D. H. BURNHAM & CO. Charles Atwood

Style at the Turn-of-the- Century.

Charles Atwood's apparent stylistic schizophrenia from 1891 until his death in 1895 (his time with D. H. Burnham & Co.) has had me stumped. NO ONE is that ambidextrous. Still, the documentation is there: Atwood was responsible for the Fine Arts Building at The World's Fair, The Palazzo Marshall Field, The Reliance Building, and The Fisher Building. Serpents, goddesses and inverted volutes.

The Fisher Building.  Serpent

Marshall Field & Company.  Goddess.

The Fine Arts Building.  Inverted Volute

But despite my architectural ponderings, the real questions of the day may have had nothing to do with architectural "style." Decision makers were weighing the advantages of alternating current vs. direct, the reliability of vertical transportation systems, and the calculations proving the stability of rigid frame construction.

The Chicago World's Fair.  Ferris Wheel

The Chicago World's Fair.  Power Generators

The Paris Exposition of 1889.  The Eiffel Tower

And here is a tough one -- especially for someone as architecturally centered as I am. The importance of Style, in the scheme of things, at the turn of the century, may not have amounted to a "hill-of-beans". And Architects? We surely played second fiddle to Nicolas Tesla, Gustav Eiffel, and E.C. Shankland. (Remember that name). Industrialization. Mechanization. Electric power. Communications.

Root? Atwood? Sullivan? Anderson? White City? Brown? What did it matter ---- speeding to the top of the tallest building in the world in an open cage elevator -- looking across the Loop and Lake to the horizon. 

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DANIEL BURNHAM. Charles Atwood.

A TOUR DE FORCE.  ONE AFTER ANOTHER.
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Charles Atwood, Daniel Burnham's 2nd design partner, made an immediate name for himself at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. Augustus St. Gaudens believed that Atwood's Fine Arts Building (now, the Museum of Science and Industry) was the "finest thing done since the Parthenon." ( Burnham concurred.) (St. Gaudens was a master of turn-of-the-century hyperbole. Remember, it was also St. Gaudens who described the Architects' and Sculptor's' Exposition job meetings as the "greatest meeting of minds since the Renaissance.") More on this in future posts. (Quietly understated, I promise.)

But beyond the Fair (an amazing accomplishment in both quantity and quality), the thing that strikes me most remarkable about Atwood is his versatility. Below are photographs of the Fine Arts Building at the Columbian Exposition, the Reliance Building, the Fisher Building and Marshall Field at Wabash and Washington. All his and all completed within a four year period. Field's and the Reliance may have been on the boards at the same time!

THE FINE ARTS BUILDING

MARSHALL FIELD and COMPANY

THE RELIANCE BUILDING

THE FISHER BUILDING

A Greek Temple.  An Italian Palazzo.  Something kinda French.  And Chicago School Gothic (with eagles!)  What was he smoking??

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Daniel Burnham. A New Assistant.

CHARLES B. ATWOOD

On January 15, 1891, in the midst of planning the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, John Wellborn Root died -- leaving his partner, Daniel Burnham, "holding the bag." What emotion, other than rage, would be appropriate?

"I have worked.." (quotes Thomas Hines in his Burnham biography) "I have schemed and dreamed to make us the greatest architects in the world. I have made him see it and kept him at it --- and now he dies ---damn! Damn! Damn!

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THE ROOKERY.  John Wellborn Root

THE FISHER BUILDING. Charles B. Atwood

Damn is right. I might have added sunnuvabich.

Daniel was often surrounded in his long career by roadblocks  that might have stopped a lesser man. Recession. Panic. Drug Addiction. Corporate poltics. Earthquake. Ill health. But in 1891 D.H.Burnham picked himself up without missing a step, and went on to produce what was arguably the most successful World's Fair in the Country's history. It just took a shift of personnel.

Burnham selected New York architect Charles B. Atwood as his new Assistant.. Daniel paid handsomely - 27% of D. H. Burnham and Company's profits. But he was rewarded -- The Peristyle and The Fine Arts Building at the Exposition,   Marshall Field and Company (Wabash at Washington), The Reliance Building, and the Fisher Building.

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VACATION RAMBLINGS.

Re-reading Donald Hoffman's JOHN WELLBORN ROOT while travelling I-15 north from Las Vegas to Cedar City...... Contemplating those elegant drawings. Yesterday's visit to Gehry's Center for Brain Health much on my mind. And Libeskind's shopping mall at City Center. The Arbiteurs of good taste had said that Vegas needed those accoutrements to be taken seriously. To be World Class. The desert, the mountains, and the neon alone, apparently, couldn't do that.

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Hoffman says that Chicago School Architects did not "express structure" in some deep-seated philosophical statement. Structure was simply exposed when unnecessary skin and ornament was removed from it -- to make it lighter -- to allow tall buildings to be built on the swamped onion fields of Chicago. The School did not channel the mystic aura of some future Mies. In fact all they really wanted (even John Root -- look at the Boatman's Bank, below) was to design something in the style of Francis I. Or Romanesque, maybe. Or Georgian. (Yes, Georgian). But they needed something lighter. (Damned engineers. And damned foundations.)

Chicago architects -- forced to "reason" by the Chicago swamp.

JOHN ROOT.  Boatman's Bank

STUDIO LIBESKIND. Crystals. Las Vegas, Nev.

FRANK GEHRY. Center for Brain Research. Las Vegas, Nev.

Forced to reason.

So that the same mutant flower of Bilbao might not rebloom in Las Vegas. Or LA. So that the "metaphysics of presence" is, at least, contextually confrontational. Not idealogically static in its manifestations. Heaven knows that even Studio Libeskind can't compete in status with Louis Vuitton. Now, so does Daniel.  I'll refrain from commenting re: convoluted logic. Or the appropriateness of a Frankish reincarnation in Cook County.

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The product of the Chicago School, those "bridgebuilders", cliffdwellers, (and Daniel Burnham foremost) was neither the product of an undisciplined hand nor unlimited resources. It was the product of a problem and a problem solved.

A remarkable creativity born of reason.

That simple. That durable. That inspiring. Reason. Found.  Speeding north. Past Moapa. In the desert heat of a Nevada Fourth of July. 2010.

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Credit due Donald Hoffman, ARCHITECTURE OF JOHN WELLBORN ROOT, p 138.  This is a great little volume produced by Johns Hopkins Studies in 19th Century Architecture.

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