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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GOOD LINKS

I will be on vacation through July 5.  A well deserved rest, I think.  In the meantime, enjoy my Flickr Site, ARCHITECTURE IN THE LOOP.  There are 28 Photo Sets describing Chicago Architecture in the Loop.  Link HERE.

And when you're done, enjoy the link page.  Chicago has the best community of Architecture Bloggers in the Country.  Link HERE for the list.  (And if I've missed one, let me know!)

And if you're still interested in "more" Architecture, Sculpture and Photography, visit THE CHICAGO LOOP.org    Link HERE 

DANIEL BURNHAM. Orchestra Hall

THE STORY

Within our lifetimes, dates blur. Facts are forgotten or rewritten Conjecture replaces truth. Men disappear. And so follow these paragraphs of speculation, best guesses from facts available......

Early 1904 may have been one of the happiest times of Daniel Burnham's life. Two young Beaux Arts Diplomes worked briefly together in Burnham's Chicago Office -- Peirce Anderson soon to be on his way to the Plan of Manila and Ed Bennett on his way to San Francisco. (These men were the future.) The MacMillan Plan for Washington DC and the 1903 Plan for Cleveland had been a success. D.H. Burnham & Company was a well-oiled machine, thanks in good part to Ernest Graham and the experienced staff. And Chicago was growing again. The dark years following the Fair were over. His sons , Hubert and Dan Jr.were to be educated as architects.  More good news.
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The Chicago Symphony Orchestra's new home was "on the Boards." Bryan Lathrop, President of the Chicago Symphony had requested that the facade of their "new home" be Georgian. Conservative, respectable Georgian. CSO Trustee Burnham was glad to comply.  This was an important commission.


Burnham, true to form, assembled the most effecient team available for the Orchestra Hall project.. He, personally, oversaw the general building layout. Joachim Giaver took responsibility for structural engineering. The Beaux-Arts designers, Ed Bennett and Peirce Anderson, (working together for the first time since graduation from the Ecole), finished in charette, the Grainger Ballroom and the Beaux Arts ornament for the great Concert Hall. Frederick Dinkelberg was given primary responsibility for the facade. But for the Georgian detail, Burnham engaged old friend, Stanford White from New York's McKim, Mead, and White.

White had been in Chicago regularly for his work with Augustus Saint Gaudens (including the Standing and the Seated Lincolns and the Logan Memorial. He also worked with the Lincoln Park Commission and the South Parks Commission at Congress Plaza). Thoroughly trusted by Lathrop ( a good, close second choice to Charles McKim) White (that's Stannie White) had the added credential of being a good guy, a bon vivant, adept at all  the luxiries that Gilded Age had to offer.

Orchestra Hall turned out beautifully, reflecting the varied talents of the team that produced it. (They all dunnit. Obviously!) But life takes turns. And truth is often better than fiction. (Here we return to fact)

The first concert took place in Orchestra Hall in December of 1904. In January of 1905, the Orchestra's conductor, Theodore Thomas was dead. Stanford White, whose architecture so carefully reflected order and reserve, had carried his private life to new extremes: an affair with 17 year old New York chorus girl, Evelyn Nesbitt, became public. (So much for Georgian respectability.) In 1906 (soon after the San Fransico earthquake)  Evelyn's new husband, Harry Thaw, shot Stannie White three times in the face -- on the roof of Madison Square Garden. The sensational trial that followed destroyed McKim, Mead and White. Daniel Burnham had missed Orchestra Hall's opening Concert (and a good thing, too -- the Chicago Tribune panned the Hall's accoustics) , while travelling to Manila with Peirce Anderson. He was certainly beginning to feel the ill health that in 1906 brought him the prognosis of "three years to live." It was that prognosis that began the political machinations, within his office, for control of the Daniel Burnham empire. Dinkelberg lost to Anderson. Giaver and Bennett left. Burnham's sons eventually sold their stakes to Ernest Graham.

And so, for this post at any rate, and to complete the story (and without specific documentation it remains a story) (the happy story of 1904) I post, instead of architecture (we know the building), photographs of some of the characters. Characters we no longer know.

DANIEL BURNHAM

THEODORE THOMAS

PEIRCE ANDERSON

STANFORD WHITE

EVELYN NESBITT THAW

Instead of three years, Burnham lived for six. Plenty of time for what has become his crowning achievement: The Plan of Chicago.

Bryan Lathrop died in 1916. Rating an Obit in the New York Times. And an In Memoriam written by Edgar Lee Masters.

Evelyn Nesbitt died in Santa Monica in 1967.

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DANIEL BURNHAM.

ORCHESTRA HALL
Charles McKim??

It would be an easy leap to guess that Charles McKim (partner in the architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White), designer of the Bryan Lathrop Residence on east Bellevue Place worked with Daniel Burnham, at Lathrop's request, on the design of Orchestra Hall. Lathrop, president of the Symphony, and an important, respected supporter of the Arts in Chicago, would have had the "clout" to select the structure's design. And Burnham had worked well with McKim Mead and White at the Columbian Exposition. The cache of a respectably "Georgian" Orchestra Hall created by the foremost architects of Chicago and New York would have been very attractive.

But it is my guess (and here I will admit to all speculation) that McKim was not the designer. I don't think the two structures came from the same "hand." The Lathrop Residence IS Georgian. Standing on the veranda (or sitting on the balustrade with your back to Bellevue Place) you are quite transported to London. Elegant, delicately scaled ornament touches the arches. The home rests horizontally on its veranda/plinth. Decorative stone bands define each story and further empasize the horizontal weight of the mass. But most importantly, it took a very confident hand to locate the front entrance off center and to further ornament that opening with assymetrical patterns. And let's not forget those little corbelled chimneys.
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Orchestra Hall, on the other hand, is an application of Georgian Style to an eight story building. (With an elevator.) It is solidly symmetrical. The Georgian is good. Very good. Right down to the brick's flemish bond. But the proportions hint of the vertical. The plinth is indicated by the entire first floor, and is surmounted by a piano nobile. And details are scaled to the larger mass of Orchestra Hall. (And I think I see a Burnham "bottom-middle-top" lurking in the facade.)

And one more thing would lead me to believe that McKim would not have contributed to our little Chicago project.

In those first years of the 1900's he was kinda busy.

With New York's Penn Station.

So whodunnit? Beaux Arts Anderson is headed for  Manila, Chicago School Dinkelberg and Weber seem not to have the experience. McKim is tied up in New York........

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