Lee Bey

End of the line for Santa Fe sign?

By: Lee Bey | Apr. 30, 2012

Apr. 30, 2012

The white-lettered "Santa Fe" sign atop the landmark Santa Fe Building could vanish--refaced with signage touting the building's newest tenant, Motorola, under a permit request being weighed later this week by city officials.

Under a permit requested by Motorola Solutions Inc., sign designer Icon Identity Solution and property manager Jones Lang Lasalle, the decades-old rooftop sign at 224 S. Michigan would be shrouded in a new lighted Motorola sign.

The request is expected to heard Thursday by the Commission on Chicago Landmarks' permit review committee, according to the body's draft agenda. 

Motorola Solutions' request follows the company's announcement last Thursday that it would lease 24,000 square feet on the seventh floor of the Santa Fe, an 18-story 110-year-old beauty designed by D.H. Burnham & Co.

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Lakefront home listed among state's 'most endangered' buildings

By: Lee Bey | Apr. 24, 2012

Apr. 24, 2012
A modernist Lake Bluff house and a hulking former West Side hotel from which WFMT once broadcast are among the state's ten most-endangered historic places, the preservation group Landmarks Illinois announced today.
 
“The sites named to the list are all exceptionally important,” the organization's interim executive director Jean Follett said in a news release.“By calling attention to them we hope to encourage solutions for their preservation.”
 
The group released its list at 10 a.m. news conference in Springfield. The list includes the vacant Hotel Guyon at 4000 W. Washington, seen in the photo above. The former 300-room hotel has been vacant for a decade and is in demolition court, Landmarks Illinois said.

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Second act for Bronzeville's Forum Hall

By: Lee Bey | Apr. 23, 2012

Apr. 23, 2012
My camera and I visited Bronzeville's historic, but vacant, Forum Hall over the weekend.
 
The 113-year-old structure, which once played a role in labor history, civil rights, jazz and even the advancement of U.S. Communism, came close to being demolished by the city last year when inspectors found extensive structural damage and loose, falling bricks.
 
Now a new owner, Bronzeville developer Bernard Loyd, is trying to figure out what to do with the Forum. Located on the corner of 43rd and Calumet just east of the CTA's Green Line, reuse of the building and vacant adjoining storefronts could provide a spark to revitalized the bedraggled strip. But that will take time and money.
 
Lots of money.
 
For now, Loyd has repaired the loose bricks, has organized volunteer clean-ups of the building and is seeking input from the neighborhood and IIT architecture students.

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Sales trailer vanishes, city view remains

By: Lee Bey | Apr. 20, 2012

Apr. 20, 2012
For more than 20 years, buildings have been rising constantly on the eastern edge of Upper Wacker Drive past Columbus Drive with Cityfront Center on the north side of the river and Lakeshore East coming up on the south bank.
 
But now, a noteworthy subtraction: A Lakeshore East sales trailer that for years sat where Upper Wacker Drive dead ends about a block east of the Swissotel is gone now, giving the public a nicely elevated overlook where sky, water and architecture meet.
 
Lots of architecture, too. Turning in place you can see the work of Mies van der Rohe, Dirk Lohan, Harry Weese, Graham Anderson Probst & White, SOM and more. You can see Tribune Tower, the understated/underrated Blue Cross/Blue Shield Building, Lake Point Tower, Aqua Tower, Trump Tower, NBC Tower and more. And there is more to come.

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Midcentury pool still makes a splash

By: Lee Bey | Apr. 13, 2012

Apr. 13, 2012
 
How did I miss this?
 
For years I've traveled down Chicago Avenue and never noticed the supremely cool Ida Crown Natatorium at Eckhart Park--or even its twin in Harrison Park at 18th and Wood. But thanks to a great essay on the two modernist Chicago Park District pool houses by Nate Lielasus on the Chicago Modern: More than Mies blog, my oversight has been corrected.
 
Built in 1961 for $625,00 at 1300 W. Chicago, the pool was named for the mother of Henry Crown, the Chicago industrialist whose empire included Material Service Corp., General Dynamics, a stake in the Empire State Building.
 
Here's another photo of the Crown pool.

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New Halsted bridge strikes right chord

By: Lee Bey | Apr. 11, 2012

Apr. 11, 2012
 
Here's one penalty for obeying the traffic law in this town: If you follow the detours around Halsted and Division, you'll miss an early look at the city's newly-completed bridge over the North Branch Canal.
 
Currently, the stretch of Halsted south of Division is only open to local car traffic as additional work continues on another bridge a little farther south on the street. With not much traffic to spoil the view, go see the new graceful, minimalist tied-arch bridge designed by Chicago's Muller + Muller -- the firm responsible for the (formerly) red-arched Damen Avenue bridge over the North Branch -- with Lochner, an engineering company.
 
Completed late last year, the fixed bridge, done-up in Chicago Blue, replaces a trussed, muscular and rusting bascule bridge from 1909. The nearby Division Street bridge is of the same vintage and, sadly, condition as the old Halsted bridge.

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Early birthplace of black Chicago politics in jeopardy

by Lee Bey | Apr. 8, 2012

Apr. 8, 2012

Looking at two buildings on the "most endangered buildings" list Preservation Chicago released this month, I paused at the irony:

In the Six Corners area on the North Side, a ministry wants to buy and sink millions into the Portage Theater--even though the theater is viable and functioning as...well... a theater. But on the South Side's, the historic 125-year-old Unity Hall has been used as a church for decades and is listed for sale at $225,000, but can't draw a congregation who can fix it up.

Until it can, Unity Hall, 3140 S. Indiana, waits there empty, its facade hides behind a mask of protective scaffolding; its upper windows shuttered as if in shame. 

And there is something shameful about a building like Unity Hall falling into such neglect. The building is a city landmark--the bronze plaque sits right beneath a mailbox at the top of the front steps--and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. As a protected city landmark the vacant hall can't be easily torn down.

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Landmark status in the picture for Portage Theater

By: Lee Bey | Apr. 7, 2012

Apr. 7, 2012
The Commission on Chicago Landmarks unanimously voted to grant preliminary landmark status to the Portage Theater, a 92-year-old venue currently in the sights of a ministry seeking to buy and alter the historic movie house.

The eight-member commission approved a preliminary designation that would protect all exterior elevations and roof lines of the entire building--which includes retail space and apartments as well as the theater--the auditorium "in its entirety", including its spatial volume, floors, walls, decoration and ornament; and the theater's outer lobby, inner lobby and a connecting rotunda.

However, the Portage's marquee, which was taken in the 1960s from the fallen Tivoli Theater on east 63rd St. and is not original to the building, would not be included as a protected feature in the designation.

The landmarks commission's decision came last Thursday, four days after this blog reported the theater, 4042 N.

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