There is scarcely any capital, ancient or modern, to which the site
supplies so little of a visible reason of being. The prairie and the
lake meet at a level, a liquid plain and a plain of mud that cannot
properly be called solid, with nothing but the change of material to
break the expanse. Indeed, when there is a breeze, the surface of Lake
Michigan would be distinctly more diversified than that of the adjoining
land, but for the handiwork of man. In point of fact, Chicago is of
course explained by the confluence here of the two branches of the
Chicago River. These have determined the site, the plan, and the
building of the town, but one can scarcely describe as natural features
the two sinuous ditches that drain the prairie into the lake, apparently
in defiance of the law that water runs, and even oozes, down hill.
Streams, however narrow and sluggish they may be, so they be themselves
available for traffic, operate an obstruction to traffic by land; and it
is the fact that for some distance from the junction the south fork of
the river flows parallel with the shore of the lake, and within a
half-mile of it, which establishes in this enclosure the commercial
centre of Chicago. Even the slight obstacle interposed to traffic by the
confluent streams, bridged and tunnelled as they are, has sufficed
greatly to raise the cost of land within this area, in comparison with
that outside, and to compel here the erection of the towering structures
that are the most characteristic and the most impressive monuments of
the town.
In character and impressiveness these by no means disappoint the
stranger’s expectations, but in number and extent they do, rather. For
what one expects of Chicago, before anything else, is modernness. In
most things one’s expectations are fully realized. It is the most
contemporaneous of capitals, and in the appearance of its people and
their talk in the streets and in the clubs and in the newspapers it
fairly palpitates with “actuality.” Nevertheless, the general aspect of
the business quarter is distinctly old-fashioned, and this even to the
effete Oriental from New York or Boston. The elevator is nearly a
quarter of a century old, and the first specimens of “elevator
architecture,” the Western Union and the “Tribune” buildings in New
York, are very nearly coeval with the great fire in Chicago. One would
have supposed that the rebuilders of Chicago would have seized upon this
hint with avidity, and that its compressed commercial quarter would have
made up in altitude what it lacked in area. In fact, not only are the
great modern office buildings still exceptional in the most costly and
most crowded district, but it is astonishing to hear that the oldest of
them is scarcely more than seven years of age. “Men’s deeds are after as
they have been accustomed”--and the first impulse of the burnt-out
merchants of Chicago was not to seize the opportunity the clean sweep of
the fire had given them to improve their warehouses and office
buildings, but to provide themselves straightway with places in which
they could find shelter and do business. The consequence was that the
new buildings of the burnt district were planned and designed, as well
as built, with the utmost possible speed, and the rebuilding was for the
most part done by the same architects who had built the old Chicago, and
who took even less thought the second time than they had taken the
first, by reason of the greater pressure upon them. The American
commercial Renaissance, commonly expressed in cast-iron, was in its full
efflorescence just before the fire. The material was discredited by that
calamity, but unhappily not the forms it had taken, and in Chicago we
may see, what is scarcely to be seen anywhere else in the world, fronts
in cast-iron, themselves imitated from lithic architecture, again
imitated in masonry, with the modifications reproduced that had been
made necessary by the use of the less trustworthy material. This ignoble
process is facilitated by the material at hand, a limestone of which
slabs can be had in sizes that simulate exactly the castings from which
the treatment of them is derived. After the exposure of a few months to
the bituminous fumes it is really impossible to tell one of these
reproductions from the original, which very likely adjoins it. Masonry
and metal alike appear to have come from a foundry, rather than from a
quarry, and to have been moulded according to the stock patterns of some
architectural iron-works. The lifelessness and thoughtlessness of the
iron-founders’ work predominate in the streets devoted to the retail
trade, and the picturesque tourist in Chicago is thus compelled to
traverse many miles of street fronts quite as dismal and as monotonous
as the commercial architecture of any other modern town.
There is a compensation for this in what at first sight seems to be one
of its aggravations. The buildings which wear these stereotyped street
fronts are much lower and less capacious than the increasing exigencies
of business require, and than the introduction of the elevator makes
possible, and they could not be other than cheap and flimsy in
construction. Naturally the rebuilders of Chicago talked a great deal
about “absolutely fire-proof” construction, but as naturally they did
very little of it. The necessity for immediate accommodation, at a
minimum of cost, was overwhelming, and cheap and hasty construction
cannot be fire-proof construction. Accordingly, the majority of the
commercial buildings now standing in Chicago are as really provisional
and temporary as the tents and shanties, pitched almost on the embers of
the fire, which they succeeded. The time being now ripe for replacing
them by structures more capacious and durable, it is a matter for
congratulation that there is nothing in the existing buildings of such
practical or architectural value as to make anybody regret or obstruct
the substitution.
Even if the old-fashioned architects who rebuilt Chicago had been
anxious to reconstruct it according to the best and newest lights, it
would have been quite out of their power to do so unaided. The erection
of a twelve-story building anywhere involves an amount of mechanical
consideration and a degree of engineering skill that are quite beyond
the practitioners of the American metallic Renaissance. In Chicago the
problem is more complicated than elsewhere, because these towering and
massive structures ultimately rest upon a quagmire that is not less but
more untrustworthy the deeper one digs. The distribution of the weight
by carrying the foundations down to a trustworthy bottom, and increasing
the area of the supporting piers as they descend, is not practicable
here, nor, for the same reason, can it be done by piling. It is managed,
in the heaviest buildings, by floating them upon a raft of concrete and
railroad iron, spread a few feet below the surface, so that there are no
cellars in the business quarter, and the subterranean activities that
are so striking in the elevator buildings of New York are quite unknown.
If the architects of the old Chicago, to whom their former clients
naturally applied to rear the phœnix of the new, had been seized with
the ambition of building Babels, they would doubtless have made as wild
work practically as they certainly would have made artistically in the
confusion of architectural tongues that would have fallen upon them. It
is in every point of view fortunate that the modernization of the town
was reserved for the better-trained designers of a younger generation.
It might be expected that the architecture of Chicago would be severely
utilitarian in purpose if not in design, and this is the case. The city
may be said to consist of places of business and places of residence.
There are no churches, for example, that fairly represent the skill of
the architects. The best of them are scarcely worthy of illustration or
discussion here, while the worst of them might suitably illustrate the
work projected by a ribald wit on “The Comic Aspects of Christianity.”
Among other things, it follows from this deficiency that Chicago lacks
almost altogether, in any general view that can be had of it, the
variety and animation that are imparted to the sky line of a town seen
from the water, or from an eminence, by a “tiara of proud towers,” even
when these are not specially attractive in outline or in detail, nor
especially fortunate in their grouping. There is nothing, for example,
in the aspect of Chicago from the lake, or from any attainable point of
view, that is comparable to the sky-line of the Back Bay of Boston, as
seen from the Cambridge bridge, or of lower New York from either river.
The towering buildings are almost wholly flat-roofed, and their stark,
rectangular outlines cannot take on picturesqueness, even under the
friendly drapery of the smoke that overhangs the commercial quarter
during six days of the week. The architect of the Dearborn Station was
very happily inspired when he relieved the prevailing monotony with the
quaint and striking clock-tower that adjoins that structure.
The secular public buildings of Chicago are much more noteworthy than
the churches, but upon the whole they bear scarcely so large a relation
to the mass of private building as one would expect from the wealth and
the public spirit of the town, and with one or two very noteworthy
exceptions, recent as many of them are, they were built too early. The
most discussed of them is the city and county building, and this has
been discussed for reasons quite alien to its architecture, the halves
of what was originally a single design having been assigned to different
architects. The original design has been followed in the main, and the
result is an edifice that certainly makes a distinctive impression. A
building, completely detached, 340 feet by 280 in area, and considerably
over 100 feet high, can scarcely fail to make an impression by dint of
mere magnitude, but there is rather more than that in the city and
county building. The parts are few and large, but five stories
appearing, the masonry is massive, and the projecting and pedimented
porticoes are on an ample scale. These things give the building a
certain effect of sumptuosity and swagger that ally it rather to the
Parisian than to the Peorian Renaissance. The effect is marred by
certain drawbacks of detail, and by one that is scarcely of
[Illustration: FROM THE CITY AND COUNTY BUILDING.
J. W. Egan and J. R. Mullett, Architects.]
detail, the extreme meanness and baldness of the attic, in which, for
the only time in the building, the openings seem to be arranged with
some reference to their uses, and in which accordingly they have a
painfully pinched and huddled appearance. In the decorative detail there
is apparent a divergency of views between the two architects appointed
to carry out the divided halves of the united design. The municipal
designer--or possibly it is the county gentleman--has been content to
stand upon the ancient ways, and to introduce no detail for which he has
not found Ludovican precedent, while his rival is of a more aspiring
mind, and has endeavored to carry out the precepts of the late Thomas
Jefferson, by classicizing things modern. His excursions are not very
daring, and consist mainly in such substitutions as that of an Indian’s
head for the antique mask, in a frieze of conventionalized American
foliage. He has attained what must be in such an attempt the gratifying
success of converting his modern material to a result as dull and
lifeless and uninteresting as his prototype. It does not, however,
impair the grandiosity of the general effect. This is impaired, not
merely by the poverty of design already noted in the attic, but also by
the niggardliness shown in dividing the polished granite column of the
porticoes into several drums, though monoliths are plainly indicated by
their dimensions, and by the general scale of the masonry. The small
economy is the more injurious, because a noble regardlessness of expense
is of the essence of the architecture, and an integral part of its
effectiveness. The most monumental feature of the projected building has
never been supplied--a huge arch in the centre of each of the shorter
fronts, giving access to the central court, and marking the division
between the property of the city and of the county. It is possible that
the failure to finish this arch has proceeded from the political
conflict that has left its scars upon the building elsewhere. There is
an obvious practical difficulty in intrusting the two halves of an arch
to rival architects and rival contractors. However that may be, the arch
is unbuilt, and the entrance to the central court is a mere rift in the
wall. The practical townspeople have seized the opportunity thus
presented by the unoccupied space of free quarters for the all-pervading
buggy. With a contempt for the constituted authorities that it must be
owned the constituted authorities have gone far to justify, they tether
their horses in the shadow of their chief civic monument, like so many
Arabs under the pillars of Palmyra or Persepolis, and heighten the
impression of being the relic of an extinct race that is given to the
pile not only by its unfinished state and by the stains of smoke,
undistinguishable from those of time, but by its entirely exotic
architecture. As the newly-landed Irishman, making his way up Broadway
from Castle Garden, is said to have exclaimed, when he came in sight of
the City Hall, that “that never was built in this country,” so the
stranger in Chicago is tempted to declare of its municipal building that
it could not have been reared by the same race of whose building
activities the other evidences surround him. This single example of
Ludovican architecture recalls, as most examples of it do, Thackeray’s
caricature of its Mecænas. Despoiled of its periwigs and its high heels,
that is to say, of its architecture, which is easily separable from it,
the building would merely lose all its character, without losing
anything that belongs to it as a building.
Nevertheless this municipal building has its character, and in
comparison with the next most famous public building of Chicago, it
vindicates the wisdom of its architect in subjecting himself to the
safeguard of a style of which, moreover, his work shows a real study.
The style may be absolutely irrelevant both to our needs and to our
ideas, as irrelevant as the political system of Louis XIV. which it
recalls. Its formulas may seem quite empty, but they gather dignity, if
not meaning, when contrasted with the work of an avid “swallower of
formulas,” like the architect of the Board
[Illustration: THE ART INSTITUTE.
Burnham & Root, Architects.]
of Trade. His work is of no style, a proposition that is not invalidated
by the probability that he himself would call it “American eclectic
Gothic.” We all know what the untutored and aboriginal architect
stretches that term to cover. There is no doubt about its being
characteristically modern and American; one might say characteristically
Western, if he did not recall equally free and untrammelled exuberances
in the Atlantic States. But it is impossible to ascribe to it any
architectural merit, unless a complete disregard for precedent is to be
imputed for righteousness, whether it proceed from ignorance or from
contempt. And, indeed, there are not many other structures in the
United States, of equal cost and pretension, which equally with this
combine the dignity of a commercial traveller with the bland repose of
St. Vitus. It is difficult to contemplate its bustling and uneasy façade
without feeling a certain sympathy with the mob of anarchists that
“demonstrated” under its windows on the night of its opening. If they
were really anarchists, it was very ungrateful of them, for one would go
far to find a more perfect expression of anarchy in architecture, and it
is conceivable that they were instigated by an outraged architectural
critic in disguise. If that ringleader had been caught and arraigned, he
could have maintained, with much better reason, the plea that Gustave
Courbet made for his share in the destruction of the column of the Place
Vendôme, that his opposition to the monument was not political, but
æsthetic.
Fortunately there is no other among the public or quasi-public buildings
of Chicago of which the architecture is so hopeless and so
irresponsible--no other that would so baffle the palæontological Paley
who should seek in it evidences of design, and that does not exhibit, at
least, an architectural purpose, carried out with more or less of
consistency and success. At the very centre of the commercial water
front there was wisely reserved from traffic in the rebuilding of the
town the “Lake Park,” a mile in extent, and some hundreds of feet in
depth, which not only serves the purpose of affording a view of the lake
from the business quarter, but also secures an effective foreground for
the buildings that line its landward edge. One of the oldest of these,
young as all of them are, is the “Art Institute,” designed by Messrs.
Burnham & Root. This is of a moderate altitude, and suffers somewhat
from being dwarfed by the elevator buildings erected
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE ART INSTITUTE.]
since, being but of three stories and a roof; but no neighbor could make
it other than a vigorous and effective work, as dignified as the Board
of Trade is uneasy, and as quiet as that is noisy. It is extremely
simple in composition, as will be seen, and it bears very little
ornament, this being for the most part concentrated upon the ample and
deeply moulded archway of the entrance. It owes its effectiveness to the
clearness of its division into the three main parts of base and
superstructure and roof, to the harmonious relation between them, and to
the differences in the treatment of them that enhance this harmony. The
Aristotelian precept that a work of art must have a beginning, a middle,
and an end, is nowhere more conspicuously valid than in architecture,
and nowhere does the neglect of it entail more unfortunate consequences.
The severity of the basement, with its plain rectangular openings, is an
effective introduction to the somewhat lighter and more open
fenestration of the second and third stories, which are grouped to form
the second term in the proportion, and this in turn to the range of
openings in the gable of the shorter front, and to the row of peaked
dormers in the longer that animate the sky-line and complete the
composition. The impressiveness of the fronts is very greatly deepened
by the vigorous framing of massive angle piers in which they are
enclosed, the vigor of which is enhanced by the solid pinnacled turrets,
corbelled out above the second story, that help to weight them, and that
visibly abut the outward thrust of the arcades. It may be significant,
with reference to the tendency of Western architecture, that this
admirable building, admirable in the sobriety and moderation that are
facilitated by its moderate size, is precisely what one would not expect
to find in Chicago, so little is there evident in it of an intention to
“collar the eye,” or to challenge the attention it so very well repays.
In part, as we have just intimated, this modesty may be ascribed to the
modest dimensions of the building. At any rate, it was out of the
question in another important quasi-public building, which is the
latest, and, at this writing, the loudest of the lions of Chicago--the
Auditorium. Whatever else a ten-story building, nearly 300 feet by more
than 350 in area and 140 in height, with a tower rising 80 feet farther,
may happen to be, it must be conspicuous, and it is no wise possible
that its designer should make it appear bashful or unobtrusive. Of
however retiring a disposition he may be, in such a situation he must
brazen it out. It is in his
[Illustration: BALCONY OF AUDITORIUM.
Adler & Sullivan, Architects.]
power to adopt a very simple or a very elaborate treatment, and to
imperil the success of his work by making it dull on the one hand or
unquiet on the other. Messrs. Adler & Sullivan, the architects of the
Auditorium, have chosen the better part in treating their huge fronts
with great severity, insomuch that the building can scarcely be said to
exhibit any “features,” except the triple entrance on the lake front,
with its overhanging balcony, and the square tower that rises over the
southern front to a height of 225 feet. While they did wisely in showing
that monotony had fewer terrors for them than restlessness, the monotony
that undoubtedly amounts to a defect in the aspect of the completed work
is by no means wholly or mainly attributable to them. A place of
popular entertainment, constructed upon a scale and with a massiveness
to which we can scarcely find a parallel since Roman days, would present
one of the worthiest and most interesting problems a modern architect
could have if he were left to solve it unhampered. It is quite difficult
enough to tax the power of any designer without any complications. The
problem of design in the Chicago Auditorium is much complicated with
requirements entirely irrelevant to its main purpose. The lobbies, the
auditorium, and the stage of a great theatre, which are its essential
parts, are all susceptible of an exterior expression more truthful and
more striking than has yet been attained, in spite of many earnest and
interesting essays. In the interior of the Auditorium, where the
architects were left free, they have devoted themselves to solving their
real problem with a high degree of success, and have attained an
impressive simplicity and largeness. We are not dealing with interiors,
however, and they were required to envelop the outside of their theatre
in a shell of many-storied commercial architecture, which forbade them
even to try for a monumental expression of their great hall. In the
main, their exterior appears and must be judged only as a “business
block.” They have their exits and their entrances, and it is really only
in these features that the exterior betrays the primary purpose of the
building. The tower, even, is evidently not so much monumental as
utilitarian. It is prepared for in the substructure only by a slight and
inadequate projection of the piers, while it is itself obviously
destined for profitable occupancy, being a small three-story business
block, superimposed upon a huge ten-story business block. Such a
structure cannot be converted into a monumental feature by making it
more massive at the top than it is at the bottom,
[Illustration: TOWER OF AUDITORIUM.
Adler & Sullivan. Architects.]