860–880 Lake Shore Drive (also known as 860–880 North Lake Shore Drive) are a pair of glass-and-steel apartment towers along Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Located in the Streeterville neighborhood, within the Near North Side community area, the buildings were designed in the International Style by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and were his first high-rise design. Holsman, Holsman, Klekamp & Taylor and Pace Associates were also involved with the design as the associated architects. Each of the towers is identical in shape and materials, measuring 270 feet (82 m) tall with 26 stories. The buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places and are designated as a Chicago Landmark.
Buildings at 860–880 Lake Shore Drive | |
Chicago Landmark | |
| Location | 860–880 N. Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois, US |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 41°53′55″N 87°37′7″W / 41.89861°N 87.61861°W |
| Area | 1.2 acres (0.49 ha) |
| Built | 1949 |
| Architect | Ludwig Mies van der Rohe |
| Architectural style | International Style |
| NRHP reference No. | 80001344 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | August 28, 1980 |
| Designated CL | June 10, 1996 |
The two buildings occupy rectangular footprints, being arranged on a 3-by-5 grid of square bays, each measuring 21 feet (6.4 m) on each side. The south tower at 860 North Lake Shore Drive is oriented west–east, while the north tower at 880 North Lake Shore Drive is oriented north–south. There is an arcade at the ground (first) story of both buildings, as well as glass walls around each building's lobbies. On and above the second story of both buildings, the windows are separated vertically by mullion bars with I-beams, and they are divided horizontally by spandrel panels. Each bay has four window panes per story, while different bays are separated vertically by steel plates. Both buildings have a steel superstructure encased in concrete, as well as a structural core for elevators, stairs, hallways, bathrooms, and kitchens. The basement has a garage, and each building's ground story has a lobby. On the upper floors, there were originally a combined 116 six-bedroom apartments and 152 three-and-a-half-room apartments. Many original design elements remain intact, though the apartments have been rearranged over the years.
The real estate developer Herbert Greenwald became acquainted with Mies in 1946, hiring the architect to design the Promontory Apartments on Lake Shore Drive. The design of 860–880 Lake Shore Drive is derived from an alternative design for the Promontory Apartments with a glass-and-steel facade. Greenwald and Robert Hall McCormick announced in April 1949 that they would build two 25-story cooperative apartment towers at 860–880 Lake Shore Drive. A formal groundbreaking ceremony took place on December 17, 1949, and almost all the apartments had been sold by mid-1951. Residents moved in even before the buildings were formally completed in August 1952. The lobbies and their plaza were restored starting in 2008. Despite initial controversy over their unconventional style, which was shared by few buildings in the United States, the 860–880 Lake Shore Drive towers were highly regarded after they were completed. After the towers were finished, many glass-box skyscrapers were built worldwide.
Site
The buildings are officially located at 860 and 880 North Lake Shore Drive, in the Streeterville neighborhood, within the Near North Side community area of Chicago, Illinois, United States. The complex has a frontage of 103 feet (31 m) on Delaware Place to the north, 242 feet (74 m) on Lake Shore Drive to the east, and 206 feet (63 m) on Chestnut Street to the south. While Delaware Place and Chestnut Street are aligned with Chicago's street grid, Lake Shore Drive runs at a slight angle from northwest to southeast.
The buildings face Lake Michigan immediately to the east and are slightly north of the Chicago Loop and east of Michigan Avenue. The apartment towers at 900–910 North Lake Shore are immediately to the north. Prior to the buildings' completion, the site had been occupied by a mansion belonging to Edith Rockefeller McCormick. The McCormick family's McCormick Management Corporation owned the northern half of the site, while Northwestern University had obtained the southern half in 1944 from Robert R. McCormick.
Architecture
The towers at 860–880 Lake Shore Drive were designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for the developer Herbert Greenwald. Holsman, Holsman, Klekamp & Taylor was the consulting architect, and Pace Associates were the associated architects. In addition, Frank J. Kornacher was the engineer, while Richard Kelly was the lighting designer. Both towers are 26 stories high, with a height of 270 feet (82 m), and are designed in the International Style. They are the first high-rise buildings Mies designed.
860–880 Lake Shore Drive were part of a trend of glassy skyscrapers in major American cities, other examples of which included the United Nations Secretariat Building. The towers' design also improved upon earlier International-style designs such as the PSFS Building in Philadelphia and 330 West 42nd Street in New York. 860–880 Lake Shore Drive's relatively simple designs contrast significantly with Mies's earlier designs such as the German Pavilion in Barcelona or the Villa Tugendhat, which used materials like travertine and marble. Mies, who had a reputation as a minimalist architect, adhered to the principle "less is more", as demonstrated in his self-proclaimed "skin and bones" designs. He did not take sunlight exposure or wind gusts into account when he designed the buildings. The towers' identical appearance, vertical mullions, and the use of a steel frame for articulation set them apart from other buildings of the time, even though none of the actual superstructures are visible on the buildings' facades.
Form and facade
The two buildings have rectangular footprints and are arranged on perpendicular axes to each other. Their superstructures are constructed on a grid of square bays measuring 21 feet (6.4 m) on each side. The longer sides of each building are five bays wide, while the shorter sides are three bays wide. Unlike older apartment buildings on Lake Shore Drive, which tended to be perpendicular to that street, 860–880 Lake Shore Drive was built perpendicularly to the side streets and the Chicago street grid. 860 North Lake Shore Drive (the south tower) occupies the southeastern corner of the site, with its shorter sides oriented eastward and westward, while 880 North Lake Shore Drive (the north tower) is at the northeastern corner, with its shorter sides oriented northward and southward. The offset positioning maximizes the number of apartments that oversee the lake. Blair Kamin of the Chicago Tribune wrote that, from above, the positioning of the towers made it seem like they were "sliding past each other".
Lower stories
There is an arcade surrounding the ground (or first) story of both buildings, exposing some of the superstructure's columns to plain view. The ground stories of both buildings have glass walls; the lobbies have transparent glass, while the service areas next to each lobby have opaque glass, in a similar manner to Mies's earlier German Pavilion. The glass walls were backlit from inside during the nighttime, giving the impression that each tower was floating. Although Mies's decision to use opaque windows has been cited as a practical way to conceal the mechanical equipment, they also highlighted the superstructure's columns at night.
The soffits at the buildings' perimeters, along the ceilings of each arcade, have powerful spotlights that illuminate the arcades' floors and provide additional lighting for the lobbies' glass facades. Specially-made lenses were placed over the lamps to distribute the light evenly over the facades. The lobbies have travertine floors and are connected by a travertine walkway. The pathway connects two travertine plazas surrounding the towers, creating a plinth. Around 1,100 stone slabs weighing up to 175 pounds (79 kg) each were used to construct the lobbies, walkway, and the plazas outside the buildings. Just above ground level, a steel canopy runs above a walkway connecting the south tower's northern facade and the north tower's southern facade.
Upper stories
On and above the second story of both buildings, the facade's glass windows run from the floor to the ceiling. The windows are separated vertically by mullion bars and horizontally by spandrel panels between different floors; the aluminum mullions run nearly the buildings' entire height. On each floor, each bay has a 21-by-9-foot (6.4 m × 2.7 m) opening. There are four window panes per opening, which are set into aluminum frames. The panes are divided into a larger upper section and a smaller lower section, which swing inward from hinges on the ceiling and floor, respectively. The buildings have a combined 3,232 panes with 130,000 square feet (12,000 m2) of glass. To prevent rain from entering the buildings during high winds, steel and rubber strips were affixed to the windows' edges. The windows' dimensions and the protruding mullions allowed Mies to emphasize both buildings' vertical design details over their horizontal details.
The centers of each mullion are spaced 5+1⁄4 feet (1.6 m) apart, corresponding to one-fourth the width of the bays inside. Protruding I-beams are welded to the mullions. Each of the I-beams is about 8 inches (200 mm) thick, and the tops and bottoms of the I-beams are cut off, allowing the beams' cross sections to be seen. Architectural writers criticized the I-beams when the buildings were constructed, since the material was being used for purely decorative purposes, and since the use of decorative design details ostensibly contravened Mies's longstanding tendency not to use materials unless absolutely necessary. Mies told one reporter that there was both a "real reason" and a "good reason" for the I-beams' existence. While the "good reason" was to stiffen steel plates in the superstructure, the "real reason" was that the I-beams were intended to represent the steel superstructure, which was exposed only at the ground level. The I-beams also broke up the otherwise-flat facades, and, as sunlight hit the I-beams throughout the day, they cast shadows in specific patterns. All exterior steel was coated in black enamel paint, without any other surface finish.
The designs of 860–880 Lake Shore Drive's superstructures and facades are closely correlated, in contrast to Mies's later designs where the facade had little, if anything, to do with the superstructure. Each bay is divided by concrete-encased columns at the buildings' perimeters. The concrete columns cannot be seen from the outside, as they are hidden behind steel plates, which have I-beams welded to them, matching the designs of the mullions between the windows. In both buildings, the columns at each corner are covered with steel plates on two sides. Although the mullions are equidistant, the columns protrude about 9 inches (230 mm) into each bay, so the two outer windows in each bay (immediately next to the columns) are narrower than the two inner windows. Adjacent mullions and spandrels formed rectangles that were similar in proportion to the footprints of each building. 860–880 Lake Shore Drive was Mies's only design where the curtain wall was flush with the exterior columns; in all of his other designs, the curtain wall was either hung outside or was recessed into the superstructure. The facades lacked other traditional design details such as cornices, and there are also no balconies.
Interior
When the towers were built, exposed steel superstructures above a building's first story were banned under Chicago's building codes, preventing Mies from exposing the buildings' steel frames on the upper floors. As a result, the columns in both buildings' superstructures (including at the perimeter) are encased in concrete above the ground story, which influenced his decision to put I-beams on the facade. Vierendeel trusses are used to support the upper floors; although the trusses are light, they also tended to make the upper stories sway considerably. The superstructures are still made primarily of steel, as opposed to Mies's later 900–910 North Lake Shore Drive, where the frames are made entirely of concrete. The beams are all welded together.
Beneath both buildings are two basements with storage space, refrigerators, laundry rooms, and sitting rooms. There is also a garage with 100 or 116 parking spots below both buildings. Barcelona chairs are installed in the lobby of either tower. The core of each building is used for circulation and includes elevators, hallways, and stairs. Each building has two elevators that serve all stories. The cores also contain each apartment's bathrooms and kitchens.
Apartments
Each of the upper stories measures 10 feet (3.0 m) high. The larger six-room units were originally located in the south tower, while the smaller three-and-a-half-room units were in the north tower. The larger apartments had three bedrooms each, spanning 1,400 square feet (130 m2), and the smaller units had one bedroom each, spanning 700 square feet (65 m2). There were initially four apartments per floor in the south tower and eight per floor in the north tower. The original plans called for 92 large units and 192 small units, but 40 of the small units were combined to make 20 large units, for a total of 116 large apartments and 152 small apartments. All of the south tower's apartments and half of the north tower's apartments had windows on two sides.
The apartment layouts are influenced by the facades' designs and the buildings' footprints. Mies had originally proposed arranging the apartments in an open plan, but Greenwald forced Mies to add walls between the rooms in each apartment. Mies also wanted to add a service entrance to each apartment, but this was discarded from the final plan. The final arrangement was a compromise between Mies's original concept and Greenwald's requirements, and many of the units have since been combined. Similarly to Mies's earlier Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois, bedrooms and other living spaces are positioned around the kitchens and bathrooms in the core. The dining alcoves in the north tower's apartments abut the core, while the alcoves in the south tower's apartments abut the curtain wall. The building's 21-by-21-foot (6.4 by 6.4 m) square bays influenced the interior layout; for example, living rooms span the entire width of a bay, while dining rooms and bedrooms span half a bay.
When the buildings were finished in 1951, the apartments had a myriad of closets, and Mies said that the full-height windows on the facade provided a plethora of natural light. The units also had radiant heating systems, and there are convection heaters near the windows. Originally, the towers had no building-wide air conditioning; Mies's original plans for a central air system, which would have cooled the apartments, were canceled due to a lack of money. Instead, dozens of apartments were retrofitted with air-conditioning units. Mies wanted each floor to look exactly the same from the outside, so the same gray color was used for all of the curtains directly behind each window. Behind each curtain is a rail where occupants could install a curtain of their own design. Several tenants modified their own apartments; for example, the Harvey family in the south tower decorated their apartment with ancient artifacts, while the Ets Hokin family decorated their unit in the same building in bright colors. Though the finishes, kitchens, and bedrooms in some apartments have since been modified, much of Mies's original design remains intact.
History
In 1946, the real estate developer Herbert Greenwald became acquainted with the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, while the latter was developing the Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois. Though Greenwald was thirty years younger than Mies, they remained frequent collaborators until Greenwald died in 1959. Greenwald was motivated to develop buildings of high architectural quality, rather than focusing on profit. Additionally, the 1933 Century of Progress world's fair had spurred the construction of modern architecture in Chicago, and architects such as Mies and Loebl Schlossman & Hackl had been inspired to build modernist structures there.
The first building Greenwald hired Mies to design was the Promontory Apartments on South Lake Shore Drive, completed in 1949. Due to World War II-era steel shortages, that building had a reinforced concrete facade, rather than the steel and glass facade Mies had wanted. Mies nonetheless drew up an alternate plan for a structure with a steel-and-glass facade, which he later reused for 860–880 Lake Shore Drive. Mies had been considering a steel-and-glass skyscraper for three decades but had been unable to realize his design; as early as 1920, he had been drawing up designs for towers with steel skeletons. After the Promontory Apartments were completed, Mies and Greenwald had considered several other designs along Lake Michigan, which were ultimately not built.
Development
Design and financing
Mies's next collaboration with Greenwald was at 860–880 Lake Shore Drive, facing Lake Michigan between Chestnut Street and Delaware Place. Northwestern University had formerly owned part of the site and still owned a parcel to the west. When the site of 860–880 Lake Shore Drive was acquired in 1948, Northwestern had agreed to sell their land on the condition that Lake Michigan remain visible from their other plot. This requirement prompted Greenwald and his development partner—Robert Hall McCormick, the son of Robert R. McCormick—to plan two buildings on the site, rather than one. Greenwald and McCormick announced plans for two 25-story cooperative apartment towers at 860–880 Lake Shore Drive in April 1949. There would be 92 six-room apartments, 192 three-and-a-half-room apartments, and 25 studio apartments, along with 100 parking spaces. In contrast to the Promontory Apartments, the development would have a steel-and-glass facade, since the wartime steel shortage was no longer as severe. The idea for a glass facade was attributed to McCormick.
The buildings were to be financed with a $3.1 million mortgage loan, which would be paid off over twenty years and split between the tenants. Since the buildings were to be co-ops, each tenant also had to pay a monthly maintenance fee. The real-estate company Baird & Warner tried to obtain financing, but the design was considered too extreme. In July 1949, the Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Company agreed to lend $3.1 million.
Mies's employee Joseph Fujikawa worked with associate architect Holsman, Holsman, Klekamp & Taylor to create blueprints for the towers, and Charles B. Genther of Pace Associates (another associate architect) spent three months creating working drawings and soliciting bids. Unlike other apartment buildings, where design started with the facade and worked inward, Mies designed the superstructure first and the facade afterward. Mies had proposed having open plan spaces with central air conditioning, but these features were removed before the final plan was approved. When his open-plan floor layouts were rejected, Mies almost quit the project entirely. The height of each tower was dictated by the need to maximize usable space on the upper stories, given the limited floor area available. The architectural historian William Jordy later recalled that Mies had considered even a 12-story building to be too tall and that Mies thought the towers "became very thin" at their final height.
Construction
A formal groundbreaking ceremony took place on December 17, 1949, at which point more than half of the apartments had been sold. The American Bridge Company received the contract for the buildings' steelwork, while Greenwald's company Metropolitan Structures Inc. was the general contractor. To provide seating for the lobbies, Mies asked one of his acolytes to consult photographs of Barcelona chairs (which Mies had designed for the Barcelona Pavilion two decades prior) and draw up modern plans for the chairs. Work on the south tower was delayed after workers discovered a derelict water tunnel 83 feet (25 m) below the ground, which had served the Near North Side of Chicago until c. 1890. Five of the south tower's footings had to be relocated as a result. Although the north tower's superstructure had reached the 14th story by July 1950, the south tower's foundation was still being constructed. By then, 72% of the units had been sold for between $13,500 and $27,000 each.
The facade was manufactured modularly, with two-story-high panels manufactured elsewhere and then welded together. The panels divided the facade into bays with four windows per story. In contrast to earlier concrete buildings, where wet concrete was poured into temporary wooden formwork, the concrete columns at both buildings were poured into a formwork made of steel plates. The steel plates remained on the facades after the columns were poured, eliminating the need to cover up the concrete with some other material. Mies contemplated painting the steel beams red, yellow, or some other color, but he ultimately decided to paint them black. The windows were also assembled from inside the building, eliminating the need to use scaffolding on the facade. Due to the materials used in the buildings, they were dubbed the "World's First Multiple Glass House".
During construction, in 1951, a worker was killed after falling down an elevator shaft. In part because of Chicago's postwar housing shortage, the developers had sold 95% of the apartments in the buildings by June 1951. All of the six-room apartments had been sold by August, while only 17 three-and-a-half-room apartments remained. Residents rapidly moved in while apartments were being completed. The structures ultimately cost $6 million. Averaging $10.38 per square foot ($111.7/m2), the buildings were less expensive than comparable apartment buildings of similar size, and they cost less than even the public housing complexes developed by the Chicago Housing Authority.
1950s to 1980s
The buildings were formally completed in August 1952, and Mutual Benefit Life renewed its $3.1 million mortgage on the buildings that year. Robert Picking, a local architect, was the first resident of the buildings. Most of the original tenants were more than 50 years old, and there were few single-person households or young families. Although both pets and children were allowed to live in the buildings, the Chicago Tribune wrote that there were 14 pets, fewer than a dozen teenagers, and two infants when the buildings opened. Apartment owners were allowed to rent out their units, but only for up to 24 months at a time. Early tenants represented a wide range of professions, from architects to businesspeople, doctors, and lawyers. Mies owned an apartment on the 21st floor but did not live there. The Chicago Tribune said this was because he did not want to hear his tenants' complaints, while the architect Bruce Graham said Mies had told him that there was nowhere to put the furniture.
Initially, the buildings had no central air conditioning, and they received large amounts of sunlight, particularly during the summer, causing them to heat up. There were also no garbage chutes, and Mies was aware of leaks in the buildings even before their completion, having futilely tried to patch them. Many tenants decided to install a second curtain behind the buildings' original drapes, and dozens of families installed air conditioning in their own apartments. The towers also swayed, particularly during high winds, but tenants eventually became used to the swaying. After more tenants with pets moved into the towers, the buildings' trustees banned pets in 1954. The trustees attempted to evict all tenants with pets in 1957, and they sued several tenants, with mixed results.
A tenant of number 880 was killed in a fire in 1970. The buildings remained well-known in the 1970s, even though they were no longer referred to as "the glass houses". During the late 20th century, many residents moved to 860–880 Lake Shore Drive because of the shorefront location and because of the views out the full-height windows. The towers, along with the adjacent development at 900–910 Lake Shore Drive, also housed dozens of architects. By the 1980s, the smaller apartments typically cost $50–80 thousand apiece, while the larger apartments cost $120 thousand apiece. During that decade, the lobbies' opaque glass panes were replaced with an aquamarine-tinted translucent glass.
1990s to present
Between 1990 and 1992, the leaking windows were resealed for $1.5 million, and the facades were restored. Residents hosted a celebration in 1992 to celebrate the buildings' 40th birthday, at which point many tenants said they still loved the buildings. By then, nineteen of the original tenants remained, and there were 20 architects living across both buildings, many of whom had redecorated their units. The towers contained a total of 248 apartments, as some of the original apartments had been combined; the south tower had 90 units, while the north tower had 158 units. Some of the residents continued to rent out their units. The towers had higher maintenance costs than the neighboring 900–910 Lake Shore Drive, in part due to number 860–880's small elevators and lack of garbage chutes.
Due to water damage and exterior deterioration over the years, the buildings were restored starting in 2007. Krueck and Sexton Architects of Chicago were commissioned to oversee the renovation, along with the preservation architects Gunny Harboe Architects. They were directed to fix prior renovations that had undermined the historical appearance of the towers, restore the lighting scheme, and renovate the plaza. The plaza's original stone slabs were cracked, and inadequate waterproofing had caused leaks in the basement, so the slabs were all replaced. As part of the project, an additional coat of acrylic paint was applied to the steelwork on the upper floors, while the paint on the first floor of both buildings was completely replaced. The renovation was completed in December 2009 at a cost of $9 million.
Impact
Reception
Contemporary
When the buildings were constructed, they were controversial because their style was so different from previous skyscrapers. The architect Frank Lloyd Wright criticized them as "flat-chested architecture", expressing his disappointment that Mies had chosen to create such a design. A writer for the Western Mail in Cardiff said that Mies's orderly design of the buildings resembled the "sterilised order of the science laboratory", while a writer for The New York Times said that the buildings were "a lovely laboratory concept" that nonetheless were bound to annoy some observers. Architectural Forum magazine said in 1955 that, while 860–880 Lake Shore Drive was successful, it had inspired several derivatives of markedly lower quality. The next year, a member of a panel for Architectural Record magazine wrote that the complex "is perfect in its proportions, serene in its stand". When Life magazine took pictures of the towers in 1957, they were captioned as "animated and inanimate, revealing yet restrained", as perceived from Lake Michigan.
Retrospective
When Mies died in 1969, The New York Times wrote that Mies had considered 860–880 Lake Shore Drive his fourth-favorite design, after Crown Hall, the Chicago Federal Center, and the Seagram Building, Ross Miller, writing for Critical Inquiry in 1979, said the towers "seem static in their strict geometry of right angles, but manage a dance of shadows that gives each work a dynamic quality." A writer for Artforum magazine said the towers and the Farnsworth House were "uncompromised realizations of Mies's rigorous ethic". The critic Herbert Muschamp regarded the structures as "endlessly complex, acutely sensitive to context" and said that their design embraced the proximity of Lake Michigan. The photographer Walter Peterhans and the historian Julius Posener both compared the buildings' I-beams to Gothic structures' architectural details (such as buttresses), which in some cases were purely decorative. The Society of Architectural Historians praised the lighting scheme, describing it as an essential part of Mies's design. Other observers praised the towers' timeless appearance.
Writing about the buildings' architectural impact, Mies's biographer David A. Spaeth said in 1985 that the buildings had "established a new standard of excellence for the apartment building", as they were among the first entirely steel-and-glass apartment buildings worldwide. Peterhans said that the towers' construction proved the viability of "the architectural potentialities of skeleton construction", contrasting with the masonry facades and smaller windows of earlier buildings. The American Institute of Architects' (AIA) Guide to Chicago regarded the buildings as the most influential of Mies's works.
The architect Robert A. M. Stern described structures like 860–880 Lake Shore Drive as "a wonderful piece of structure, but not so wonderful as a place to live", while Paul Richard of The Washington Post described the I-beams on the facade as being functionally useless. Commentators in the 1980s mocked Mies's less is more principle, describing the buildings as having a "less-is-a-bore" design. Blair Kamin wrote that the buildings' facades would "seem less elegant and less revolutionary" if it were not for the presence of a masonry building directly to the south, the Lake Shore Athletic Club at 850 North Lake Shore Drive. Werner Blaser stated that the building "opposes [Louis] Sullivan's famous axiom 'form follows function' with the term 'structure'", in that the buildings' superstructures did not at all indicate their interior uses. Architectural Record magazine described 860 and 880 North Lake Shore Drive in 2000 as one of the United States' "most famous [architectural] works of the mid-20th century" that were protected as local or national landmarks.
Landmark designations
The building was one of the first official landmarks designated in 1958 by the then-new Commission on Chicago Architectural Landmarks, as well as one of the youngest landmarks so designated. Each building's lobby includes a metallic plaque in honor of this designation, which was dedicated in February 1960. The towers were added to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 1980. Although NRHP listings were generally required to be at least 50 years old, an exception was made for 860–880 Lake Shore Drive because of the towers' architectural significance. The NRHP designation also did not prevent unauthorized modifications to the structures.
The modern Commission on Chicago Landmarks had considered designating the buildings as Chicago Landmarks starting in 1969, but this was postponed twice due to opposition. In a survey in 1980, the majority of residents opposed landmark designation. Even though Chicago Landmark designations could be made without the owners' agreement, the alderman representing the area, Burton Natarus, had recommended that the commission not vote on the landmark designation unless the building's residents supported it. The designation was stalled until 1996, when city aldermen rescinded temporary protections from pending landmarks that previously had such protection. By then, 104 of 280 households supported landmark protection while 40 households opposed it, and the buildings' trustees narrowly voted to recommend designation. After Natarus voted in favor of the designation, 860–880 Lake Shore Drive received Chicago Landmark status on June 10, 1996, which protected the buildings from being modified without the commission's approval. A square plaque in honor of this designation is on a railing near number 860, the south tower. The towers were the first Mies buildings to be designated as Chicago Landmarks, as well as the first post–World War II buildings to be so designated.
Media and awards
During the buildings' construction, Edward Duckett of Mies's office created an architectural model of one of the towers, which was displayed on Michigan Avenue as part of a promotional campaign for the development. Another model, measuring 6 feet (1.8 m) tall, was displayed in New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1950. After the buildings were completed, architectural students from around the world came to visit the structures. MoMA featured the towers in another exhibition about postwar architecture in 1953, and they were depicted in a book accompanying the exhibition. In subsequent years, the buildings were detailed in many modern-architecture books. The towers were also among ten Chicago buildings that were displayed in an architecture exhibit at the Sears Tower in the mid-1990s. They were showcased in Phyllis Lambert's traveling exhibit Mies in America in the early 2000s, and the Art Institute of Chicago also featured them in a 2005 exhibit about post–World War II Chicago architecture.
The buildings received the Twenty-five Year Award from the AIA in 1976, in honor of the longevity of their design. In a poll of American architecture experts the same year, at least one expert ranked 860–880 Lake Shore Drive among the best structures in the United States. In June 2005, the United States Postal Service included the towers in the commemorative stamp program Masterworks of Modern Architecture, where they were listed as one of the "12 outstanding examples of modern buildings". In celebration of the 2018 Illinois Bicentennial, 860–880 Lake Shore Drive was selected as one of Illinois's 200 Great Places by the American Institute of Architects' Illinois chapter, AIA Illinois.
Architectural influence
When 860 and 880 North Lake Shore Drive were completed, they contrasted with the masonry apartment buildings that dominated Chicago at the time, and few buildings anywhere had a similar design. After the towers were finished, glass facades became more prevalent across Chicago apartment buildings, while apartments with balconies became less prevalent. A myriad of glass-box skyscrapers was also built in the U.S.. Examples of such towers included the Lever House and Seagram Building in New York, as well as the Sears Tower and John Hancock Center in Chicago. The buildings' design became commonplace internationally, and The Wall Street Journal described their use of prefabricated steel-and-glass exteriors as "one of [Mies's] crowning realizations". Mies's disciples copied elements of the design in projects around the world, though the biographer Detlef Mertins wrote that not all of these projects' facades were so closely related to their superstructures. When the buildings became Chicago Landmarks in 1996, the Associated Press noted that "all those other high-rises [in other big cities] look like these two".
The development helped bring attention to Mies's architectural style, The Chicago Tribune wrote in 1964 that 860–880 Lake Shore Drive, along with buildings such as Marina City, were examples of a new school of Chicago architecture. Another writer for the periodical Universitas wrote that it "does not seem possible" to create a steel-and-glass building with a simpler design than 860–880 Lake Shore Drive or the Seagram Building. Paul Gapp of the Chicago Tribune wrote in 1981 that 860–880 Lake Shore Drive was among the "internationally famed classics" designed by Mies in Chicago, and Gapp later wrote that the towers had helped make Mies "the 20th Century's single most influential architect". The historian Carl W. Condit wrote that the buildings had influenced modernist architecture in a similar manner to how the Empire State Building and the Woolworth Building had influenced earlier architectural styles.
After 860–880 Lake Shore Drive, Mies continued to use decorative I-beams in his designs during the rest of his career. He duplicated the building's floor grids at 900–910 Lake Shore Drive, across the street; that complex also has a black-painted aluminum facade, referencing the materials used at number 860–880. The design of number 860–880's facade was replicated in other skyscrapers that Mies designed during the rest of his career. Most of his residential buildings did not use protruding I-beams, but his office structures (like the Seagram Building, Toronto-Dominion Centre, and AMA Plaza) did use such a feature. Mies also designed the McCormick House in Elmhurst, Illinois, for Robert McCormick Jr., which was inspired by the interior design of 860–880 Lake Shore Drive. Phyllis Lambert, whose father Samuel Bronfman's company had commissioned the Seagram Building, said that she had recommended that Mies design that building after seeing 860–880 Lake Shore Drive.
See also
- List of Chicago Landmarks
- National Register of Historic Places listings in Central Chicago
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