WBEZ 91.5 Chicago

South Shore High School, hailed by school officials as the "most advanced high school in the United States" when it opened in 1969, will be demolished this year, according to the city's Public Building Commission.

The PBC this month is seeking qualifications from companies with the capacity to demolish the block-long, 180,000 sq ft concrete structure at 7529 S. Constance Avenue on the western edge of Rosenblum Park. Submittals are due by January 14th. Spared from the wrecker's ball will be the original South Shore High School building, an Art Moderne-ish beauty at 76th and Constance that is still in use. A new South Shore High School located at 75th and Jeffrey on the east edge of Rosenblum Park is nearing completion.

The demolition will bring an end to an odd chapter in Chicago Public School design history. Built for a then-hefty $9 million, South Shore High was planned to be "a pace-setter for the city," according to a 1968 Tribune story.

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Frank Gehry, the architect of the Pritzker Pavilion and the adjacent serpentine BP footbridge at Millennium Park, is interviewed in the January edition of Playboy, which hits the stands and the web tomorrow.

Gehry's featured in the Playboy Interview, which has picked the brains of starlets, actors, politicians, musicians (it's where John Mayer famously ran aground a year ago)--but seldom architects. The magazine sent me a PDF of the interview yesterday and it is a good read with Gehry opining about the banality of architecture, the initial negative reactions in Spain to his now world-famous Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao,  and other topics.

Hardly anything is said of Chicago, though. The 81-year-old Gehry mentions the Pritzker Pavilion, but that's all. He does focus on two Mies van der Rohe works, the glass Farnsworth House in Plano, IL and the twin 860/880 Lake Shore Drive. "There are also places that are so designed they are unlivable," he said. "I used to rail against the Farnsworth House..."  he said.

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Director Michael Bay made a lot of noise around town filming Transformers 3 here earlier this year.

But during his stay,  the big budget filmmaker also shot Victoria's Secret televison spots--the newest of which has just begun airing in the Christmas season--with Chicago architecture as a backdrop for the beautiful models. The clip above begins with an angel (and, man, is she ever) spreading her wings above the guilded lobby of the Lyric Opera, 20 N. Wacker. Then the action switches to the Santiago Calatrava-designed Milwaukee Art Museum where the women pose and saunter in their expensive underwear. There's a woman in blue reclining on the LaSalle Street bridge at 0:34, with Hotel 71, Mather Tower and 360 N. Michigan visible in the background.

The commercial then bounces among its primary locations of the Lyric, the museum and the streets and bridges of downtown.

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The brilliant photographer Carrie Mae Weems spoke at the Art Institute last night, kicking off the showing of her Kitchen Table Series at the museum's Modern Wing.

Hate that I missed her talk, but I'm glad I found the above clip of Weems expressing some rather compelling notions about architecture, space and power.

And check out the Kitchen Table Series-- one of Weems' best-known works --if you can,. It'll be at the Art Institute until June.

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A bit of the past has resurfaced on Dempster Street, just east of Bronx Avenue. That's because the recent demolition of a retail building's exterior wall has revealed an even older original brick wall with five nicely-preserved mid-century ghost signs painted on it.

What a flashback. Westpoint Pharmacy boasted that it gave away S&H Green Stamps--and who didn't back then? You could get your hi-fi repaired at Allen Lee TV. My favorite is the ad for Pagliacci Pizzeria, which used a 1960s comic book-like "POW" graphic to tell you they delivered. And look at the phone numbers. No need to fumble around with area codes, because unless you were somewhere in the Illinois hinterlands where Mabel the Operator still connected your calls, everybody had the 312 area code. All five businesses have the old Orchard telephone exchange, but Pagliacci expressed its telephone number in the modern, seven numerical digit way.

Davis Cleaners is the only establishment still in business, at 4047 Dempster. The cleaners has the same Orchard telephone exchange, but an otherwise different number.

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A month has passed since the city publicly announced it would demolish the old Michael Reese Hospital main building--going back on its promise to preserve the historic structure.

The bulldozers haven't yet moved in, though. So for now, the 1907 structure just sits there cordoned off under the cold, open sky, surrounded by a 37 acre vastness created by the demolition of every other Reese building but this one, the modernist Singer Pavilion and a concrete parking garage.

Below the parapet above the main entrance--beauty:

You wish for a better end for a building like this---as in, no end at all.

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The Julia C. Lathrop Homes, an historic 35-acre public housing development near Diversey and the Chicago River, could take a step toward being listed on the prestigious National Register of Historic Places under a vote being taken today by the Commission on Chicago Landmarks.

At a meeting this afternoon at City Hall, the commission will decide whether to recommend the Illinois Historic Sites Advisory Council list the 75-year-old housing complex on the National Register. The 15-member state council which decides what Illinois sites are named to the National Register, would take up the Lathrop listing at its meeting next week.

The National Register listing could mark a stunning change of fortune for Lathrop. The low-rise, 30-building complex in a park-like setting was slated for demolition as recently as 2006.  Since then--and after lengthy talks with residents, neighbors and preservationists includling Landmarks Illinois, the city now seeks to redevelop Lathop in a way other than totally demolishing what's there.

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