MAILBOX
I’m very pleased with the emphasis on craftspeople and craftsmanship in your magazine.
So often we look at the larger whole and forget about the thoughtful detail that the
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whole, in fact, consists of.
–Karin Ariss, via email
You are in a class by yourselves! Without you, I would be forced to educate myself on the
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best of art, architecture, studio crafts, graphic design, fashion and how the history of the
modern world and the best creative minds of the 20th century intertwined from dodgy,
unvetted online sources.
–Doug Law, via email
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Your online magazine was excellent. I am a new person to modernist design, but I feel it
gave me an excellent introduction. Thanks.
Hugh Vellos, via email
This is a beautiful magazine. It’s inspiring and wonderfully and thoughtfully put together!
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–Sally Skyer, via email
CITY REPORT It’s disappointing that Modernism and author Edward
C H I C A G O
Keegan chose last issue’s City Report to reinforce a
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Raising Modern Architecture popular but incomplete view of Chicago’s modern
By Edward Keegan
architectural history. By omission, you gave read-
Architecture is central to Chicago’s image of itself. Its citizens are remarkably
well educated and highly opinionated about its architecture and place in the
world of design. Chicago without its architecture would be like Los Angeles
without the entertainment industry, Washington without government, New
York without commerce. Its claim to being the birthplace of modern archi- ers the false impression that Sullivan, Wright and
tecture may be debatable, but in this city with nary a structure older than 14
decades, you’d be hard pressed to consider any as not truly modern.
Chicago’s prominence sprang from a potent combination of geographical
advantages, commercial greed, political clout and relentless self-promo-
tion. The city was incorporated in 1837, when it was still a small, fortifi ed Mies, important as they may be, are all there is to
encampment on Lake Michigan at the mouth of the Chicago River. The site
was little changed from when the smelly, swampy locale was fi rst explored
by European visitors during the 17th century. Its strategic importance — and
the impetus for its rapid growth — lay in the Chicago River’s easy portage via
the Des Plaines River to the Illinois River. That transfer, simplifi ed by a canal
Chicago’s modern architecture. I’m baffled that you
in 1848, linked the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean with the Mississippi
River and the Gulf of Mexico and made Chicago a critical link for commerce
in the still young United States of the mid 19th century. Chicago’s fame as the
“Windy City” endures — but the term was coined not about the city’s weather
(which can be truly windy, since it’s perched on the shores of one of the
chose to omit: George Fred Keck, who built in the Eames
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largest lakes in the world). Rather, it’s an outsider’s appraisal of the penchant
of the city’s boosters to extol its greatness. This perpetual self-promotion
meant that other American cities with centralized locations — St. Louis, for
example — never had a real chance in the battle for Midwestern supremacy.
The Cliff Notes version of Chicago’s architectural history pivots on the
International Style more than a decade before Mies
Great Fire of 1871, a catastrophic event that torched the city’s central busi-
ness district and a large proportion of its better-situated lakefront housing.
But there’s almost nothing left of the quickly built structures that the city’s
merchant class built in the months after the fi re. An exception is the cast
iron structure located at 27 West Adams – still operating as a long and
arrived in Chicago, including the first all-glass houses
locally revered German restaurant and bar formerly known as the Berghoff
(now called 17). Although often missing from the history books, this simple
façade assembled from a commercially available kit was the prelude to
Chicago’s remarkable architectural adventure.
One of the earliest signifi cant buildings still extant in Chicago is Dankmar
anywhere; Bertram Goldberg, whose Marina City is
Adler and Louis Sullivan’s Auditorium (1887-89). As originally conceived
and built, the immense structure was a virtual city unto itself with a hotel,
offi ce building and performance space fi t within a single, somewhat dourly
articulated limestone block. But its interiors are where the immensely
gifted Sullivan found his voice as an architect. Aided by a young drafts-
as much a symbol of Chicago as any other single
man, Frank Lloyd Wright, Sullivan created a 4,200-seat theater that sings
loudly even when it’s empty. He based his megaphone shaped room on
Photo by Barbara Karant. partner Adler’s acoustical prowess (it’s still the best sounding hall in the
structure; Paul Schweikher, whose Home & Studio
86
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is a sterling example of early Organic architecture;
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Bruce Goff, whose Ford House is probably his finest work anywhere; SOM, Bruce Graham
and Walter Netsch, who showed the world how Big Architecture is done; and Harry
Weese, whose less dogmatic, fully mature modernism showed the way toward the best
of postmodernism. There are many more; the Chicago area’s extant examples of modern
architecture are enormously rich and diverse.
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Please note that my gripe is like the old joke about the teenage boy who never uttered
a word until one day, at the family dinner table, he exclaimed: “Ma, the biscuits are
burnt!” The mother sobbed, “It’s a miracle, he can speak.” “Well,” the boy replied, “up ‘till
now, everything was all right.” I thoroughly enjoy reading Modernism, and look forward
to each issue.
–Dan Obermaier, Bensenville, IL Nelson Marshmallow Sofa Nelson End Table
It would be impossible to do justice to the full range of Chicago’s modern architecture in a
single article; we intended ours as an introduction. We hope to cover additional Chicago
For more about Herman Miller’s design legacy,
architects in the future.
please go to
HermanMiller.com/discoveringdesign.
For the Herman Miller retailer nearest you, call
1 800 646 4400, or go to
HermanMiller.com/hmhome.
Send letters to the editor to
andrea@modernismmagazine.com ©2008 Herman Miller Inc.
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