Chicago Daily Observer

Two of the world’s leading architects will design temporary pavilions in Millennium Park as focal points for the regional celebration of the 100th anniversary of Daniel Burnham’s influential Plan of Chicago next year.

London-based Zaha Hadid and Ben van Berkel of UNStudio in Amsterdam will create innovative structures that symbolize Chicago’s commitment to cutting-edge design and bold thinking about the future. The temporary pavilions will be centerpieces for the Burnham Plan Centennial, which includes hundreds of educational programs, arts events and open-space projects to recognize the 1909 Plan’s strong influence and to inspire new ideas for the 21st Century.

The timing was coincidental but totally appropriate: at two separate meetings on a single day last week, announcements were made revealing the very different fates of the Three Arts Club building, at 1300 N. Dearborn, and the organization that owned it for nearly a century.

Since the controversial $13 million sale of the structure to a developer last year, the two had gone their separate ways. Pockets stuffed with $11 million in net proceeds from the sale, the venerable Three Arts Club went off in search of a new mission to replace the one Jane Addams and 31 colleagues had articulated for it in 1912: creating a safe haven in the city for women artists. Meanwhile, the haven itself—a Byzantine-style landmark by City Hall designers Holabird and Roche, with quarters for 100 residents, a tea room, a library, a dining hall, and a spacious courtyard—headed down Zoning Change Lane toward ... Read More...

In 2005 a proposal for a new condo tower in the landmarked Jewelers Row District on Wabash came before the Commission on Chicago Landmarks. The plan for the Legacy allowed the developers to demolish everything but the facades of three 19th-century buildings, one of which had once housed the flagship store of booksellers Kroch’s & Brentano’s. I wrote in the Reader in favor of the project, rejecting preservationists’ “slippery slope” arguments that it would set a dangerous precedent.

I was wrong. Three years later, even as the commission is celebrating the 40th anniversary of Chicago’s landmark ordinance, the true legacy of the Legacy has become clear: not only does the commission continue to leave many of Chicago’s most famous buildings in danger, it’s also eviscerating the very concept of what a landmark is.

In something of a surprise, the Chicago Plan Commission had a rare show of independence last Thursday when it rejected a Chicago Department of Planning Development-backed proposal, that would have seen the embattled Congress Hotel add five stories above the Harrison Street side of the structure, and one story above the part along the landmarked Michigan Avenue street wall.

George Bernard Shaw’s “Major Barbara” (1905) is a classic examination of hypocrisy, philanthropy with the Salvation Army, then as now, portrayed as assisting the poor, sick, hungry and homeless with a blend of charitable works and evangelical Christianity. In a real life update to Shaw’s classic, a huge donation ($1.5 billion) has come in to the Salvation Army via The Ray & Joan Kroc Foundation. Ray Kroc started the McDonalds empire, with fast food replacing munitions as the source of new funds for the Salvation Army. It’s a kind of microscopic moral dilemma, not really resolved by Shaw’s romanticized ending but easily resolved by the realities of “charity” in modern day Chicago.

Last Tuesday Chicago metropolitan division of the Salvation Army announced it is building a massive 222,000 sq ft, $160 million community center in the West Pullman neighborhood. Coming in at $727/sq ft, this facility will be one of ... Read More...