My UChicago Haunts (Part 1)

This year the University of Chicago is celebrating the 125^th anniversary of its founding.  In commemoration of that great and special (and unusual) place, home of the “life of the mind,” where exasperated shouts of “define your terms” bounce between the limestone Gothic buildings, where secondary sources are third class citizens, where the graffito “F-you – Newton” is coupled with “F-your vicinity – Heisenberg,” and where when hurrying to the library on a brisk fall Saturday afternoon a driver pulls over to ask, in all earnestness, “where’s the Plato lecture,” as if you’d know just which one.

Reminiscing on some well-travelled campus haunts:

Hitchcock Hall is an unusual building, inside and out.  Completed in 1902 as a men’s residence hall, it has Gothic elements encased in prominent horizontal lines enclosing five vertical sections, four stories each, connected only by cross corridors in the basement and on the quad side a ground floor, unheated cloister.  It was designed, writes campus historian Jay Pridmore, as “a merger of Prairie School and Gothic Revival.”  Very UChicago – cross-discipline fertilization.  How many other Prairie-Gothic buildings can one name on the National Register of Historic Places? 

 

Hitchcock Hall
(Snell Hall in more traditional Gothic design is adjacent to the right)

Hitchcock Hall is a place where once upon a time, after yet another intense conversation around a greasy table in the basement kitchen, someone would remark sardonically “well, another raucous Saturday night at the U of C;” but also a place where, should anyone try to leave such conversation, on the price of tea in China or carbon-carbon double bonds, the plea “five more minutes” would invariably be heard. 

Bartlett Gymnasium was a pretty neat, and historic, place.  It once stood as the eastern part of the Stagg Field complex, housing a big gym, offices for coaches, a large trophy room with testaments of past Big Ten glories, and a locker room where attendant Bill Dee would string a mean Hornet squash racket for a young college freshman.  It was decorated with large hand-painted murals and most notably over the entrance a large, multi-paneled stained glass window depicting a scene from Ivanhoe “in which the knight is crowned for his triumph in a legendary twelfth-century tournament” (Pridmore).  Build of very solid limestone in the Gothic style, of course, with the same turrets and battlements found on Stagg Field. 

 

Bartlett Gymnasium

A place where I learned the game of squash, which I played there for many years, and the place where I would interview the athletic coaches for my short-lived small sports column in the student newspaper The Chicago Maroon.  In the twenty-first century, upon completion on the edge of campus of a larger athletic center with a faddish, futuristic-look, the convenient and centrally-located Bartlett Gymnasium building was turned into a cafeteria.  My oh my.
 

Hutchinson Commons, Mitchell Tower, a sliver of the Reynolds Club, and a corner of Mandel Hall (L to R) 

Hutchinson Commons was the grandest place on campus to eat a mediocre meal, though when a student it was a bit pricey for me.  Always an interesting experience to chow down in the wood-filled, heavy-beamed, high-ceilinged hall, watched over by past university greats whose huge portraits hang on the walls all about you.  The building, modeled after Oxford’s Christ Hall Church, is, writes Pridmore, a “classic example of the late-Gothic English Perpendicular.”  How about that?  Hutch Commons is part of a multi-building complex that includes Mitchell Tower, Mandel Hall auditorium, and the Reynolds Club, a hodgepodge of spaces and offices built as a student center.

Hutchinson Commons; Portraits Fill the Walls Now

My thin wallet preferred the adjacent C-Shop, where, if flush with a few extra dollars from the latest advance on a loan, my pals and I ate many a greasy hamburger rather than cooking up a pot of cheaper spaghetti or gnocchi.  We were glad to have a late night dining option on campus.  It looks now to have been converted into a healthy-food sandwich, granola, and muffin shop, with a full line of organic juices.  Times have changed.     

Cobb Gate
(Incorrectly named on the postcard)

 

 

Finally, for now, Cobb Gate merits a mention.  It is the south entrance (on 57^th Street) first to Hull Court, with its complex of biology buildings, and then to the main quadrangles.  Traversed innumerable times in a typical undergraduate’s stint, it certainly is a sight, a passageway beneath a massive limestone archway covered with a bevy of gargoyles and other grotesque creatures glaring down on passers-by, a fair warning that the University of Chicago isn’t for the faint of heart.   

 

 

R Balsamo

Other posts relating to the University of Chicago

Good Tidings of Great Joy

....And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.  And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. 

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.  And this shall be a sign unto you; You shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

 

From the Gospel of Luke

 

A postcard from the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany at Ashland Avenue and Adams Street on Chicago’s Near West Side, giving times of various 1905 Christmastime worship services and celebrations.  According to Father George Lane in Chicago Churches and Synagogues, the Church was constructed in 1885 of rusticated Lake Superior limestone in the Romanesque style reminiscent of the Trinity Church in Boston, and contains “elegant woodwork and beautiful mosaics.”

R Balsamo

Experts Jump the Shark on New One World Trade Center Height – 70% Building & 30% Mast; the Clintons & Obama Comment

Obama assures Chicagoans that if they like the tallest building designation for the Willis Tower, they can keep it.  Period. 

As Abraham Lincoln said, even if you call a tail a leg a dog still has only four legs.

Willis Tower (per Wikipedia)

The height committee of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, an international body based at Chicago’s Illinois Institute of Technology (that very underappreciated university that should be much better known), determined (link) that the big mast rising up from the top of the new One World Trade Center in New York City qualifies as a “spire”, and is not an “antenna” even though it looks exactly like one, because it is a permanent feature and thus counts in their estimation as part of the building’s height.  Despite the fact the spire accounts for a ridiculous 30% of the building’s now “official” height of a very symbolic 1,776 feet, the new structure is now designated by them as the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere.  Such designation could of course add to the building’s attraction as a target for Islamic terrorists, and the structure will now be defended by the administration of the city’s newly elected mayor, a socialist no less, whose main promise is to compromise the city’s increasingly successful police protection methods. 

The Willis (formerly Sears) Tower in Chicago, once the world’s tallest building, is 1,451 feet tall and doesn’t have a mast as part of its official height, while the roof of the new One World Trade Center is (only) 1,368 feet tall.  Normal people, rather than experts who sometimes, like here, get twisted up into non-sensical positions, would regard a building’s height as closely related to the tallest occupiable space on which a human could stand.  By that definition, as I understand it the Willis Tower remains the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere and taller than many other “officially” higher buildings around the globe which have increasingly resorted to longer and longer “spires” in what amounts to a spire race to one-up competitors.  I think everyone would agree, though, that Willis Tower still has the highest toilets in the Western Hemisphere.

Reaction was swift.  Former President Bill Clinton, apparently an architectural buff since he's often overheard using the term “tall mast” on overnights in Chicago, said that whether the mast is a spire or an antenna depends on what the definition of “is” is.  Chicagoland native Hillary Clinton, also a prominent Democrat politician, mastermind of the Benghazi Betrayal, and noted cattle futures expert, also weighed in, saying “At this point, what difference does it make?”  Former Chicago resident Barack Obama, whose only significant adult job and therefore main qualification for the presidency of the United States was the “street cred” he garnered as a local community organizer for a socialist organization, assured Chicagoans that if they liked the tallest building designation for the Willis Tower, they could keep it.  Period. 

Christmas Eve at Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral

It’s Christmas Eve, and my mind’s eye looks back on my many Midnight Masses of years long past.  One church I’ve never seen on Christmas Eve is Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral, home base of the Roman Catholic Archbishop. 

It’s a beauty inside and out, described by Fr. George A. Lane, in his Chicago Churches and Synagogues, as a Victorian Gothic containing the official chair of a bishop, the cathedra.  The building was completed in 1875 of Lemont limestone and has undergone a number of alterations and renovations since.  Most striking to me is the unusual wood ceiling, described by Fr. Lane as “an elegant water-pegged black walnut ceiling, probably unique in the Chicago area.”  The cathedral features five bronze panels celebrating the Holy Name of Jesus by sculptor Attilio Selva, Stations of the Cross in bronze and red marble by Goffredo Verginelli, stained glass windows from Milan, and massive bronze doors designed by Albert Friscia.  Fr. Lane tells us that the wide-brimmed red hats hanging from the ceiling high above the sanctuary area are the galeros belonging to the previous cardinal-archbishops of Chicago, a custom dating to the thirteenth century; old traditions can live on in new places. 

Although this is one more Christmas Eve I’ll miss Midnight Mass at the Cathedral, I hope to once again at least catch it remotely via the annual local TV broadcast.    

From the Cathedral's website:

      

Holy Name Cathedral's website
Holy Name Cathedral at Wikipedia

John M Greco

Related Post:
Notre Dame Church in Chicago (and Christmas Eve)

Ryerson Physical Laboratory – “The Most Beautiful University Building in the World”

I previously mentioned (link) the Kent Chemical Laboratory building at the University of Chicago, and now I get around to posting the picture of its next door neighbor and close cousin, Ryerson Physical Laboratory.  I had just one class here as an undergraduate, physics of course, and a tough one it was.  Rambling around inside and peering into the nooks and crannies of the beautiful, old, storied building was I think the most enjoyable part of that particular experience.   

The young University’s main architect Henry Ives Cobb designed the building, which opened in 1894 and was named after Chicago lumber businessman Martin Ryerson.

At its dedication, according to Jay Pridmore’s U of C architectural Campus Guide, then university President William Rainey Harper called Ryerson “the most beautiful university building in the world,” and I’m not here to dispute that.  Pridmore writes that the building “exhibits a dreamy Gothic fantasy: complicated solids and voids on the surface, with balconies, gables, and a crocketed roof line.  As usual in Cobb’s buildings, the main entrance is the most elaborate part…”  An annex was added in 1913, by Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, “sympathetic” to Cobb’s design but “with noticeably richer ornamentation.”  

Pridmore tells us that “one of the earliest denizens was physicist Albert Michelson, the first Nobel laureate among many at this university,” who was honored in 1907 for his measurement of the speed of light. 

In the second post card image, the pre-annex building rear is seen from the north, with Botany Pond just to the left foreground and Hull Gate to the right, and the original Law School building in the distance.  

R Balsamo

New Look for the Old Colony

Chicago’s Old Colony building is looking better than it has in perhaps almost a century after a cleanup that has washed away layers of build-up soot.  It’s one of my favorites, for its curved corners, interesting design, and appealing height, and I was delighted the other day to see it cleared of scaffolding and looking bright and clean.   

Completed in 1894 by Holabird and Roche, the slender early skyscraper has a classic Chicago tripartite structure, with a distinguishable base, a plain midsection, and a defined top section, which here includes a colonnade and a projecting cornice.  The most striking and unusual feature is its curved corners, and one can also see the “Chicago windows”, characterized by a large fixed pane of glass flanked on either side by narrower windows with sliding sashes that can be raised.  The Old Colony sits at southeast corner of Van Buren and Dearborn streets in the south Loop, and forms with the Fisher, Plymouth, and Manhattan an interesting row of old, preserved classic Chicago skyscrapers running between Dearborn and Plymouth streets.

Judith Paine McBrien, in her Pocket Guide to Chicago Architecture, says that the Old Colony was “built on speculation by Boston lawyer Francis Bartlett” and was “named for the first English colony in America….  The building was a successful venture, offering 600 offices that were occupied by railroad, printing, and lumber interests who sought space here in the thriving printing center of the Midwest.”  

Ira Bach says, in his Chicago’s Famous Buildings, that “the Old Colony is the last remaining Chicago downtown building with rounded projecting corner bays, a device often employed … to create highly desirable corner spaces on the interior and an interesting silhouette on the exterior…. [Also,] It was the first structure to employ a system of portal arches to brace it against wind loads, an innovative solution to a basic problem of tall skeleton-framed buildings.”  In Chicago on Foot, authors Bach and Wolfson tell us that the building has 17 stories, ... the first four [of which] are of light-blue Bedford stone [while] the upper part pressed brick and white terra cotta.”

Finis Farr in Chicago says that “the design as a whole gave an impression of dignity and power.”  Agreed.  Kudos on the rehab. 

The photo is taken from the west side of Dearborn street, northwest of the Old Colony; part of the Fisher Building is visible on the left, and the Chicago El tracks run on Van Buren Street between the two buildings.  The postcard is postmarked November 1907 to a Miss Underwood in Dayton, Ohio.  Click on an image to enlarge.  A brief Wikipedia article is here. 

R Balsamo

Notre Dame Church in Chicago

Quite a few years ago many a Christmas Eve found me with my family at midnight Mass at Notre Dame Church on Chicago’s near west side. It was a special yearly visit to the Italian Taylor Street “old neighborhood” of big families and special memories. I especially recall peering up into the great dome overhead and marveling at the art work so high up, and even at my age then was able to appreciate how well the church was cared for.

In Chicago Churches and Synagogues: An Architectural Pilgrimage, Fr. George Lane writes that “the words ‘Notre Dame de Chicago’ above the door … recall the illustrious French history of Chicago…. Although Notre Dame parish was founded in 1864, it was actually a continuation of an earlier French church known as St. Louis which was organized in 1850.”

Fr. Lane tells us that the beautiful church is in the Romanesque Revival style, with the main body almost circular in plan surmounted by a 90-foot dome and cupola. The high vaulted ceiling is one of the most striking features in my memory. Fr. Lane also describes “thirty-three beautiful stained glass windows, all imported from Europe, [that] decorate and illuminate the church.” In 1918, after most of the French-speaking residents were gone, the Cardinal gave the parish and church to the Blessed Sacrament fathers to run.

The Notre Dame parish has suffered some set-backs in more recent years. First, the city razed good parts of the parish for the Eisenhower Expressway just to the north, for the West Side medical center just to the west, and for the University of Illinois campus just to the east. Some other Taylor Street churches, such as St. Calistus, survived these depredations, but a special one, Guardian Angel, did not.  Then, Fr. Lane relates that in 1978 the statue of Our Lady atop the cupola was struck by lightning and caught fire, causing extensive damage to the church. But through all that, Notre Dame still stands this new Christmas, on Flournoy Street at Loomis, in the heart of the old neighborhood through which so many lives have passed and become enriched.

R Balsamo

Our Lady of Sorrows Basilica

Some days it doesn’t take much – a comment, a picture -- to ignite old memories. Yesterday I read mention that today is the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows.

Some of the clearest memories I have as a small boy are the walks from our home in Chicago straight down Jackson Boulevard to a large church I later came to know is the basilica of Our Lady of Sorrows. We didn’t go there on Sundays, for our church, Resurrection, was in the next parish over, but I knew it held special meaning for my mother. It was large, quiet, dim, and mostly empty when we would visit on days warm enough for a walk. My mother would light a candle, spend a few moments in reflection, and we would be off.

I now read that Our Lady of Sorrows is the patron saint of Slovakia, the Molise region of Italy, and the Congregation of Holy Cross order of Catholic priests, who, among other things, run the University of Notre Dame. Who knew?

In Chicago Churches and Synagogues: An Architectural Pilgrimage, Fr. George Lane writes that the church was raised to the status of basilica (one of only two in Chicago) by the Pope because the Sorrowful Mother Novena rite originated there in 1937 and subsequently spread all over the world. The building was built by the Servite friars "in pure Renaissance form" and completed in 1901 of Chicago common brick with a limestone façade. Between two 200 foot towers, a great barrel-vaulted ceiling reaches 80 feet above the marble floor, and the beautiful main altar is made of white Carrara marble. The basilica features numerous original works of art and “perhaps the oldest working pipe organ Lyon & Healy ever installed.”

Richard Balsamo

Kent Chemical Laboratory at the University of Chicago

Bleary eyed, I would pack my books and papers for the day and leave Burton-Judson Courts to brave the wind gusting down the Midway Plaisance, then hustle through the Classics archway, past Bond Chapel, and across the main quad to Kent, pass through its heavy doors and on to its great octagonal lecture hall, for my first class of the day, early morning chemistry. And from an upper floor lab, as an overawed fresh undergraduate, I could wander down the hall and cross into its neighbor Jones Laboratory, and peer into the very small memorialized room where a weighable amount of plutonium was first isolated, a few months before man’s first controlled nuclear reaction was engineered in a squash court a block away.

Apparently I hadn’t had enough, for I returned the following year for an early morning class in organic chemistry, but, relievedly, from a room not so far away.

Kent Chemical Laboratory was designed by the University of Chicago’s first architect, Henry Ives Cobb, in his Chicago Gothic style and built of Indiana limestone in 1894. It anchors the north side of the main quad, alongside its close cousin Ryerson Physical Laboratory. Chicago Gothic doesn't get any better than these two.

Richard Balsamo

Related Post:
Ryerson Physical Laboratory – “The Most Beautiful University Building in the World”

The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago

One of the gems of the University of Chicago, The Oriental Institute (link) houses a museum, an auditorium, a beautiful library, classrooms, and scholars’ offices. The museum, open to the public, contains countless artifacts gathered during excavations in the Near East over many years by University faculty, students, and staff. Among the striking treasures displayed: an Assyrian Lamassu, or human-headed winged bull (link); a Striding Lion of Babylon (link); a statute of King Tutankhamun from Egypt; and a colossal Persian bull’s head from Persepolis.

The Institute's beautiful building was dedicated in 1931. From Jay Pridmore’s architectural guide to the University: “Designed by the same [architectural] studio [responsible for Rockefeller Chapel], the architects certainly intended for the Institute to harmonize with if not resemble [the nearby] modern Gothic chapel. But for reasons of fashion and a few characteristic design features, [the Institute] is commonly tagged ‘Art Deco.’ The building’s simplified Gothic exterior is indeed notable for planes and masses similar to those of Art Deco or Art Moderne commercial buildings of the period, such as Chicago’s Board of Trade [building]…. [Nevertheless,] despite its exotic and modern touches, the Oriental Institute remains an integrated part of the Gothic revival campus…. its gables and gray stone, as well as its bays and buttresses show that the Gothic revival was still regnant in the early 1930s.”

American Egyptologist – Breasted & The Oriental Institute

A "colossal" statute of Tutankhamun (c. 1334 B.C.), “one of the most famous pharaohs of ancient Egypt” says the note in the museum. Excavated in modern Luxor, it is one of a pair, the other of which stands in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Richard Balsamo

Related Previous Posts:
Ancient Assyria & the Transience of Economic Strength
The Oriental Institute's "Striding Lion" of Babylon
American Egyptologist – Breasted & The OrientalInstitute

Chicago's Insurance Exchange Building

Chicago's Insurance Exchange Building, still beautiful, still vibrant, on a crisp January day in 2010. Occupying one square block directly west of the iconic Chicago Board of Trade Building in the south Loop, between Jackson and Van Buren Streets, it was once home to the Mid-America Commodities Exchange and, per Leslie A. Hudson in Chicago Skyscrapers, to the headquarters of more insurance companies than any other building in the world. Completed in 1912 by D.H. Burnham, with a southward expansion in 1928, it shows the classic tripartite structure with a well-defined base and top, here punctuated by ionic colonnades separated by an unadorned middle.

Pictured above is the east face of the building.

Pictured on this vintage postcard is the initial northern half of the building, viewed from the northeast across Jackson Blvd; the northwestern corner of the old Board of Trade Building is visible on the extreme left.

Richard Balsamo

Chicago's London Guarantee and Accident Building

An image of one of my favorite Chicago buildings -- The London Guarantee and Accident Building. This picture is actually of a model of the building found in a remarkable diorama of downtown Chicago that is part of the model railroad exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago on the Southside lakefront. As an aside, the museum's building is one of the few remaining structures from the 1893 World's Fair.

The unusually-shaped London Guarantee building is located at the southwest corner of Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive, just south of the Chicago River, on the site of historic Fort Dearborn, and looks across the river at the Wrigley Building.

The architectural beauty, unique shape, and historic location make this building a must-see. Judith Paine McBrien writes in the Pocket Guide to Chicago Architecture: Designed by Alfred Alschuler and completed in 1923, "a 22 story building made of Indiana limestone using classical references throughout, from the three story columns
marking the entrance, repeated above the fifteenth floor, to the Greco-Roman tempietto on top. Note how the rusticated base matches that of the Wacker Drive Esplanade below and how the unusual concave facade accommodates the semicircular plaza defining the intersection of Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive."


This great photo on the left and more can be found here.





Addendum June 2010:




This is an image of a vintage linen postcard from my collection.














Richard Balsamo

Great Architecture: The Rookery, Chicago -- "Forceful, Yet Friendly"

The Rookery is one of the great Chicago buildings, and one I particularly enjoy glimpses of while walking in the Loop. Designed by noted architects Burnham & Root, completed around 1886, and with a lobby remodeled by Frank Lloyd Wright, it sits squat and imposing, ornate yet serious, along the LaSalle Street canyon. Judith Paine McBrien writes in the Pocket Guide to Chicago Architecture that the Rookery’s “robust Romanesque exterior has a two-story rusticated granite base punctuated by glass and stone columns, a grand arched entry, and intricate terra-cotta ornament.”

From Chicago’s Famous Buildings, edited by Ira J. Bach: “The vigorous contrast of columns and heavy stonework, … as well as the combination of massive walls and large windows and the degree of emphasis at the corners, top, and center of the façade, all help to establish the building’s strong presence. John Root held that the virtues of architecture were similar to the traits of civilized people, and the Rookery can well be viewed this way. It stands there like a stronghearted and cheerful person, forceful, yet friendly.”

[Click on photo to enlarge; another exterior view here; great photos of the lobby here and here; Wikipedia article here]
Richard Balsamo