Herr Mies Van Der Rohe

So, yes, firstly, first off, I'm still here. Have just been extremely bad about posting. 

So here are some shots most of you have never seen before (not just since they are my pictures) of The Promontory Apartments in Hyde Park, Mies' first high rise building and the first of a string of distinguished apartment buildings along the Lakefront in Chicago. However, the most similar buildings to these are his residential buildings at IIT which use the same brick and exposed concrete. 

Thanks to Chicago Bauhaus and Beyond I was able to get some interesting interior shots. 

 Service Stairs - the open stairs

are rather interesting.

 Pipe penetration through service

stair landing - rather a nice detail.

 View from western windows to

the west with north wall of south wing

with Jackson Towers, 1700 and

The Windermere beyond.

 Vintage (and abandoned) intercom

control panel at unit entry.

Original Honeywell Thermostat -

each unit has it's own thermostat

for the in-floor radiant heating.

Les piscines de Parc Rogers

Yes, the pools of Rogers Park, as seen on tours during Open House Chicago. I was able to visit three pools in the gems of Rogers Park. Casa Bonita, Park Castle and Park Gables (three of my favorite big courtyard buildings). Casa Bonita's pool (below) is lovely, but plainer than the other two, though the access to it is rather grander and features an observers balcony (now a corridor).


Park Gables has a much grander pool, but the "entry" spaces to it are just "regular nicer than average Chicago basement" (it should be said that Park Gables appears to be well maintained).


Park Gables really resembles a 1920's film set, with ornate tile work, terra cotta columns and "tented" or awning ceiling. However, the most impressive of the group, the piece de resistance if you will, is Park Castle, which resembles San Simeon.



It sports an L shaped pool, elaborate mosiacs and a lit fountain! Note the potted plants, forming a ceramic topiary border around the pool.

Two Holsman High Rises

So my regular readers probably know of my Henry K. Holsman obsession. So here are two for you. The taller (the brown building with stepped roof), 1321 E. 56th Street, of the two was meant to be the western twin of two buildings which the depression stopped. The units are spacious full floor units. Across the street is a more modest building - the red brick building which contains more modest units. Immediately to the left of 1321 you may notice a church, behind which lurks another Holsman complex. And to the far left, there is a small Harry Weese house (which I swear is blond brick except that every time I see it its, quite obviously, not).

Back to Boston

550 Beacon Street

Since we've been visiting New York, I felt we had to go back to Boston to get some of my backlog of posts cleared out of the archives (and believe you me, there are a lot planned, believe me...).

So here we have 330 Beacon Street in the Back Bay, Boston's Back Bay that is. Here in the middle of the posh 19th Century Subdivision (yes, for that is what it is, a subdivision, albeit, tres upscale) lurks an interloper, an interloper of a modernist ilk. It would be Hugh Stubbins' 330 Beacon of 1959. Not only is it discretely fitting itself in with it's red brick and bay windowed facade, but it also make no grand gestures, but simply fits in quietly.

Interestingly, the back facade (the rear faces both the Charles River and an expressway) is glazed and balconied. In fact, in a paraphrased quote, the orientation doesn't matter to Americans as much as the view (and as long as the physical plant can provide comfortable temperatures year round). What struck me when I visited this spring was something that I hadn't realized; that it is red brick and not white brick as I had thought from my trusty "Multi-Story Housing" book. In fact, I shall get more images from that and another book from the era it was built in. I had to cull the floor plans from elsewhere, however... (disclaimer, as a technically inept person and luddite, my computer, pc, wordprocesser or whatever you want to call it, and hence scanner, at home are not working, I am somewhat limited with and in my imaging abilities).

In fact, the building is also quite interesting in plan as well. It has a modified skip stop corridor configuration. Here is the corridor floor, which is every third floor.
There are a few north facing, single sided units, while the rest of the units are through units, with two exposures.
Some of the units are duplexes, and most are quite large. At the core floor, there are three cores with two units per core lobby.

A future post will feature more plans, vintage and interior shots...

Reference:

Key Urban Housing of the Twentieth Century
Plans, Sections and Elevations
Hilary French
W.W. Norton & Co
2008

Chatham Towers

Chatham Towers is one of the most interesting middle income developments in urban American from the 1960s. They were built in 1964 as a cooperative near City Hall, next to Chinatown, designed by Kelly & Gruzen. Unusually, they are raw concrete in one of the most purely brutalist complexes in the United States - residential complexes that is. In form they are close to many English social housing schemes, however in detail they far surpass them (being site built for a higher price point helps, of course). Interestingly, they reputedly have Swedish windows - the blinds are between the glass of the double-glazing, which is extremely common in Swedish windows from the 30s until the 80s, as well as being center-pivot windows (also common in Sweden in this era). Apparently, there was some controversy about the use of gypsum board (aka drywall) within the units at the time as well.

Here is a view from an overpass, framed through tree's, showing the assymetrical penthouse. A view of the balconies, showing the detailing, the ribbed concrete and elegant balcony edges and the windows. The slots beneath the windows are for fresh air supply I assume, for the air handlers.

A view looking up at the balconies and facade. The balconies are assymetical in the sense of some floors not having them to create a more interesting silhouette. Another view looking at the buildings obliquely. A shot from the privacy and retaining wall, framed through the garden trees.

A parting glance, looking at the towers in shadow. This shows the balcony silhouette quite well. The concrete is in amazingly good condition, probably due to the less severe New York winters.

I will follow up with plans and further details when I get a chance, however I wanted to get these photos out quickly.

Tudor City

Tudor City in the Rain

Well, once again I realize that I have been truly neglectful of this little project, my blog. In fact, I haven't updated since the very end of May, and I have all of June and July to get written and posted. Since I went to the multi-family capital of America this weekend for a visit and took my trusty little camera with me, you, my dear readers, can have some visual treats.

Tudor City

First off we have Tudor City, once owned by Husband to the Diva, Harry Helmsley, who got into quite a bit of trouble trying to redevelop it before selling. I'll update with further information, but briefly, it was built in the 1920s, on the eastern edge of Midtown Manhattan. It is literally directly across the street from the UN (as in United Nations) however, when it was designed, there was no Congress of Nations or other body on that site (well, bodies, not the governmental kind, or even human, but the edible kind) just docks and stockyards, hence the inward facing design.

It was quite a lovely space, with a large garden with tall, mature tree's making the Neo-Gothic (Tudorbethan or Jacobethan) towers all the more surreal when seen through the leafy canopy. At ground level the arboreal splender appears to be a modestly scaled, nicely detailed space, however the penthouse levels above do make a dramatic impression when viewed from below in typical Manhattan fashion (nearly all of my photos were in portrait mode from the verticality of it all - at least Lower Manhattan and Midtown.

Another shot looking upwards. The tops of the buildings are really magnificent against the cloudy sky with rain pouring down. A view of the central courtyard, more of a garden than a park. The undeveloped area was a big bone of contention when H. Helmsley owned Tudor City.

A parting glance. The last shot shows one of the more modest building tops.

Minneapolis Cooperative

Minneapolis Cooperative

This is an out of town example which has intrigued me for a while. It is a rather nicely done, medium sized apartment building, built for mutual ownership in the Twin Cities. It was designed by one Arthur Dahlstrom, who appears to have designed luxury villas, churches and the like for well heeled clients in the area. This also appears to have been designed for a moderately well-heeled clientele. The individual units are reasonably spacious and efficiently planned, with large living rooms with fireplaces and built-in bookshelves, with good relationships to the dining rooms and entries. However, the apartments have what I consider to be a defect, albeit a minor one, in that one must travel through the living and dining room from the main entrance to get to the kitchen or bedrooms. In fact, the only access to the bedroom wing is through the dining room. The kitchens, on the other hand, appear to be well planned, with a breakfast and casual dining nook under a window and there is generous closet space as well.

I am wondering, and hoping, if we have any Twin Cities readers, if any light can be shed on this building, which is hopefully still standing, as I have had no luck finding any references to it.

Reference: The Architectural Forum, September 1925, p. 146.

Sherman Gardens

Sherman Gardens is another of Holsman, Holsman, Klekamp and Taylors large cooperative projects. This one is probably their highest density design, with three mid-rise buildings around a landscaped courtyard in downtown Evanston. The land plan of this is quite interesting, being in a trapezoidal block, which however, they were not able to get all of, which means that there are interloping buildings within it.


As you can see from the aerial view, the three buildings are clustered around a central courtyard. Two of the buildings take a similar dumbbell plan while the third takes an ell shaped plan. The buildings also have many units with balconies facing onto the court (as well as onto the surrounding streets), which have canted, fluted glass fronts as part of the railing system.

East View into Court

View into CourtBalcony View

The construction system is the same as their other projects, however, it appears that Sherman Gardens was built with a higher-income tenancy in mind, as there are some grander moderne flourishes to the entries, sculptural panels screening the service stair windows and a main entry from Sherman into the court. The buildings also have some larger unit combinations - maisonette units in a few of the building.

Lobby Entry View
Lobby Entry View
Main Entry View

View of Main EntryView through Main Entry Vestibule

The Courtyard Building, Part V - Courtyards de Luxe

This post is dedicated to the ultra large courtyard building, which I am giving the terminology of Courtyard de Luxe (or perhaps a taxonomy of Courtyard Giganticus) of which there are several well known and lesser known examples throughout Chicago.


The first of these is the legendary or near notorious Tudorbethan Park Gables of Indian Boundary Park, which is one of the very finest examples of both the style and of a large courtyard, in this case a double-courtyard in fact. In many cases, unusually, the exterior decor here carries into the interior, carrying the theme of gothicism inside with vaulted ceilings and beamed rooms.
And I'm not even mentioning it's neighbor, the Park Tudor, which has more of a castellated, gothick feel than Park Gables.


The next example in this post is The Sterling Apartments, probably less well known, in fact, as much as unknown I would say. This one is of the single-courtyard type, but with multiple entries along the front and sides, as well as off of the side courtyard and it runs from side street to side street, for an entire block front. As you can see from only half of the floor plan it is a large building with a variety of accomodation types, from studios to two-bedroomed suites.



Some other examples of these large types can be found in Kenwood, South Shore, Beverly and other areas (such as Uptown-Buena Park, in the Pattington) which were upper middle class.

Holsman, Holsman, Klekamp & Taylor

Holsman, Holsman, Klekamp & Taylor was one of Chicago's more venerable firms, descended from Henry K. Holsman, and the ancestor of today's real estate firm, Parker-Holsman. This entry is going to focus on one of their 1950's projects, centered around the intersection of Hood and Wolcott in West Rogers Park.

These were built by the architects development arm, Community Development Trust. This company specialized in high density, for-sale owner-occupied housing, which at that time meant cooperatives - or more specifically, mutual ownership in trust - via a not-for-profit corporation. These can be found across the city, and in fact, the Chicago area in general, as there is one project in Evanston.

Not only was this an usual ownership and development form, there was also technical innovation as well. They are built of bearing wall construction, of solid masonry - refer to the image at right, which shows the system, as built at the Lunt-Lake Apartments. They also feature radiant heating and an innovative structural floor system allowing lower floor to floor heights and enabling more floors within the overall building height.

In plan they are also economical, being fairly similar in size (unit-wise) to tract houses of the era. The structural system gives them almost an Eichler-esque interior feel, that of a single-family post and beam construction building, particularly on the top floor walk-up units. Units range from two to three bedrooms, with extra storage and laundries in the basements. In the walk-up buildings there is a dining area, with the top floor units having vaulted ceilings and fireplaces. The elevator buildings have four corner units on each floor, with one or two elevators depending on height.

Walk-up PlanElevator Plan

The site planning with lush greenery and open common space gives them a unique feel for the Chicago area, which typically favors very dense site development. With their mature landscaping they truly present an idyllic scene today, very much to the ideals of post-war planning.

View into central court

View of typical 5-story entrances

Entry view of 4-story entrance
(with intact lighting)

Entry view of 5-story building
Alternate entry type for 5-story building
(notice the "hat" shaped lighting fixture)

View of 5-story building

View of corner of 5-story building