer said that if Bertha were to remarry her next husband would get his hands on all of Palmer's money. The multi-millionaire said that whomever Bertha's new husband might be, he'd need the cash.

 [Potter & Bertha Honoré Palmer Mausoleum, National Register of Historic Places, Chicago, Graceland Cemetery /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Bertha Honoré Palmer was a force of nature whose affect on the world around her impacted peoples lives for generations to come. The Queen of Chicago society wasn't the kind of woman who just sat around collecting gowns and jewelry, she was a political activist and a feminist - a word that didn't exist at the end of the 19th century. She was a founding member of the politically progressive Chicago Women's Club; a vocal supporter of the right of women to vote; and a member of the Women's Trade Union League. As the President of the Board of Lady Managers of the World's Columbian Exposition, Bertha made sure that the Women's Pavilion was designed by a woman, Sophia Hayden, the only female architect represented at the Fair. She collected the work of avant garde artists like Monet, Degas and Renoir, which laid the foundation of the Art Institute's impressive Impressionist collection. Mrs. Palmer was as good at business as her husband had been, and by the time she died in 1918 the value of the Palmer trust had grown by over $20 million dollars in the 16 years under her stewardship. Unlike other vast family fortunes, the Palmer sons didn't squander their parents largess and built an even greater family fortune.

 [Potter & Bertha Honoré Palmer Mausoleum /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Unlike Potter's small private burial service 16 years before, Bertha's ceremony was a much more crowded affair. As she was laid to rest over 1,000 members of the general public stood behind a quickly erected line of rope to see her off. Bertha's sons, Honoré known in the family as "Cappy" and Potter, Jr. nicknamed "Min," had intended the service to be a family affair, but the morning of the funeral crowds began gathering early and waited until dusk to watch a handful of masons seal Bertha's orchid covered coffin into its resting place. Her sons, their wives, and Bertha's six grandchildren inherited the expanded Palmer fortune, and the Palmer boys managed money as well as their parents. The trust's value grew to a reported $100 million as the next generation was coming of age, although by that time there were fewer grandchildren left to inherit.

  [Henry Hamilton Honoré Mausoleum, Graceland Cemetery, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Honoré and Grace Palmer's two sons, 34-year-old Honoré, Jr. died in 1938 and 33-year-old Potter D'Orsay Palmer died in 1939. Then Potter, Jr. and Pauline's 37-year-old son Potter III died in 1946 - two years after the death of his father. Min and Pauline's son Gordon died in 1964, the same year as his 90-year-old uncle Honoré. As one Palmer after another left this life, they joined their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents under the canopy of the many columned Palmer mausoleum. Bertha had always remained very close to her Honoré relatives, her husband had even designated Bertha's brother Adrian as a co-trustee of the Palmer trust in 1902. And in death, as in life, Bertha insured that her clan would be close-by building a mausoleum for them directly across the road from her final resting place. 

Palmer House Hilton

 by: chicago designslinger

 [Palmer House Hilton (1926) Holabird & Roche, architects; Louis Pierre Rigal, murals /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

One of the country's remaining 26 historic, grand palace hotels sits on a Chicago city block at State and Monroe Streets - and not in Las Vegas on the Strip. Perhaps not as "grand" as the MGM, Bellagio, Venetian, or Wynn to suit some peoples tastes, the Palmer House Hilton is one of those hotels that recalls a different era in the hostelry business when luxury came with a little less flash.

  [Palmer House Hilton, 17 E. Monroe Street, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

By the time architects Holabird & Roche were asked to design a hotel for the Palmer trust in the early 1920s, a Palmer had been offering upscale accommodations on this site since 1871. The Roaring 20s version would be the third incarnation of a Palmer branded hotel born out of a $1.25 million, Parisian-styled, 19th century, fireproof caravansary that Chicago real estate magnate Potter Palmer opened for business on September 26, 1871. The Palmer Hotel was said to have been a wedding gift given to his 21-year-old bride Bertha, daughter of H.H. Honoré, one of the 44-year-old bridegroom's business associates and a wealthy real estate investor in his own right. Unfortunately Palmer's "fireproof" investment burned-to-the-ground fourteen days later in the big fire. After surveying the damage, one story goes, Palmer was ready to throw-in-the-towel, but according the an article in New York Times published after Palmer's death in 1902, his willful and determined partner said, "Mr. Palmer, it is the duty of every Chicagoan to stay here and devote his fortune and energies to rebuilding this stricken city." Whether it was to avoid an argument he knew he could never win, or his civic pride took hold, Palmer rolled-up his sleeves and got to work rebuilding a re-jiggered version of his original fireproof structure.

  [Palmer House Hotel, City of Chicago Landmark /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Architect John Van Osdel had been able to save the drawings of the recently completed, and now destroyed hotel by burying them in Chicago's sandy soil. After things had cooled down a bit, he took-out the original plans and elevations and got to work overseeing construction on the new and improved Palmer House. Palmer spared no expense, borrowing $3 million dollars on his reputation alone, and began rebuilding his Chicago properties - literally. It wasn't uncommon to find the millionaire out on the scaffolding, pants tucked into his boots and slouch hat covering his head, handing bricks to the masons, as his hotel building rose-up on State Street once again. If Michelin had had a U.S. guide in 1874, the new Palmer House would have been at the top of the list. It was considered the most luxurious hotel in the country.

  [Palmer House Hotel /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

After Palmer's death in 1902, the mighty Bertha took over the hotel and all the other Palmer holdings and investments, and held sway over the Palmer Trust until her death in 1918. The Palmer House was just one piece in a huge portfolio of real estate she passed-on to her two sons and seven grandchildren, and by the mid-1920s sons Honoré and Potter, Jr. realized that the once opulent hotel was a little worn and old-fashioned, and in need of an upgrade. Instead of a remodel, they decided to tear the whole thing down and start from scratch. They hired one of the city's preeminent architectural firms Holabird & Roche - who had designed some of Chicago's best known hotels  - to build a modern luxury property on the site. Pieces of the older building were saved and reworked into the new 120 x 85 foot, two-story lobby, touted to be the largest in the world at the time. Twenty-one murals painted by Louis Pierre Rigal under Bertha's direction were incorporated into the ceiling, and a pair of Tiffany bronze sculptures from the old hotel now supported clusters of lamps at the foot of the future Empire Room's grand staircase. Potter Palmer, Jr. laid the cornerstone of the first phase of the new building on January 3, 1925, and Honoré Palmer was the first person to sign the new guest register on December 21, 1925.

  [Palmer House Hilton /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

In 1945 the Palmers sold the hotel to Conrad Hilton. Under the Hilton corporation's stewardship the hotel rode-out economic downturns, survived, and held-on against newer more modern competitors. In the mid-2000s the company undertook an extensive $170 million renovation and restoration of the 80-year-old grande dame. Completed in 2009, the hotel has won numerous awards for its historically sensitive updating, and even drew a Palmer back into the fold in 2008. In June of that year, Hilton revealed their new lounge Potter's, opened by none other than 74-year-old Potter Palmer IV - Potter and Bertha's great-grandson.

Lake Point Tower

 by: chicago designslinger

 [Lake Point Tower (1968) Schipporeit Heinrich, Inc., architects; Graham Anderson Probst & White, associate architects /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

To create an iconic building, two essential ingredients have to come together: a design that pushes the envelope, and a developer/owner who thinks outside the box. Throw in an extraordinary location, and you will most likely find an instant landmark at your doorstep - a combination of factors that gave Chicago the iconic Lake Point Tower.

  [Lake Point Tower, 505 N. Lake Shore Drive, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

The ball got rolling in the mid-1950s when the Chicago Dock & Canal Company Trust   decided it was time to recapitalize their 45 acres of industrial property located along the north edge of the main branch of the Chicago River at Lake Michigan. The Trust was the brainchild of William Ogden, an early Chicago pioneer and city booster, who made a fortune investing in the young city. In the 1850s, Odgen acquired a strip of sand that jutted-out into the lake at the mouth of the river, filled-in the surrounding area of water with trash and dirt, and created a his own personal harbor. In the intervening years the Canal Company expanded and erected a series of interconnected warehouses served by a trunk line of the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad, of which Ogden was a founder and majority owner. In the late 1950s, as the area to the east around Michigan Avenue continued its evolution from a warehouse/industrial district and into an upscale residential and shopping district, the Trust trustees saw an opportunity, and jumped on it. Times had changed, and there was more money to be made in shifting from housing goods to housing people.

  [Lake Point Tower, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

The Chicago Dock & Canal Terminal Warehouse structure, which stretched 4 city blocks,   had its top 3 floors whacked-off when the Outer Drive Bridge was constructed in the 1930s. The slice left about 100 feet of warehouse along Illinois Street, where the structure's eastern end terminated at the approach to Navy Pier. Across Illinois stood a 4-acre, vacant piece of land that was being used as a temporary parking lot with two railroad spur lines running still through it. The trustees decided to start with their plan for the 21st century by building high-rise apartment buildings along Illinois, east of the bridge, and began looking for a developer willing to take on the project. The search wasn't easy even though this was a prime piece of real estate. The Trust didn't want to sell the land, they were looking for a long term - as in 99 years or more - ground lease, but no one was biting. Finally, developers William Hartnett and Charles Shaw saw an opportunity, made a deal on the parking lot acreage, and hired two young architects to come up with a plan.

  [Lake Point Tower /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

George Schipporeit and John Heinrich were in their late 20s and recent graduates of the Illinois Institute of Technology, where they had been students of Mies van der Rohe. Both had worked in Mies's office for a short time, and to have a project of this magnitude come their way at such a young age seemed like a billion-in-one opportunity. The site was fraught with problems. The building would stand on "ground" that had once been lake water, and was actually composed of layers of landfill. It was cut-off from the nearby Streeterville neighborhood by the eight-lanes of lake Shore Drive, and surrounded by old industrial warehouse buildings. Even Navy Pier was a rusting heap. To make the building profitable, the architects had to squeeze 900 studio, one, two and three bedroom apartments into the tower, along with a 700 car parking garage. To overcome the spongy quality of the man-made surface, the garage was built above ground, which created platform for the building. To hold the structure airborne, the architects built a long concrete shaft, like a tree trunk, which sat secured to bedrock far below street level. The floor plates would radiate out from the central core, and finding inspiration in an old design van der Rohe had come-up with in 1921, the pair drew-up a floor plan that looked like a Y, sitting on the 4-story base. Apartments would have unrivaled views, and because the building would be the only one in the city of its kind to stand east of Lake Shore Drive - instant recognition.
Today, with the revamped Navy Pier drawing millions of visitors, the green-glazed brick base of the Tower has come under a constant stream of criticism. The boxy behemoth is now seen as an example of all that was bad in urban planning in the previous century, when architecture turned its back on the dynamic city streetscape. In the recently revitalized pedestrian friendly area, its hard to believe that 50 years ago this little section of Chicago was a no man's land of aging structures left over from another century - when Lake Point Tower stood alone, out in the urban wilderness.

860-880 Lake Shore Drive

 by: chicago designslinger

 [860-880 Lake Shore Drive (1951) Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, architect; Pace Associates, Holsman Holsman Klekamp & Taylor, associate architects (2009) restoration, Krueck + Sexton; Harboe Architects, PC; architects /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

On April 15, 1951 a group of Chicagoans participated in a momentous event - they moved into an apartment building unlike any other on the planet. For the first time in history, people would be living in a high-rise residential tower surrounded by exterior walls made of glass - instead of brick and plaster. A few of these cutting-edge tenants had second thoughts after moving in, either because there was no place to put the furniture, or because they were afraid to go near the floor to ceiling windows for fear they would fall out. The sleek looking tower would be copied over and over again - sometimes successfully, sometimes not - but life for office workers, and apartment dwellers, would never be the same again.

  [860-880 Lake Shore Drive, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's twin towers broke the mold. Up until these two buildings appeared on Lake Shore Drive, tall architecture was wrapped in a skin of masonry, concealing the great structural innovations pioneered in the late-19th century. Although the groundbreaking use of the steel frame had allowed architects to build tall for two generations, by the mid-20th century most of that slim framework was still hidden behind brick, stone, concrete and plaster. Van der Rohe was ready to build outside the box and create a new architecture for a new modern age. He'd been thinking about constructing towers of glass in his native Germany since the 1920s. But it took the Nazis, a move to the United States, his landing in Chicago, spending over a decade as the chair of the architecture department at I.I.T., and partnering with a brave like-minded developer, before he was able to realize his glass-walled, structurally-revealing concept.

  [860 Lake Shore Drive, National Register of Historic Places, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Van der Rohe was lucky to have a partner who believed in the architect and was not afraid of trying something new. Developer Herbert Greenwald was only 29-years-old when he asked the 61-year-old department chair to design an apartment complex that Greenwald was developing in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The Promontory Apartments were moving toward Mies's desire to express the true essence of a modern building, but the designer still relied on the plastic quality of concrete to bring the project to fruition. In 1949 - the same year that the Hyde Park buildings were completed - a scion of one of Chicago's storied families, Robert Hall McCormick, announced that Herb Greenwald would be developing a cooperative apartment complex on McCormick-owned land on Lake Shore Drive between Delaware and Chestnut Streets. And that Mies van der Rohe would be the architect.

  [860 Lake Shore Drive, City of Chicago Landmark /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

At the time of the Promontory construction, Mies had already been experimenting with a design scheme that better expressed a building's true, steel, structural nature. He'd worked-out a concept with one of his students Earl Bluestein prior to the completion of the Promontory drawings, but he wasn't ready to commit to this new construction method just yet. But, by the time the McCormick/Greenwald project was underway, Mies was ready to launch his revolutionary new idea. Although the main structural steel frame had to be covered in concrete because of fire codes, the masonry cover extended only as far as the code required. On the other hand, Mies was able to attach unfettered steel I-beams to the vertical edges of the window frames - which helped hold the 9-foot tall, single-paned pieces of glass in place - but also increased the visual upward thrust of the building and gave the exterior surface much more visual interest. Although criticized for decorating his "pure" steel structure with the seemingly needless beams, the man who became forever attached to the statement "Less is More," also fundamentally believed that aesthetic choices, over an absolute strict practicality, always triumphed.

Sullivan Center - Carson Pirie Scott & Co. Building

 by: chicago designslinger

 [Sullivan Center - Carson Pirie Scott & Co. Building (1898-1960) Louis Sullivan, D.H. Burnham & Co., Holabird & Root, architects (2001 - 2011) exterior restoration, Harboe Architects PC, architects /Image &Artwork: chicago designslinger]

In an era of big-box, super-sized retail outlets dominating the retail landscape, it might be hard to believe that there was once a time when a single department store contained more floor space than several big-box stores combined. In the first half of the 20th century, eight giant department stores occupied a six block stretch of State Street in downtown Chicago, offering-up just over 8,000,000 square feet of sales space. An amount that is equal to about 43 Super WalMarts, or 46 Super Targets, or an even more astonishing 200 Best Buys.

  [Sullivan Center  - Carson Pirie Scott & Co. Building, 1 & 33 S. State Street, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Today's Sullivan Center/City Target building was once one of those retail behemoths - a single store containing miles of sales counters, more clothes than you could possibly try-on in a week, acres of books and home appliances, plus fine dining - all packed into 600,000 square feet. It all began over 130 years ago when Leopold Schlesinger and David Mayer joined the march from Chicago's established retail center on Lake Street, to its emerging center on State Street. They picked one of the best trafficked corners in the city - the intersection of State and Madison - where every major streetcar line in Chicago intersected. They took over half of the ground floor space in architect William W. Boyington's 1873 Bowen Building, where the dry good merchants hit pay dirt on the busy corner, and began an expansion program that kept them busy for the next 13 years.

  [Sullivan Center  - Carson Pirie Scott & Co. Building, National Historic Landmark, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

The Bowen Building sat on a piece of ground owned by Marshall Field - proprietor of the department store up the street. The corner lot was leased by Field to one of the city's major real estate players, Otto Young - who owned the actual building. Young in turn leased the building to Schlesinger & Mayer, who wanted to demolish the older Bowen structure and build a new, modern department store. Architects David Adler and Louis Sullivan had already begun working with the dry goods vendors in a revamp of the Bowen in 1891, but by the time Schlesinger and Mayer were ready to build from scratch, Adler & Sullivan had dissolved their partnership and Sullivan took on the new project solo. So in 1898, work got under way on a project that grew section by section over the next 72 years.

  [Sullivan Center  - Carson Pirie Scott & Co. Building, National Register of Historic Places, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Although Sullivan's signature foliage began sprouting on the store's Madison Street    facade in 1898, the signature corner building didn't appear on the scene until 1903. The round bend followed the profile of the old Bowen structure, but after that, it was Sullivan all the way. From the lacy cast-iron base, to the ornately molded terra-cotta, to the finely crafted plaster and wood trim found inside, the building exploded in Sullivan's exuberant design. Then in 1904, just as the finishing touches were being added to the store, David Mayer announced he was ready to retire while talks were already underway to build a southern extension on property controlled by Otto Young. The existing building and all its contents were sold to Henry Selfridge, a key player in the success of Marshall Field & Co. Selfridge then turned around and sold the store and all its contents to Carson, Pirie, Scott & Co. - an established Chicago retailer who had recently lost their lease on a building they rented across the street from Field & Co. Carson's agreed to grow into the space Young had planned on building to the south, but Sullivan was not invited back to design the addition. Daniel Burnham was brought in - an architect with a temperament much more to Young's liking - and Burnham & Co. designed a building which duplicated many of Sullivan's decorative flourishes, with a few trims here and there.

  [Sullivan Center  - Carson Pirie Scott & Co. Building, City of Chicago Landmark /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Carson's occupied the corner of State & Madison for the next 103 years, with more expansions into adjoining buildings, including a final State Street extension in 1960 designed by Holabird & Root. The retailers bought-out their last long-term property leasehold in 1955, and for the first time, actually owned all the land under their massive store. When the jig was up for Carson Pirie Scott on State in 2007, developer Joseph Freed & Associates purchased the whole magilla and undertook an extensive restoration of Sullivan's landmark. The exterior now looks almost like it did the day the architect released his drawings for construction, and retail has returned to the first two floors with the introduction of Target Corporation's newest branding idea for dense urban blocks - CityTarget.

Macy's on State - Marshall Field & Co. Building

 by: chicago designslinger

 [Macy's on State - Marshall Field & Co. Building (1893-1914) D.H. Burnham & Co.; Graham, Burnham & Co.; architects /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

The mammoth building at State & Washington Streets in downtown Chicago has a large bronze plaque attached to its corner that reads MARSHALL FIELD AND COMPANY. However the awings lining the ground floor of the enormous structure are trimmed with the words Macy's on State - which may be a bit confusing. Although the Cincinnati-based Macy's corporation now owns the 3,225,000 square foot department store building, the structure's 2005 historic designation commemorates the building and Field - a name that has been associated with this corner location since 1868, and represented Chicago to the world in much the same way Pullman, Palmer, Swift, Armour, Sears and Ward's once branded the nation's second largest city.

  [Macy's on State - Marshall Field & Co. Building, 111 N. State Street, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Marshall Field had been working as a dry goods clerk in the city's bustling Lake Street retail district for over a decade when in 1865 a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity presented itself. Dry goods merchant Potter Palmer was looking to get out of the business and focus on real estate development, and Field, along with co-worker Levi Leiter, heard that Palmer was looking for partners to take over the active management of his dry goods emporium. Two years later the active partners bought-out their silent partner and Field & Leiter announced they were open for business. Palmer meanwhile had bought several city blocks of State Street property near the Lake Street commercial area, and in 1868 he built a large six-story, mansard-roofed, marble-clad building on the northeast corner of Washington and State. Chicago had never seen anything like it, and dubbed the eye-popping structure the Marble Palace. Palmer convinced Field & Leiter to leave Lake Street and move into the building, whose gleaming-white, Second Empire-era architecture drew as many customers to the store as the luxury goods offered inside.

  [Macy's on State - Marshall Field & Co. Building, National Historic Landmark, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

Three years after their spectacular grand opening Field & Leiter's Marble palace burned to the ground in the Great Fire of 1871. Sensing that the flames were headed their way, Leiter gathered a group of men, hitched the store's wagons to their horses, packed-up as much merchandise as possible, and headed toward the lake. Days after everything cooled-down Field & Leiter were back in business in a temporary location. Potter Palmer soon sold the rubble-strewn corner to the New York-based Singer sewing machine company, who were looking to get in on the booming post-fire Chicago real estate market. Field & Leiter returned to the corner in 1872, and occupied the brand new Singer Building until 1877 when a fire destroyed the luxury department store once again. This time however, the merchants weren't so quick to return.

  [Macy's on State - Marshall Field & Co. Building, City of Chicago Landmark /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

When Singer began construction on their second building, the company assumed that Field & Leiter would return as tenants. The store's partners however didn't want to lease any longer - they wanted to buy - but Singer wasn't interested in a purchase. Instead the sewing machine concern offered the department store merchants a 5-year lease at $50,000-a-year, with the two parties splitting the real estate taxes 50/50. Plus a second 5-year term at $50,000-a-year, this time with Field & Leiter picking up the entire tax tab. The partners countered with a flat $500,000 purchase price for the land and the building, but Singer again said no. After months of negotiations that were quickly going nowhere, Singer started talking to another State Street dry goods partnership, Carson Pirie Scott & Co. As contracts were being drawn-up between Singer and Carson's, Field & Leiter re-entered the picture with a cash offer of $650,000 for the Singer building and land, and $100,000 in cash for Carson's to prevent the lease from going forward. In April 1879, Field & Leiter moved back to the corner of State & Washington and never left.

  [Macy's on State - Marshall Field & Co. Building, Loop Retail National Historic District, Chicago /Image & Artwork: chicago designslinger]

In 1881 Field bought-out Leiter, and the store was eventually renamed Marshall Field and Company. Field began buying up the buildings around him, and if he could, the ground underneath them. Purchasing the buildings proved to be easier than buying the land, so he leased the ground leasehold rights for terms of up to 99 years or more, and in 1891 hired architects Daniel Burnham and John Root to build the first of what became a series of six inter-connected buildings. By the time Burnham and Field began the exisiting State Street frontage in 1902 Root was dead, and D.H. Burnham & Co., and the successor firm Graham, Burnham & Co. expanded the building over the next 22 years into one of the largest department store structures in the world. And with its Classically inspired architecture and Tiffany glass mosaics, Marshall Field and Company offered-up luxury goods in a supremely stylish setting for generations to come.