Chicago: City of Architecture, Film & Ideas, Part 1

Well, most architects would agree that the Windy City is always a great place to view architecture, but there is even more to ponder during the crisp days of October.  During my recent visit, the city hosted the 53rd Chicago Film Festival from October 12 through 26th, Chicago Ideas Week (Oct. 16-22), and the Chicago Architecture Biennial, which opened at the Cultural Center on September 16th and runs through January 7, 2018.  There was some cross-pollination between events. One example was an intriguing panel at the Film Fest on the Architecture of Film Noir, with commentary by guest panelists including film directors and design professionals, and the Ideas Week team sponsored a session for aspiring urban planners, as well as a talk by film director George Lucas.  Even at my high school reunion, the original excuse for stealing a week from work, a surprising (even alarming) number of old friends revealed themselves to be architecture enthusiasts.  Why had I not noticed this back then?  My old friend Mike even reminded me how I'd coerced him into a bike tour of local Frank Lloyd Wright houses; the memory of being such an authoritarian eluded me.  But when I went back to Forest Avenue in Oak Park, just north of Lake Street, it struck me again that this is one of the best living museums of residential architecture anywhere. I vaguely recall telling everybody in my childhood world who'd listen that they needed to see it.  And if you're looking to reawaken the sense of wonder that all twelve-year old kids seem to have, Forest north of Lake is still a pretty good destination...

If you start at the north end of Forest where it meets Chicago Avenue, you can tour the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio, which is the only Wright home on Forest which is normally open to the public.  The gable-roofed house was built to Wright's design in a Shingle Style variation in 1889, and is the oldest extant Wright home.  A Playroom was added in 1893, and the more horizontal Studio introduced Prairie Style themes in 1895. This wing was remodeled in 1956 in an effort to restore it to its 1895 appearance, as it was before Wright moved to Taliesin in Wisconsin. Further south on Forest, the Arthur Heurtley house from 1902 combines an arched entry redolent of Louis Sullivan with horizontal emphasis obtained with a broad, hipped roof sheltering predominantly brick walls whose surface projections echo wood battens and extend the lines outward...

If you stay on the east side of Forest and continue past the Huertley house you'll find the Beachy house, built in 1906 with deep eaves trimmed in dark wood sheltering stucco gable shapes over horizontal bands of windows and rectilinear masses of brick. All these themes would come to be associated with Wright throughout his long career, and they were masterfully handled considering there was an older house at the core of the Beachy...

Across from the Huertley house is the Moore house and stable, built along Tudor themes in 1895, but extensively remodeled to Wright's design after a fire in 1922. Completed in 1923, the house manages to combine horizontality with uncharacteristic (for Wright anyway) steep roof pitches by deploying long, deeply shaded terraces and massive, wide brick chimneys.

If you continue your walk north toward Lake Street you'll be able to view still more Wright designs, and a side trip onto Elizabeth Court to the east will net you a view of the the Thomas Gale house. Designed in 1904 and built 5 years later, the Gale house established the simplified geometry of cantilevered rectilinear solids and flat roofs that reached its apex at Falling Water, built at Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania in 1935.  Photography was obstructed by road construction on my visit, but the Thomas Gale house still looks like this...

You can round out your tour by turning east onto Lake street and continuing a block towards Kenilworth, where Unity Temple awaits you.  Built in the 1904, the year the Gale house was designed, it also features flat roofs and rectangular solids, with bands of windows standing free of supporting columns and thus creating a new flow of light and space from the exterior to the interior. Outside, Wright's innovation was the use of reinforced, poured-in-place concrete for the building's structure and exterior walls.  It was the first such use on a large-scale building in the United States, and was prompted by the limited budget ($35,000). 

The interior has an almost mystical gravitas, with light from square skylight wells puncturing the ceiling, and shadows defining the deep balcony spaces and echoing the dark bands of wood trim. In the early 70s I attended the wedding of some good friends with whom I'd shared a place on Chicago's north side.  Lots of friends were getting married back then, and I had my choice of weddings nearly every month.  But I made a point of going to this one because the couple got married in Unity Temple.  As the Summer of Love faded into the disillusionment of the Disco Era, my friends staked out some new territory by writing their own wedding ceremony.  In a move about a decade ahead of New Age spirituality, they pledged to share life on the same vibrational modality.  It was, in a way, as brave as Wright's pioneering use of reinforced concrete. Though they have since gone their separate and happy ways, it seems they picked the right place to make that pledge. The space still hums with light and mystery, and vibrates with life and promise...  

Photo credits:
Top left:  flwright.org
Top right:  the author
3rd, 4th and 5th:  the author
6th, 7th & 8th: wikimedia