Lee Bey

What Obama can learn from Bush's library

By: Lee Bey | Apr. 24, 2013

Apr. 24, 2013
The George W. Bush Presidential Center is scheduled to be dedicated Thursday in a gathering that will include the four former U.S. presidents and the nation's current chief executive, whose future library is the subject of jockeying and speculation here in Chicago.
 
Designed by architect Robert A.M. Stern, the $250 million center located in Dallas looks to be a sober and traditional building—conservative, if you'll pardon—that matches the SMU campus. Inside there is a policy institute, an auditorium, archives, a restaurant and more.
 
The library sits on 25 acres including a 15-acre Texas prairie recreated by landscape architects Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, designers of Chicago's Maggie Daley Park under construction east of Millennium Park.
 
What will Obama see during his visit?

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Mies-designed Farnsworth House safe after river rises

By: Lee Bey | Apr. 22, 2013

Apr. 22, 2013
The historic Farnsworth House was left surrounded—but, thankfully, not flooded—by waters from the nearby Fox River in the wake of last week's heavy storms, a representative of the National Trust for Historic Preservation said.
 
"We do not believe that the water breached the interior of the building," Katherine Malone-France, an outreach director for the National Trust, which operates the property as a house museum, said Saturday. "The lower terrace has just come into view and as soon as it is safe for our staff to walk to the house, we will be able to confirm this."
 
Designed by architect Mies van der Rohe, the one-room modernist home was built in 1951 on 60 picturesque acres nestled on the banks of the Fox River in Kendall County, near Plano, Ill. The Farnsworth's eight exterior columns also act as stilts that elevate the home five feet above the ground.

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Want to own an old firehouse?

By: Lee Bey | Apr. 15, 2013

Apr. 15, 2013
A historic former Chicago Fire Department station is set to hit the market today, as part of a class of ornate and romantic early 20th century firehouses being put up for sale by the city.
 
A request for proposals for the firehouse at 5714 N. Ridge Ave. is expected to be issued today, according to spokesman Peter Strazzabosco of the Department of Housing and Economic Development, the city agency in charge of selling the property. The site has been appraised at $350,000, he said.
 
“That will be the target price,” Strazzabosco said. “But that doesn’t mean people will have to bid [that price].”

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Former Chicago printing house turns student residence

By: Lee Bey | Apr. 12, 2013

Apr. 12, 2013
I've passed by the Printer's Row corner of Polk St., and Plymouth Ct., countless times on foot and by car. But it wasn't until a recent stroll that I saw–and I mean really saw–the magnificent 19th century jewel on the intersection's northeast side.
 
The brick and limestone edifice at 731 S. Plymouth Ct celebrates its 20th year as the Columbia College Residence Center, one of an abundance of South Loop buildings bought and repurposed by the arts college in recent decades. The structure was built in 1899 as the Lakeside Press Building, part of the R.R. Donnelly publishing empire.
 
It's an industrial building. Let that sink in for a bit. Far removed, designwise, from the cement block and corrugated metal roof ciphers that often house industry these days, this printing press building has piers, symmetry, arches, detailing, presence—it's all there.
 
No wonder, given the building was designed by Howard Van Doren Shaw, a premiere architect of his day.

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A midcentury bank at risk in Gage Park

By: Lee Bey | Apr. 10, 2013

Apr. 10, 2013
The Gage Park community is a classic city neighborhood with the ranks of Chicago bungalows, brick two-flats and other buildings constructed before the Great Depression.
 
But the working class neighborhood went a bit go-go in the 1950s and 1960s, and the result is some unexpectedly modern buildings turning up here and there in the mainly pre-War landscape.
 
A prime example is the corner of 55th and Kedzie, which boasts the former Talman Federal Savings & Loan, the midcentury gem by Skidmore Owings & Merrill seen above and St. Gall Catholic Church, a curved modern stunner with a 60 foot stainless steel crucifix in front. The church was designed by the unheralded (but quite worthy) Pavlecic Kovacevic & Ota.
Built in 1956, St.

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Siskel & Ebert and one last laugh

By: Lee Bey | Apr. 9, 2013

Apr. 9, 2013

I posted this on my Facebook page last week, then thought a wider audience might enjoy it today: a 1995 episode of the short-lived (and wickedly funny) animated series The Critic that featured Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert.

In the episode, the duo breaks up their partnership and each court the series lead character, Jay Sherman--voiced by Jon Lovitz--as a replacement. Siskel and Ebert do their own voices, as did movie critics Rex Reed and Gene Shalit.

(And to keep this page reasonably honest, the series intro features some nifty animated versions of NYC landmarks such as the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Guggenheim Museum, the Dakota apartments, the United Nations complex and the departed World Trade Center.)

And I'll close with this 1997 Ebert cameo from the filmed-in-Chicago series, Early Edition:

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Roger Ebert: An architecture critic, too

By: Lee Bey | Apr. 5, 2013

Apr. 5, 2013

 

"I walk around Chicago, and look up at buildings of variety and charm. I walk into lobbies of untold beauty. I ascend in elevators fit for the gods. Then I walk outside again and see the street defaced by the cruel storefronts of bank branches and mall chains, scornful of beauty. Here I squat! they declare. I am Chase! I am Citibank! I am Payless Shoe Source! I don't speak to my neighbors. I have no interest in pleasing those who walk by. I occupy square footage at the lowest possible cost. My fixtures can be moved out overnight. I am capital."

— Roger Ebert, discussing architecture in his Chicago Sun-Times blog, July, 12, 2010.

During my nine years at the Chicago Sun-Times and in the 12 years since, Roger Ebert and I kept in touch, occasionally sending email to one another—mostly about film. We discussed the brilliance of 1993's Tombstone, particularly Val Kilmer's performance as Doc Holliday; that Michael Mann's big screen hit Heat was really a remake--albeit a fine one--of the director's 1989 made-for-TV film, L.A.

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Bulldozers roll on Reagan's boyhood home

By: Lee Bey | Apr. 2, 2013

Apr. 2, 2013
Demolition has begun on a Hyde Park apartment house that was once a boyhood home of President Ronald Reagan.
 
Workers had knocked away significant chunks of the building by late Tuesday, exposing some third floor interior walls. The University of Chicago is demolishing the structure to build a strip of green space adjacent to a nearby parking lot in the institution's expanding medical district on the west edge of campus.
 

The university--which purchased the building in 2004 and has eyed it for demolition since at least 2011--applied for a permit in late December to raze the building.

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