WBEZ | Lee Bey

Old North Side firehouse up for sale: City wants art or commerce there

Fri, 03 May 2013 05:00:00 -0500

The city this week has begun seeking reuse proposals for a former Chicago firehouse.

Under the city's request, issued Wednesday, the ornate two-story firehouse, 5720 N. Ridge, could be reused as "a commercial and/or not-for-profit development focusing on arts, recreation or culinary activities that are open to the public." In other words: A nice place to visit, but you couldn't want to live there. "Residential uses will not be considered," a summary of the requests states.

Other forbidden uses include gas stations, payday loan establishments, currency exchanges, liquor stores or pawn shops. The building is also a protected city landmark.

Built in 1929, the building was the home of Chicago Fire Department Engine Company 59, Truck 47. Firefighters there moved to a new facility at 6030 N Clark St in 2008. The retired firehouse is among a cluster of vacant city-owned properties now up for sale including the 88-year-old former Stock Yards National Bank, 4146 S. Halsted; the tattered Ramova Theater near 35th and Halsted and more.

The target price for the Ridge firehouse is $360,000, although price is not seen as a minimum bid by the city. An open house for prospective bidders will be held May 21. Responses are due August 1. The city's RFP can be read here. The document includes more photos of the building, zoning maps, historic images of the old firehouse in action and an 1928 architectural rendering.

Afternoon Shift: Endangered buildings, Milk Carton Kids and housing the American dream

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 13:28:00 -0500

Bloggers Veronica Arreola and Lee Bey help us digest the top stories of the day, including subsidized water usage for nonprofits and the gender salary gap. Music from The Milk Carton Kids before they play a sold out show at Lincoln Hall. And real estate expert Mabel Guzman discusses the American dream.

Richard H. Driehaus Prize to be awarded to Chicago architect

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 15:08:00 -0500

Oak Park native Thomas H. Beeby will receive the Richard H. Driehaus Prize Saturday.

Beeby is the architect behind buildings including the Harold Washington Library and the Harris Theater at Millennium Park. It's the first time a Chicago area architect is taking home the international award.

WBEZ’s architecture blogger Lee Bey said Beeby’s style is very important to the city.

“The genius of Tom’s work is that he incorporates these elements in a way that references the past but doesn’t somehow replicate the past," Bey said. "It’s a really fine line and he is able to master it.”

Beeby is known for designs of large and sturdy public buildings that fully embrace classical columns and arches.

The $200,000 prize is given out to living architects whose work embodies ideals of traditional and classical architecture.

Mod Squad Chicago - Chicago at Midcentury: Images by Lee Bey

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 17:20:00 -0500

Lee Bey has had a distinguished career in the built environment as an architecture critic, mayoral advisor, adjunct professor and civic leader. But he is also a published and exhibited architectural photographer who has documented the city's mid-century modernist architecture. Bey shared his photography of the city's modernist architecture and discussed the importance of documenting this unique architectural style. The program was part of Lunch Talks @ CAF, a weekly lecture series that takes place every Wednesday at the Chicago Architecture Foundation.

Recorded live March 20, 2013 at the Chicago Architecture Foundation.

A midcentury gem: Chicago's Diamond Bank

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 05:00:00 -0600

I'd passed the corner of Clark and North countless times without noticing--really noticing--the Diamond Bank building on the intersection's northwest corner.

Built in 1961 as North Federal Savings & Loan, the two-story modernist building is visually overshadowed by the huge, Byzantine-styled Moody Church just to the north. But as I discovered last week, the glassy, transparent and well-kept bank building is worth a look--inside and out.

The building was designed by Naess & Murphy on the heels of the firm's better-known works such the Prudential Building and the former Sun-Times Building, 401 N. Wabash. While those buildings read as updated pre-World War II structures, North Federal was full-on modernism,with a glass curtain wall wrapping around the long rectangular structure and exposed exterior columns creating an unobstructed banking floor inside.

By the 1960s, Naess & Murphy would become C.F. Murphy Associates, a modernist powerhouse with work that includes the stellar CNA Building at Jackson and Wabash, McCormick Place's Lakeside Center, the Daley Center and more. North Federal is a small, but noteworthy step in the firm's evolution.

The building's design phase began in 1959, according to the city's landmark commission's report on the bank. The report also said the look was influenced by Manhattan's Manufacturers Trust bank building, designed by Gordon Bunshaft of SOM. Agreed, but Bunshaft's columns are inside the curtain wall, allowing the box to read a bit purer.

Diamond Bank looks good on the inside as well. The interior's decor has been updated, but the midcentury bones, spirit and layout are still evident. Praise the bank for not cluttering up this view with window signs:

...and for keeping this ceiling of suspended light diffusers, which also have a sculptural effect:

A staircase wraps around an exposed elevator core--that is covered in gold ceramic tile. That terrazo floor is pretty cool, too.

Diamond Bank had been considered for landmark status a few years ago as part of a designation honoring neighborhood bank buildings. But the building was denied because it was the only midcentury building in the proposed designation.

Architect Mits Otsuji designed the bank while at Naess & Murphy, according to Vince Michael, architecture historian and executive director of the Global Heritage Fund. As for C.F. Murphy, the firm became Murphy/Jahn and now, Jahn.

New college dorm in Pilsen is gaining attention--and accolades

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 05:00:00 -0600

Much too often, Chicago neighborhoods get stuck with a bad pieces of architecture.

So it is worth celebrating when good design occurs in the community, as is the case with La Casa Student Housing and Resource Center, a college dorm that opened last fall in the Pilsen neighborhood.

The six-story building at 18^th and Paulina cuts a tall, graceful figure along 18^th, with masonry exterior walls that pull back—and up—to reveal glassy corners and a base.The building hits the right note in the historic neighborhood by using heft and masonry of its older neighbors, then reworking the elements into a contemporary form.

Designed for Chicago college students who want to stay close to home, the $12 million building is the brainchild of The Resurrection Project. La Casa has 25 four-bedroom suites and amenities such as a fitness center, tutors and on-site counseling.

The building’s purpose and program have garnered it early acclaim, including a New York Times profile. And now its design is getting notice. La Casa’s architecture earned the Richard Driehaus Foundation Award for Architectural Excellence in Community Design at the Chicago Neighborhood Development Awards held at the Chicago Hilton & Towers last Wednesday.

La Casa was designed by UrbanWorks, a Chicago architecture firm that’s been on a pretty good tear lately, particularly with an UNO school in Galewood and Roseland’s All Saints Residence home for seniors.

And there it Goes: Demolition claims historic South Side printing company building

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 05:00:00 -0600

Goes Lithographing Company was a Chicago fixture for better than a century, with stock certificates, iconic colorful posters for the 1933 World's Fair, the Illinois Central Railroad--even President Obama calendars--rolling out from its Washington Park neighborhood plant.

Built in 1904, Goes building was a bit of an icon itself: a handsome 75,000 square-foot complex with a three-story main building topped with Flemish diagonal bond brickwork and masterfully-done brick dentils. Tucked away at 61st and Perry, the family-owned business was a remaining bright spot in the neighborhood's long-faded industrial corridor.

But no more. In 2010 Goes left and moved 92 miles north to the town of Delavan, WI. And now within days, the company's 109-year-old former building--a beautiful example of early 20th century industrial architecture--will be demolished. Northfolk Southern Railroad bought the building and will build a truck depot on its site. The company has a railyard nearby at 63rd and State.

Goes president Chris Goes said the company decided to move after discovering vibrations from passsing trains would jostle sensitive new presses.

"The vibration of the railroad would affect the quality of the print on an electronic printing press," said Goes, whose great grandfather built the structure. "The railroad created too much vibrations when it passed."

In addition, Goes said the old building wasn't fully air-conditioned. And the city wasn't much help in keeping the area around the building clean or enforcing better upkeep of the nearby railroad embankment, he said.

"I would say as far as manufacturing goes, they don't give a good goddamn," Goes said of the city. "So were up here in Delavan, continuing our business."

Workers were removing Goes signage from the building when I visited last week with my camera. The plant's low-rise north wing had already been demolished along with an adjoining exterior wall of the main building--revealing the bones of the structure and its interior spaces.

I took a peek inside the building:

A section of signage is lowered to the ground:

If only the building could have been reused. Artists' space. A business incubator. Manufacturing of a different kind. Anything but demolition.

At least with a truck depot there, the land won't become yet another vacant South Side lot.

"Which might be a good thing because [the site] is still active," Goes said.

"But it might be a bad thing because everything in the trucks is made in China."

'Purple' by any other name? Owners seek new moniker for legendary Lincolnwood hotel

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 15:00:00 -0500

The team planning a major makeover of Lincolnwood's Purple Hotel wants to give the long-troubled landmark a new name as well as a new look. And they're asking the public's help.

Jackie Koo, architect for Weiss Properties Inc., a Skokie company that led a group that purchased the hotel at auction in May for $8.3 million, is heading the effort to find a new moniker for the structure at 4500 W. Touhy.

"We're looking for something that basically speaks to the midcentury modernity of it," Koo said. "But nothing has really hit."

So Koo turned to the public today "just for fun," using her firm's Facebook page to solicit ideas. Prospective names would be forwarded to the hotel's owner, Jake Weiss, who would vet them with his branding team, Koo said.

Under a plan first reported by this blog earlier this year, the shuttered hotel at the intersection of Lincoln and Touhy avenues would be remodeled with new retail establishments added to the grounds. Until Weiss Properties prevailed, the building faced demolition in 2011 as Lincolnwood officials awarded a $1.87 million contract to raze the edifice.

Saving the building also became a minor cause celebre among preservationists of modern architecture. The hotel, built in 1961 as the area's first Hyatt Hotel, was designed by the architecture firm of Hausner & Macsai. A subsequent owner renamed the building the Purple Hotel in honor of the establishment's most visually-prominent feature of purple glazed exterior brick.

Realizing the potential of Chicago's abandoned buildings

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:50:00 -0600

After asking listeners to consider what they would sell if in need of some fast cash--ideas ranged from wedding gifts to coffins--Eight Forty-Eight wondered: How about buildings? Maybe every day Chicagoans walk by a particular abandoned building and realize there are things they admire about it. Does it get demolished or should it be brought back to life?

WBEZ blogger Lee Bey recently wrote about an effort to save what many Chicagoans simply refer to as the Purple Hotel in Lincolnwood. Maybe drivers have seen it as they make their way to the Edens Expressway. Bey joined Eight Forty-Eight along with David Schalliol, a visiting assistant professor of social sciences at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Schalliol is also a photographer with a series out called Working Legacies: The Death and After Life of Post Industrial Milwaukee and a new feature on Gapers Block called To Be Demolished.

Mapping a decade of CPS closings

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 15:31:00 -0600

This year Chicago Public Schools announced plans to close, turnaround or phase out over 15 schools. If the latest round is approved, Chicago will have shut down or turned around more than 100 schools over the last decade. In most cases, the buildings remain schools; but some could face the wrecking ball. WBEZ blogger Lee Bey hopes once the final bell rings, those cultural gems among Chicago’s historic schools will be salvaged. That is the subject of one of his recent posts on his WBEZ blog. Also found on WBEZ's website, a map that plots out school closings and turnarounds over the last decade in Chicago created by WBEZ's web team, Catalyst Chicago’s Sarah Karp and WBEZ's education reporter Linda Lutton. To get the lay of the land and the buildings, Eight Forty-Eight spoke with Lee Bey and Linda Lutton.

Music Button: Sao Paulo Underground, "Just Lovin'", from the album Tres Cabecas Loucuras, (Cuneiform)