CHARLES ATWOOD. The Fine Arts Building

I would be hard put to identify which of  Charles Atwood's projects for Daniel Burnham and Company made the greatest contribution to Chicago Architecture.  Marshall Field & Company transitioned Burnham and Root's 19th Century designs (The Rookery and the Masonic Temple) to the 20th Century "Commercial" style.  The delicacy of  The Reliance Building ( see E. C. Shankland's contribution HERE) clearly expressed its steel frame construction.  And the Fisher Building continued the early Chicago School's predilection to the Gothic.  But,  the greatest public impact, both then and now,  is undoubtedly made by the Columbian Exposition's Fine Arts Building (now the Museum of Science and Industry).

Some 120 years after its conception, the Fine Arts Building still "holds its own, "  thanks in large part to extensive care given the building by the Museum.  Ongoing restorations allow us the luxury to "imagine".....  Wooded Isle is behind us.  And Henry Ives Cobb's Fisheries.  The World's Fair remains very "close" in Jackson  Park. And Atwood's presence is clear.

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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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