THE WRIGLEY BUILDING

and NORTHWESTERN TERRA COTTA COMPANY

We think of the Wrigley Building as the grand architecture of  GRAHAM, ANDERSON, PROBST AND WHITE.  And it is.  Trapezoids. Towers.  The Clock, of course. Bronze.  And gleaming Terra Cotta. GAPW led the team.
.

But designs for the terra cotta were not entirely generated by the Architects. Uncredited "Modelers"  from the Northwestern Terra Cotta Company are largely responsible for the play of light across the architect's surfaces..  And for the invention of those characters ....who inhabit the clay.

+++

EXPLORE THE CHICAGO LOOP . ORG

+++

THE INSURANCE EXCHANGE. Terra Cotta

No question about it. Peirce Anderson knew terra cotta. And classic details. So well, in fact, that when George Beersman designed the Insurance Exchange addition 16 years after Anderson's original work, he saw little to improve with the primary street level ornament. It matches exactly.

.

Beersman did clip a 45 degree corner here and there, simplify the column details, streamline the glass and find room for creativity at the cornice line. But the line between old and new is barely discernable. Had his plans for a twenty story tower topper been completed (reminiscent of the Straus Bank) his contribution to the project would have been less likely to be overlooked. Instead, twenty years of Depression and War almost allow us to forget that George Beersman knew a little about terra cotta himself. He designed the Wrigley Building for Graham Anderson Probst and White.

THE INSURANCE EXCHANGE. Thoughts on Style

.

Trust me. I know "modern".

I grew up in a pre-mid-century modern house, whose spare style was a statement of available materials and capital. In the fifties I watched with envy as the neighbors built their wooden house with sloped roofs, plate glass, and egalitarian bathrooms. In the sixties I saw Mies birth Mies Modern as he gutted a block of the loop. And tried to compete with the new Miami Beach Modern apartments on Lake Shore Drive for hearts and minds. I went to school in a Bauhaus inspired studio, learned of Corbu, the Wiener Werkhaus and the Fagus Works. Friends interned at TAC and came home wrapped in Marrimekko. "Total Scope with Grope, " they chanted (stoned out of their minds). My first apartment (seventies modern) had plastic furniture, an arc lamp, celery shag carpet, and a Macrame plant hanger. My cigarettes balanced on a Warren Platner ash tray. I participated in Post Modernisim (though the effect was somewhat diluted by the strip center building type that had become my specialty.) I've seen the granite and stainless elegance of nineties modern. The computer inspired millenial modern return-of-the-curve. And finally, (thank heaven) the come-to-Jesus, this-is-it, the-final-real-and-forever modern of the new age. Sensible. Sustainable. And nine-eleven secure. Designed by architects with head shots and windblown hair, and sales gigs ranging from "Magic Carpets" to "Deconstructivism".

Now, don't get me wrong. I can identify and relate to real masterworks of every decade of twentieth century architecture. (And in some future post I'll describe how Richard Meier's work in New Harmony, Indiana fundamentally changed my own work and way of thinking.)

But there is one thread of modernity that persists and repeats. It is the belief that "This time, we've got it right." "This time its real, lasting, permanent" There is an odor of infallibility. An arrogance that allows the destruction of even the finest expressions of generations now passed. Below is the "elegant transformation" of the Insurance Exchange. The original building was designed by Peirce Anderson in 1911. I forget who did the 1995 remodeling.

.

.
The original space was a dead ringer for the Atrium at the Railway Exchange (Daniel Burnham, 1904), though larger and more finely detailed. These days, there is a CAF Daniel Burnham Exhibit at the Railway Exchange, that is well worth seeing. The model of Chicago is spectacular. But take a look, too, at the skylight, the ironwork, the light fixtures, the balustrades. And consider the weight of loss and gain.

.

Credits are due Sally A. Chappell Kitt and her highly recommended work THE ARCHITECTURE OF GRAHAM ANDERSON PROBST & WHITE, page 46, University of Chicago Press.

LaSALLE STREET. 1924. At Jackson

Eighty years and the changes they've held, have mellowed the corner of LaSalle and Jackson. We see what we expect to see. Have always seen. But when the Board of Trade was constructed at the end of LaSalle Street, flanked by the existing classicism of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the Illinois Merchant's Bank, it was a violent statement of modernity. A stylized expression of verticality, and height, leaving its two classical "framers" at street level. Beneath the tallest building in Chicago. A title to keep until 1965. (See previous post.)

Blame it on the kids.

Graham, Anderson, Probst and White, Architects of the Merchants Bank and the Federal Reserve, not only continued Daniel Burnham's legacy of Classicism that won the Chicago World's Fair, they continued the almost unstoppably successful corporate culture that serves as a model of organization for architects today. They literally carried Daniel Burnham to the next generation. Peirce Anderson's dedication played no small part in this accomplishment. But time has a way of creeping up on us. The symmetrical porticoes of LaSalle Street were already "on their way out" at their time of completion. A generation late.

In 1923, William Holabird, revered, accomplished Chicago School partner at Holabird and Roche was dead. (See Chicago Sculpture in the Loop for recent developments at the Marquette Building.) In early 1924 Anderson died of cancer. It was time for John Holabird and John Root ("the kids"), architects of the Palmolive Building and 333 North Michigan to take center stage, unopposed, with a small assist from the 1924 Zoning Ordinance that allowed the Board of Trade to rise 605 feet above the street below.

A remarkable accomplishment. But the next few posts will belong to Peirce Anderson. We'll give the future to Holabird and Root.

Below are details of the Brass Marquis that stands in front of the Illinois Merchants Bank (completed 1924). Think nothing of the Great War. The Panic. The cancer. The astonishing growth of density within an already dense City. Think nothing of the passing of a generation that knew the Fire and the Fair. Or the Depression to come. Just - look at this brass.

.

MARSHALL FIELD

Marshall Field & Company wasn't built in a day. The first construction on the block bounded by State, Randolph, Wabash, and Washington was begun in 1892. The final segment, at the southwest corner of Wabash and Randolph was constructed in 1914. Above is the North Atrium, located near the corner of State and Randolph, constructed in 1902. The North Atrium anchors the Grand Arcade that parallels State Street and displays 13 floors of retail sales area This mastery of vertical and horizontal space is also evident at Chicago's Field Museum and Union Station, later projects also designed by Peirce Anderson.