Here's the link: www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/cityscapes/. The writings of architecture critic Cheryl Kent and reporter Ron Grossman, who will sub for me while I'm on a Nieman Journalism Fellowship at Harvard, will be posted on the blog.

I’ve never liked being out of the paper for too long. When my byline disappears, I am assume readers think one of three things: A) I got lazy; B) I got fired; C) I’m dead.

Architects who’ve been on the receiving end of my critical volleys might rejoice if B or C transpired. Sorry to disappoint them. While my stuff won’t appear in these pages for the next 11 months, the reason for my upcoming vanishing act happens to be a happy one.

Later this month, along with 23 journalists from around the nation and the world, I’ll start a Nieman journalism fellowship at Harvard University. During the next academic year, we can take classes anywhere at the university. It’s an amazing chance to recharge intellectual batteries worn down from 25 years of pounding out copy at the neo-Gothic Tribune Tower.

Equally enticing is the chance to sample the architectural riches of Boston, a city that offers surprising connections to (and sharp contrasts with) Chicago. These go beyond the similarities of ancient, oddly configured baseball parks that draw packed houses whether or not their teams win.

Many of Chicago’s early settlers and investors were New Englanders, a heritage that lives on in the names of some of the city’s noteworthy older skyscrapers. The Monadnock Building at 53 W. Jackson Blvd., for example, is named for a famous New England peak.

The connections run deeper. While Chicago’s early skyscrapers sprang from mythical prairie soil, they had New England roots. Look at the tall office buildings of Louis Sullivan and it’s easy to see the aesthetic influence of Boston architect Henry Hobson Richardson. His rugged Romanesque buildings of rounded arches and exquisitely severe geometry formed a powerful reaction against Victorian eclecticism.

Even Chicago’s tradition of an open lakefront owes a debt to the New England common.

That connection is enshrined in the words that the men hired to supervise construction of the Illinois & Michigan Canal once wrote on a map of what would become Grant Park: “Public Ground — A Common to Remain Forever Open, Clear and Free.”

We may not have had hangings in Grant Park, as they did on Boston Common, but the comparison still holds.

Much as such similarities will make me feel at home in Boston, I look forward to the creative jolt delivered by strong differences between its cityscape and Chicago’s. If absence makes the heart grow fonder, it also makes the eye — and mind -- grow sharper.

Take our respective John Hancock skyscrapers.

Our John Hancock Center is dark, strong, maybe even a little threatening, like a muscle-bound, Prohibition-era gangster clad in a tuxedo. Their John Hancock Tower, with its elegant skin of reflective glass, is the rare skyscraper that seems to disappear into the sky. The two iconic high-rises are emblems of Chicago muscle and Boston refinement.

Or consider our respective street patterns and topography.

They have hills. We live on a pool table. Our checkerboard street grid is easy to navigate. Their charming but cockamamie collection of colonial lanes practically guarantees you’ll get lost.

Descending to O’Hare one night after a recent visit to Boston, I looked out the plane’s window and took in a view that was at once reassuring and bracing. After a few days in Boston, the skyscrapers seemed taller, Lake Michigan’s expanse broader. The city’s familiar street grid, aglow in light, seemed to stretch endlessly across the flat landscape, as if it would reach all the way to Iowa.

Chicago had never seemed more Midwestern — or more beautiful.

I’ll be back in these pages in July 2013, although I reserve the right to jump back in if I want to share something special about Boston — or if our architects, developers and politicians decide to wreak havoc on the cityscape.

While I’m away: Chicago architecture critic and author Cheryl Kent, who has written for the Tribune, The New York Times and a variety of architectural magazines, will be responsible for critiquing major new buildings and urban design. She can be reached at cheryl.a.kent@me.com.

Veteran Tribune reporter Ron Grossman will cover historic preservation issues. Grossman, who once studied under Ludwig Mies van der Rohe at the Illinois Institute of Technology, has covered subjects ranging from religion to ethnic communities to the life of the mind. You can reach him at rgrossman@tribune.com.

The subdivision, which includes six Wright-designed houses and three boldly sculpted  markers of poured concrete, was built in 1915 for developer Sherman Booth. But Chicago's brutal climate has taken its toll on the markers, aided by Wright's characteristically cavalier treatment of such nagging, day-to-day realities.

As Chicago architect John Eifler writes: "The Ravine Bluffs Subdivision markers in Glencoe are in need of repair...The master forgot to install a drain in the planter, and the freeze/thaw cycles have caused one of them to recently fall apart.  The cost to restore each marker will be about $15k, though the attached (pictured at left) will probably cost a little more.  I can’t help but think that there must be some Wright fan out there that would love to fund the repair of this marker and get their name on a nice plaque.  The Glencoe Historical Society will gladly accept donations." 

Chicago August 7, 2012 - Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) Provost Alan Cramb announced today the appointment of Wiel Arets as the new dean of the IIT College of Architecture. Born in the Netherlands, Arets, an internationally acclaimed architect, educator, industrial designer, theorist, and urbanist, is known for his academic progressive research and hybrid design solutions. He is currently the professor of building planning and design at the Berlin University of the Arts. His architecture and design practice, Wiel Arets Architects, has multiple studios throughout Europe and its work has been nominated for the European Union's celebrated ‘Mies van der Rohe Award’ on numerous occasions.

Arets, who was dean of the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam from 1995-2002, will join IIT this fall and will lead an academic program originally shaped by the vision and work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Considered by many to be one of the founders of modern architecture and design, Mies chaired the IIT architecture program from 1938-1958 and designed the IIT Main Campus, home to many of his iconic structures including S.R. Crown Hall.

Arets currently has projects under construction throughout Europe and Japan, including the Allianz Headquarters in Zürich, Switzerland, Amsterdam Centraal Station’s IJhal, the Schwäbischer Verlag in Ravensburg, Germany and the A’ House in Tokyo. His many distinguished projects include the library on the Uithof campus of Utrecht University, the Academy of Art & Architecture in Maastricht, the Euroborg Stadium in Groningen, and the Hedge House in Wijlre, the Netherlands.

“The College of Architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology has a global reputation and attracted outstanding candidates for dean from leading programs worldwide. It is indicative of the position of the IIT College of Architecture that we have found such an accomplished architect to lead the school in a new direction,” said Cramb.

Arets has been a guest professor at many of the world’s preeminent architectural universities, including the AA London, Columbia University and Cooper Union—and served on the Advisory Council of Princeton University from 2003-2012. He graduated from the Technical University of Eindhoven in 1983, where he obtained his Master of Science in Architecture.

The IIT College of Architecture offers a five-year Bachelor of Architecture program, four master’s programs and the Doctor of Philosophy in Architecture. Accredited by the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB), the college attracts students from around the world.

From today's print edition

Does it make sense to turn on-street parking spaces into miniature urban parks and plazas where people can sit, eat, check their mobile phones, read a book, take a catnap or watch the world go by?

Chicago is about to find out. With the blessing of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the city now has two of these miniparks, called "parklets" elsewhere and dubbed "people spots" by officials here.

One, completed Tuesday and tucked amid Andersonville's ethnic restaurants and bakeries, offers blue benches made out of recycled milk jugs (left). The other (above), which city transportation commissioner Gabe Klein plans to dedicate Friday, beckons pedestrians in Lakeview with lime-green tables and chairs. Two more are expected to open next week on the South Side along 47th Street.

Typically 6 feet deep and about two parking spaces wide, the parklets have been a hit in other cities, especially San Francisco, which has built more than 30 of them. They're part of a global urban planning trend that treats streets as places for cyclists and pedestrians, not just conduits for cars. Emanuel is touting them as a way to draw more foot traffic to neighborhood shopping strips. But some Chicagoans are greeting them with a mix of optimism and skepticism, worried that they could actually hurt business by cutting the supply of parking.

"As a pedestrian, I think it's great," said Onna Skelly, owner of Farraguts on Clark, an Andersonville bar at 5240 N. Clark St. "As a business owner, I'm a little bit concerned."

Others fret that the parklets will become magnets for homeless people, a problem that cropped up in San Francisco.

City officials stress that the parklets are part of a pilot program, from which lessons will be learned and tweaks made. Besides, because of Chicago's harsh winters, they won't be permanent. Their modular designs will allow them to be put in storage at the end of November and reassembled next spring. Money to build them -- an estimated $25,000 in Lakeview and roughly $20,000 in Andersonville -- came from sources including local tax districts.

Nothing comes free, of course. Because of Chicago's infamous parking meter deal, which leased the city's parking spaces to a private company, city officials had to agree to replace the lost parking spaces with other spots where the company could charge for parking.

Still, judging by the first two parklets, the program is off to a solid, if not particularly creative, beginning. The architects and their clients wisely played it safe, knowing that flashy but function-challenged (and over-budget) designs could doom future efforts. To that end, the walls that separate the parklets from the street are tough enough, the architects say, to protect people from a car that hits the miniparks.

Designed by the dSpace Studio and located at 2959 N. Lincoln Ave., the Lakeview parklet (left) helps remedy the lack of greenery and inviting places to sit and relax that has long afflicted this stretch of Lincoln.

Its zinc-colored planter boxes surround a wood deck built on plastic pedestals. The planters and their prairie grasses (left) provide just enough of a sense of enclosure from passing cars and trucks. Small river birch trees pop out of large end planters, offering much-needed shade and pleasantly fluttering leaves. The lime-green tables and chairs, which are movable, complete the picture.

"I think it looks pretty cool," said Dylan Easley, 29, as he and his friend, Katie James, took a break from riding a tandem bike.

Still, at least in its present form, this parklet comes across as a glorified sidewalk cafe. It's doesn't adequately communicate that it's a public space. Easley and James thought it had been built by a neighboring bike store that also houses a coffee shop. Passers-by might think they had to buy a latte to use it.

Architect Kevin Toukoumidis of dSpace promises that the parklet will acquire a more public feel once special touches, such as custom-designed chairs made of undulating wood, are installed. The chairs will be permanent, unlike the other furniture, which will have to be removed each night and put back in place the next morning.

"The design goal is to have people know it isn't a bistro cafe," he said.

The Andersonville parklet is less sleek but more public. It's on a stretch of North Clark Street that has plenty of sidewalk cafes but few parks. So local business leaders directed Matt Nardella of Moss architects to create a minipark with as many plants and benches as possible.

His design uses continuous exterior walls to create a strong sense of separation from the street. However, the arrangement produces a blank wall that faces the street (left). And there was so much truck noise one afternoon this week that the parklet didn't exactly feel parklike.

Nevertheless, there are plants aplenty, including sumacs that will turn red in the fall. The blue benches jog in and out, allowing people to sit alone or to turn and face each other if they want to engage in conversation. Options like that help attract people to public spaces. So does humor. One end of the parklet has a tiny, whimsical slope (below) that invites kids to climb on.

"We plan on having sledding competitions," cracked Brian Bonanno, who spearheaded the project for the Andersonville Development Corp.

As the city moves forward with parklets, it will be interesting to see how well they attract people -- and if perhaps they do the job of inviting people to sit down and relax too well.

As one parklet architect told the San Francisco Chronicle: A parklet shouldn't be "a giant lounge chair. The idea was to create something comfortable, but not so comfortable you want to be there all day."

(Tribune photos by Nancy Stone)

Asked about last week's "save Prentice" letter, which was signed by more than 60 architects, including Frank Gehry, and sent to Emanuel, a mayoral spokeswoman emailed: "As you know, there are two very committed sides to this debate and the mayor committed to give everyone a voice and he is still in the process of that and hearing from all sides."

Separately, during the monthly meeting of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks, commission chair Rafael Leon stated that the panel would not discuss Prentice Thursday. He said negotiations are continuing between city officials, preservationists, community groups and Northwestern University.

The university wants to tear down Prentice and replace it with a medical research tower. It contends that Prentice cannot be adapted to that use and meet current research standards. Preservationists tried to show in a re-use study last year that the building could be converted to that use, or to offices or apartments.     

More than 15 members of the "Save Prentice" coalition had gathered at Thursday's meeting.

During the public comment period, Christina Morris, head of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Chicago field office, began to make a statement about old Prentice. Leon cut her off. He said the building, which was replaced by a new women's hospital that opened in 2007, would be discussed if it appears on the commission's agenda.

Commission member Mary Ann Smith, a former North Side alderman, asked when that would be.

Leon said he didn't know.

Designed by the late Chicago architect Bertrand Goldberg, whose best-known work is Marina City, old Prentice "propelled advances in the fields of architecture, engineering and health care--advances that are still recognized today," Morris wrote in cover letter to a National Trust report recommending landmark status for the building.

Here's the answer: two highly-qualified journalists who can be counted upon to provide excellent coverage of architecture, urban design and historic preservation issues:

--Chicago architecture critic and author Cheryl Kent will be responsible for architecture criticism, including critiques of new buildings and evaluations of major design plans. 

Kent has been writing about architecture, design and cities for more than 30 years. Her articles have  appeared in the Tribune and in such publications as The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, Architectural Record, Metropolis and the now-defunct Progressive Architecture, for which she served as Chicago correspondent. She is the author of books on Millennium Park, the Spertus Institute and Santiago Calatrava's addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum. She can be reached at cheryl.a.kent@me.com.

--Veteran Tribune reporter Ron Grossman will be responsible for coverage of historic preservation issues and the Commission on Chicago Landmarks.

Grossman is the rare newspaper reporter who studied architecture under Ludwig Mies van der Rohe at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He later attended the University of Chicago, from which he received his BA with honors in 1959 and a doctorate in 1965. During his award-winning Tribune career--he has been a staff writer at this newspaper for more than 25 years--his subjects have ranged from religion to ethnic communities to race relations to the life of the mind. He recently chronicled the saga of Walt Disney's birthplace, an unexceptional home associated with an exceptional man. He can be reached at rgrossman@tribune.com.

In 2001, when the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University asked the nation's architecture critics to name the best newspaper for architecture criticism, two newspapers were widely cited: The Tribune and The New York Times. It's enormously important to me that our first-rate coverage continue while I'm on the fellowship. I have every confidence that it will through Kent's criticism and Grossman's  reporting. Their stories will be posted here on Cityscapes.

Time -- or, more accurately, the passage of time -- can upend the economic assumptions on which real estate deals are built. It can allow historic preservationists to drum up popular support. And over time, architectural attitudes can shift, transforming today's "this has gotta go" eyesore into tomorrow's "this must be saved" treasure.

Issues of time connect the recent announcement that a joint venture led by John Pritzker will turn the Chicago Athletic Association into a boutique hotel and Thursday's news that more than 60 architects, including Frank Gehry, have urged Mayor Rahm Emanuel to save old Prentice Women's Hospital from demolition.

At first glance, the two sagas have little in common. The Athletic Association, at 12 S. Michigan Ave. (with an annex at 71 E. Madison St.), is a Venetian Gothic gem designed in the 1890s by Henry Ives Cobb. Old Prentice, at 333 E. Superior St., is a brilliantly engineered, powerfully sculpted work of late modernism, designed in the 1970s by Bertrand Goldberg, the architect of Marina City.

If you took a poll, I'd venture, the public would be far more likely to support saving the lacy, layered facade of the Athletic Association than the exposed concrete cylinders of old Prentice. But five years ago, the Athletic Association's fate was very much in doubt.

A pair of developers, who sought to convert the building into an Omni Hotel, planned to hack off the back of the building and replace it with a 19-story high-rise. The high-rise would have towered gracelessly above the iconic Michigan Avenue "streetwall," a row of stone-sheathed buildings that form a distinctive, clifflike wall across from Grant Park.

Preservationists rightly raised a stink.

Yet as much as their objections mattered, time and changing economic circumstances played a far more important role in derailing the developers' plans.

After the 2008 financial crisis and the real estate crash, the developers defaulted on a loan and lost control of the Athletic Association.

Eventually, it sold to the Pritzker-led joint venture for just $13 million -- less than half what the first set of developers reportedly paid.

The deep discount means there is little economic pressure on San Francisco-based John Pritzker, son of Jay Pritzker, the late Hyatt Hotels founder, to over-build the Athletic Association, as the original developers planned.

"My guess is that we're going to try to live within the confines of what's there," Pritzker said the other day. "To buy a building like that and cover up what's great about it seems kind of '60s to me."

Chances are that the Athletic Association will join the ranks of such successful architectural recycling projects as the transformation of the Reliance Building into the Hotel Burnham and the Carbide & Carbon Building's reincarnation as a Hard Rock Hotel. Chicago architects Hartshorne Plunkard will lead the renovation, which Pritzker wants to complete by spring of 2014.

Time has also affected the battle over old Prentice, which Northwestern University wants to tear down to make way for a medical research tower. The building was replaced by a new women's hospital in 2007.

In April 2011, Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42nd, forced Northwestern to hold off on applying for a demolition permit for the building for 60 days. That allowed pressure to build on the city's landmarks commission, which scheduled a June 2011 vote on whether to grant old Prentice preliminary protected status.

But the vote was tabled at Northwestern's request, and in the 13 months since, old Prentice's fate has been in limbo -- the subject of behind-closed-doors meetings involving city officials that have been anything but transparent.

Nevertheless, the delay has let preservationists make their case for this tough-to-love building -- and how to give it new life. A land swap, they argue, would allow Northwestern to build its research tower on vacant nearby parcels. That would allow old Prentice to be converted to a new use. Apartments and offices are the most realistic.

In a sense, the campaign is trying to accelerate time: To move Prentice, which is just 37 years old, out of a classic danger zone -- when a work of architecture is considered too old to be new and too new to be old. Let enough time pass, the theory goes, and public opinion will eventually come around, just as it did with once-despised Victorian houses.

As I've argued for more than a year, old Prentice easily meets the standards for city landmark status -- most notably, that it was designed by a significant architect and that it is architecturally unique and innovative. It's long past time for Emanuel and the landmarks commission to stop dithering and start giving this striking building the protection it deserves.

(Tribune photos of Chicago Athletic Association building by Chris Walker; Tribune photo of old Prentice Women's Hospital by Heather Charles)

Whatever term you use, these miniature parks and plazas are about to get a trial run here. The concept, backed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, is being tried out in the North Side Andersonville neighborhood at 5228 N. Clark St. Workers were putting the finishing touches on Chicago’s first semi-permanent parklet there Monday.

Parklets remove parking spaces and replace them with decks that extend out from the sidewalk. That provides more room for seating and dining. Unlike a restaurant’s sidewalk cafe, though, the mini-parks are open to the public.

Chicago architect Matt Nardella, whose firm designed the Andersonville parklet, said it would include seating, an herb garden and a small hill. The Andersonville Development Corp., a local non-profit, paid the $15,000 cost, Nardella said.

San Francisco’s temperate climate lets parklets there be used year-round. That’s not possible in Chicago for a simple reason: Winter. The one in Andersonville is expected to remain open through November.

While some San Franciscans have groused about the loss of curbside parking caused by the mini-parks, the idea has proved popular. More than 30 parklets have been installed in the City by the Bay.

Yesterday, Frank Gehry and other prominent architects urged Emanuel to preserve the building. Today, it's the editorial page of the Chicago Sun-Times. In a well-written, well-argued piece, the newspaper states: 

"The history of Chicago architecture is one of considerable regret, a history of lost treasures that could have been saved. Louis Sullivan’s Stock Exchange building and Garrick Theater, for example, fell to the short-sighted economic needs of the moment, and how we now wish we had them back. A city known worldwide for its architectural heritage cannot allow that to happen again." 

Meanwhile, on the op-ed page of the Tribune, Bonnie McDonald, the new president of Landmarks Illinois, and Zurich Esposito, the executive vice president of the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects, add their voices to the growing "save Prentice" chorus. Their piece appears in full on the jump:

Chicago ranks as a world-class city for many reasons, not least because of its buildings. From Louis Sullivan's era to the present day, architects have found in Chicago a canvas that welcomed wizardry and innovation. But a city needs to do more than welcome new architects and embrace the future. A vibrant cityscape must also honor the past, balancing the two in an ever-evolving interplay. That is why Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Women's Hospital must be preserved.

Built in 1975, Prentice stands not just for architectural history but social history. In commissioning its new building for obstetrics, Northwestern Memorial Hospital sought to incorporate new ideas about women and childbirth. Goldberg's design took these ideas and ran with them. The building's floor plan made a family-oriented childbirth experience possible; fathers could be present for labor and delivery. In addition, the floor plan allowed nurses to be closer to patient rooms and have better lines of sight, improving women's care.

Goldberg proved an inspired choice to design the building. Modernism already defined Chicago architecture -- most famously in the work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Goldberg, born and raised in Chicago, had studied and worked under Mies in Germany before returning to the U.S. and putting his own Chicago stamp on modernism. (His work includes the iconic Marina City).

Goldberg sought to bring humanism into hospital architecture but faced daunting design challenges. To meet them, he used groundbreaking techniques that have become the standard for modern structural design. For example, Prentice was one of the first buildings ever designed using three-dimensional computer modeling software. This achievement has made today's multiform structures possible. In this way, Prentice is a rare snapshot of the evolution of architecture and design technique.

In spite of all of this, Northwestern University has made it clear that it intends to demolish Prentice and will not consider reuse. The preservation community believes the university can achieve its goal of being a leader in research while preserving the hospital -- and with it, the city's leadership in architecture and design. Architects from around the world have weighed in on behalf of preserving the building, and a major retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago last year solidified Goldberg's reputation as one of the 20th century's premier architects.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has made it clear that maintaining Chicago's status as a global city matters to him. He has projected a bold vision for the city and met significant challenges head-on. Moreover, with decisions like supporting the transformation of the Old Dearborn Bank into a new hotel, Emanuel has shown he understands the importance of preservation and reuse.

Prentice meets the key criteria for landmark status: It represents a critical part of our city's history. It is important architecture by a major architect. And it is utterly unique. The city should move to save Prentice and grant it landmark status.

Bonnie McDonald is president of Landmarks Illinois. Zurich Esposito is executive vice president of the American Institute of Architects Chicago

The message, sent in a letter to the mayor and made available to the Tribune on Thursday, said: "As members of the architecture community, we believe Goldberg's Prentice should be given a permanent place in Chicago's cityscape. A building this significant--this unique in the world--should be preserved and reused."

Northwestern University wants to tear down the vacant 1975 building, whose cantilevered concrete shells soar over a steel-and-glass base, to make way for a medical research tower that is not yet funded. But old Prentice, located at 333 E. Superior St., has been in limbo since June, 2011 when the city's landmarks commission tabled a vote on whether to grant it protection from demolition. 

Gehry is a winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the field's highest honor, and his designs include the Pritkzer Pavilion in Millennium Park. Gang is a winner of the MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant and the architect of Chicago's Aqua tower. 

By enlisting their support and the backing of other leading design figures from around the world, historic preservationists are trying to step up the pressure to save old Prentice at a time when news reports have speculated that a decision about its fate is near. The city's landmarks commission meets next Thursday, August 2. An agenda for the meeting is not yet posted online. A spokesman for the commission said Thursday that he knew of no plans to put old Prentice on the agenda. 

The signers come from around the nation and four continents: Asia, Australia, Europe and North America. They are strongly at odds with what a vocal segment of the public thinks--that old Prentice is an eyesore and should be torn down. As the boldly-sculpted concrete buildings of the 1960s age and some owners target them for demolition, such battles are occuring around the country.

The signers include other prominent American architects, such as Malcolm Holzman of New York and Tod Williams and Billie Tsien of New York. Williams and Tsien just completed the new Barnes Foundation art museum in Philadelphia. Their Logan Center for the Arts will formally open in October at the University of Chicago.   

Other Chicago architects who signed the letter include Joe Antunovich, David Brininstool, Dirk Denison, John Eifler, Philip Enquist, Doug Farr, Geoff Goldberg (Bertrand Goldberg's son), Phil Hamp, Donald Hackl, Gunny Harboe, Thomas Kerwin, Jackie Koo, Leonard Koroski, Ronald Krueck, Brian Lee, Dirk Lohan, Brad Lynch, Jeffery McCarthy, John Ronan, Ken Schroeder, Mark Sexton, Richard Tomlinson, Joe Valerio, John Vinci, Dan Wheeler, Ross Wimer and David Woodhouse.

All of the partners at the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill signed, including the firm's top structural engineer, William Baker.

Leading educators also signed, among them Donna Robertson, former dean of the architecture school at the Illinois Institute of Technology; Bob Somol, director of the school of architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago; Charles Waldheim, chair of landscape architecture at Harvard's graduate school of design and Sarah Whiting, dean of Rice University's architecture school.

Last week, a spokesman for Chicago's Department of Housing and Economic Development said that meetings about old Prentice's future are "ongoing." He declined to elaborate. The building was replaced in 2007 by the new Prentice Women's Hospital at 250 E. Superior St.  

The letter was released to the Tribune by the Save Prentice Coalition. The group includes Landmarks Illinois, the Washington, D.C.-based Natonal Trust for Historic Preservation and Preservation Chicago. 

The letter cited a recently-completed report by the National Trust, whose president, Stephanie Meeks, has activitely campaigned to save old Prentice. The report, not surprisingly, concludes that the building qualifies for city landmark status.

It "is a significant and highly intact illustration of the aesthetic creativity, technological experimentation, and cultural optimisim that made Chicago a world center for late modernist architecture in the 1960s and 1970s," the report says. "Prentice is an exceptionally valuable resources for the scholarly understanding and public appreciation of this influential period in the City's history."

Goldberg also designed Marina City.

In an email, Gehry acknowledged that he had not visited old Prentice in many years.  However, he indicated that the building and Goldberg (whose expressionistic forms and reliance on computer-aided design anticipated Gehry's own innovations in those areas) had made an impression on him.

Goldberg's work "has always interested me," Gehry wrote. "He was an original. I'm always afraid that when something original is torn down, it's usually not replaced with an equal."  

(Tribune photo by Heather Charles)

What would the discount retailer do, they wondered -- plaster its red bull's-eye logo all over the world-renowned architectural masterpiece?

Hardly.

The new store, which opened Wednesday on the building's first two floors and is called CityTarget, strikes the right balance between preserving the aesthetic integrity of one of the nation's great works of architecture and projecting the visual brand of one of the nation's biggest retailers. That really should be no surprise, given Target's long-standing reputation as a purveyor of cheap chic.

Coming five years after Carson Pirie Scott closed its store, a move widely seen as a body blow to the once-thriving State Street shopping district, the high-profile project gives the retail strip a major boost. It revives the building as a living landmark (left), not a frozen museum piece. And it offers a reuse model worth emulating as Target and other retailers accustomed to doing business in the suburbs look to dense downtowns in search of customers.

"I like that they kept all the architectural features," Tom Carscaden, of Scottsdale, Ariz., said as he stood near one of Sullivan's intricate columns. "It's really wonderful. They've stayed true to the design of the building."

The building (left), at 1 S. State St., took its definitive form between 1899 and 1906. It is justly celebrated as a uniquely American expression of the big-city department store, a bold departure from such European-inspired examples as the palatial former Marshall Field & Co. store, now Macy's, to the north on State.

Sullivan, who had already made his reputation as a designer of great skyscrapers, brought the steel-frame technology of the high-rise to the horizontally proportioned store. He clad the building's steel frame in sweeping lines of white terra cotta. He marked the busy corner of State and Madison streets with a rounded tower. He gave the building its most distinctive flourish by wrapping its first two floors in a veil of cast-iron ornament that depicted leaves, vines and berries.

For the last several years, developer Joseph Freed and Associates has worked with Chicago architect Gunny Harboe to painstakingly restore the building and other structures that make up the former Carsons complex on the block bounded by State, Wabash Avenue and Madison and Monroe streets.

The building's upper floors were turned into offices. The complex was renamed the Sullivan Center. But only now, with a store back on its first two floors and people coursing through the revolving doors at State and Madison, does the building truly feel reconnected to the city around it.

Rich Varda, an architect and Target's senior vice president of store design, declined to disclose the cost of the project, which was designed by the retailer's in-house team with help from the Minneapolis firm RSP Architects.

However, he acknowledged that the cost per square foot was more than double that of a typical, single-level Target due to the intricacy of inserting a two-story store, including new elevators and escalators, within an oddly configured, historic complex. The store's L-shaped second floor stretches all the way from State to Wabash, where it affords shoppers a view of the "L" tracks.

The key to the project's exterior success is its subtle branding and transparency, both of which invert the model of the sign-plastered, inward-turning suburban big-box store.

There are no giant block letters that scream "TARGET." And though the red bull's-eye logo seems to hover within the glass walls of the store's corner tower, the logo is set behind those walls, not on them, creating a clear distinction between old and new. Red screens of perforated metal (left) are also set back from the glass exterior. Look closely and you'll see how their round openings subtly form the Target logo. There's no brand overkill here, as in the endless mouse ears of the faux Sullivan facade of the Disney store on Michigan Avenue.

Along State and Madison, attractive displays of merchandise (not fully enclosed, as in a conventional department store window, but see-through) celebrate the urban tradition of window shopping.

The displays alternate with windows that afford open looks into the store, including one that offers a peek at the side-by-side escalators that ferry customers and their shopping carts to the second floor.

Credit for the sensitive balance between branding and respecting the past should also go to the city, state and federal historic preservation officials who oversaw the project.

The interior is also skillfully handled, though I suspect that some architectural buffs may be shaken by the abrupt transition between Sullivan's glorious entry rotunda and racks of women's running shorts, tights and the like.

Nevertheless, the new interior features are crisp, clean-lined and carefully placed. They do no harm to Sullivan's building and, in some cases, restore original details. Among them: The ornamented tops of columns, known as capitals, have been repainted white (above), echoing Sullivan's white-on-white original design, which extended the white of the building's terra cotta cladding to the interior. A clueless previous renovation had turned the capitals gold.

The flooring also reinforces Sullivan's white-on-white look, with a light terrazzo on the first floor and a light vinyl tile on the second. The lighting, too, is well-done, especially the replacement of traditional pendant lights with sleek white, round counterparts. This isn't just do-good fidelity to Sullivan, of course. All the white allows the merchandise to stand out.

There are some faults, including display walls that chop up the flow of the interior space and a dropped ceiling on the Wabash side of the second floor that obscures the capitals of historic metal columns.

Some customers, like Miles Scott, a sophomore at Harold Washington College, said they had trouble finding the merchandise they wanted. But others, like Lisa Howard, a resident of Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood, were willing to forgive the blemishes and to grasp the larger picture of an architectural masterpiece brought back to life.

"I'd rather see something in here than it be empty," Howard said. "It's an opportunity for people to see some fabulous architecture."

The Santa Fe sign that sat atop a downtown building for decades won't be straying far from home.

The Illinois Railway Museum will take possession of the sign that advertised the former Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway from the roof of Chicago's Railway Exchange Building at 224 S.Michigan Ave.

A New Mexico arts group, Creative Santa Fe, also applied for the sign. The city of Santa Fe, N.M., supported the application.

The white letters adorned the Railway Exchange Building, also called the Santa Fe Building, until they were taken down last month and replaced with a sign for Motorola Solutions.

Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe — now Burlington Northern Santa Fe — occupied the Exchange Building from 1904 to 1991. Motorola Solutions will open offices on one floor of the building later this year, a company spokesman said.

The sign will be delivered as early as Friday to the railway museum in Union, about 60 miles northwest of downtown Chicago.

Volunteers for the nonprofit museum will refurbish the sign, said Dave Diamond, the general manager for facilities. Once ready for display, it will join a collection of other Santa Fe equipment and railroad signs, many with roots in the Chicago area. The museum already has a Santa Fe locomotive on display.

"It's a unique artifact that's tied to Chicago," Diamond said. "It keeps a piece of that in the area where it's still viewable to folks to understand Chicago's importance as a rail transportation hub."

— Mitch Smith

(Tribune photo by Carl Hugare)

There’s an encouraging answer on Chicago’s North Side, one that differs markedly from the contorted, computer-assisted skyscrapers of the recent past and recalls earlier, more pragmatic eras of Chicago architecture.

Just south of the North Avenue shopping strip, you find two muscular, elegantly-detailed boxes (above) — the 28-story SoNo West, a condo tower which was finished in 2009, and the 22-story SoNo East, a just-opened apartment building that is among the first byproducts of Chicago’s current apartment boomlet. Forget their pretentious, SoHo wannabe names. There’s a handsome straightforwardness to these architectural siblings. They reveal the good things that can happen when developers, general contractors and architects collaborate.

In this case, the developer and contractor are one and the same. Bill Smith, president of Smithfield Properties, has already built some of Chicago’s better recent residential towers, among them the structurally expressive Erie on the Park and the suavely curving 30 West Oak. It took him just 15 months to construct SoNo East, about five months more quickly than a typical high-rise of the same size. The rapid construction, a result of several innovations, put rent money into Smith’s pocket faster. Yet it has not short-changed the cityscape.

Like Mies van der Rohe’s celebrated residential high-rises at 860 and 880 North Lake Shore Drive (above), the SoNo buildings are arranged perpendicular to one another, forming an asymmetrical “L” shape. Even their addresses, 840 and 860 W. Blackhawk St., evoke the great Lake Shore Drive pair. But the duos differ in critical ways.

Those on Lake Shore Drive crack an opening in the continuous wall of high-rises along the majestic shoreline road. The SoNo towers, in contrast, soar alone above a jumbled array of strip malls, bars, car dealerships, a sleek Apple store and the CTA’s North and Clybourn subway station. Fortunately, they work well as individual objects and, for the most part, as a pair.

That is no small achievement considering that SoNo East was originally supposed to be a condo tower but was changed to apartments after the condo market collapsed. Apartments buildings typically have lower budgets than condos, which easily could have turned this pair into a visual odd couple. In this case, however, the price tags for the high-rises were roughly equal--$76 million for SoNo West and $78 million for SoNoEast, according to Smith.

SoNo West (above, at right), designed by Chicago architects Booth Hansen, a firm headed by Laurence Booth, is the taller and better proportioned of the two. Described by Booth as an ode to the minimalist sculptor Donald Judd, it’s a simple box whose reflective glass is richly articulated by cantilevered and recessed balconies, plus gutsy steel-flange details that cover the outer edge of the tower’s concrete floor slabs.

This detail (left) may strike old-fashioned modernists as “dishonest,” given that the SoNo towers are framed in concrete. Yet it is undeniably functional, one of the elements that enabled Smith to build the towers quickly. It serves double-duty as a built-in form work for the floor slabs, eliminating the time-consuming step of building and breaking down the wood forms that shape concrete. In addition, the steel floor covers and the tower’s steel balconies were built as pre-assembled units, allowing them to be quickly hoisted into place.

For the second tower, Smith changed architects, giving primarily design responsibility to Adam Berkelhamer, a former principal in Booth’s office who now has his own firm in San Francisco. Berkelhamer, 38, worked on the first tower, though the extent of his involvement is disputed. He says he led the design effort. Booth says that Smith and other architects at his firm played a more significant role. In any event, Berkelhamer was ably assisted on SoNo East by the Chicago firm of Antunovich Associates, which prepared construction drawings.

With Smith’s blessing, Berkelhamer wisely changed Booth Hansen’s original site plan, which called for the second tower to be a mirror image of the first one (left) — a rigid arrangement that would have produced an imposing, nearly-continuous wall. But the shift to the asymmetrical “L” configuration had drawbacks, blocking the Lake Michigan views of some condos in the original one.

Berkelhamer’s architectural moves, however, are fundamentally sound, skillfully treating the apartment tower as an exercise in subtraction and subdivision (below). Broad horizontal bands of steel break down the tower’s scale. Berkelhamer further splits up the mass with stacks of recessed balconies. The tower’s glassy surface, thin concrete columns and an airy modern cornice (further below) also lighten things up.

The only weak note comes in a raised plaza that sits beneath the tower. The stairs approaching the plaza are cluttered by built-in landscape planters and the wheelchair ramp is hard to find.

Booth, Berkelhamer and Smith also deserve credit for placing the parking garages that serve the towers beside, not beneath, the high-rises. That avoids the ungainly tower-on-a-parking-podium look that has afflicted recent residential high-rises. And it was another factor that let the project be built quickly. Instead of shifting column placements, as they must do in a tower that combines a parking garage and apartments, construction workers were able to build the columns continuously upward.

The concrete walls of the garages, however, are still visible from the street.

SoNo East’s apartments, which range from studios to two-bedrooms, seem more spacious than their actual sizes because of their floor-to-ceiling glass, expansive city views and balconies. Apartment dwellers can also take advantage of several amenities above their parking garage — a pool, a sun deck and a nicely-detailed steel-and-glass pavilion that contains the de rigueur exercise machines.

Even if they don’t equal the visual poetry of Mies’ 860-880, the SoNo towers offer models worth emulating. Their proximity to a subway stop reminds us that clusters of outlying skyscrapers can create energy-saving, transit-oriented design. The process by which they were built shows the benefits of collaboration between developers and designers. Best of all, you don’t need to be an architectural genius to replicate their economical, elegant kit of parts.

(Tribune photos of SoNo East and SoNo West by Jose Osorio; Tribune photo of 860-880 N. Lake Shore Drive by Brian Casssella; rendering from Booth Hansen web site.)

Several years ago, a developer planned to hack off the rear two-thirds of the building as part of a plan for a new hotel. That drew a rebuke from local preservationists and the Washington-based National Trust for Historic Preservation. In 2008, the trust cited the developer's plans when it named the entire Michigan Avenue Streetwall one of the nation's 11 most endangered places.

The big question now is: What are John Pritzker's plans for the Chicago Athletic Association? Preservation Chicago executive director Jonathan Fine sounded an optimistic note. In an interview, Fine told me: "It’s our understanding that this concept is a much less invasive, much less destructive proposal" than the previous plan. "It’s a proposal," he added, "that does the least amount  of harm to the historic fabric of the building."

(Tribune photo by Michael Tercha)

Here's an earlier Detroit News story about the foreclosure auction.

(Photo by Ankur Dholakia/Detroit News)

Does a good cause inevitably lead to good architecture?

It's a touchy subject, especially when you're taking the measure of a building, like the new Ronald McDonald House in Chicago, which provides convenient, caring lodging for families that have a child in the hospital. Criticize anything in such building and you're bound to sound insensitive, as if aesthetics mattered more than cancer. Yet all urban buildings, no matter what their purpose, are obliged to appeal to a broader constituency — namely, the people who pass by them every day.

So here's my split verdict on the new Ronald McDonald House: It's enormously attentive to the families who use it, wrapping them in a sense of normalcy at a time when their worlds have been turned upside down. But it's no prize-winning work of architecture. To say so isn't to deny the good that's done there. It's to wish that the building excelled equally at raising the quality of the cityscape.

To put this in Siskel & Ebert terms, a thumbs-up on function can coexist with a thumbs-down on form.

Located at 211 E. Grand Ave., just east of Michigan Avenue, the $39 million, 15-story building was built to serve families whose children are being treated at the new Lurie Children's Hospital and the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, both a few blocks to the north. Provided at little or no cost, its 86 guest rooms are reserved for families who live at least 10 miles away. The idea is to provide them with a home away from home — a high-rise inn, as it were. Indeed, reflecting Chicago's penchant for architectural superlatives, this is said to be the world's largest Ronald McDonald House, making it an appropriate match for Lurie Children's, which bills itself as the world's tallest children's hospital.

The problem with bigness is that it can be intimidating. The architects of Lurie Children's dealt with that (rather awkwardly) by making their high-rise evoke a pile of children's building blocks. The architect of the Ronald McDonald House, Joe Antunovich of the Chicago firm Antunovich Associates, took a different tack. He's a contextualist, not a cutting-edge modernist, and his design reflects his desire to make the building a good neighbor even if it dwarfs the two restaurants that flank it.

In that spirit, Antunovich sheathes the concrete superstructure of the Ronald McDonald House in human-scaled, hand-laid brick (left). Stacks of bay windows signal the building's adherence to Chicago vaunted design traditions. The east and west facades, which could have been eyesores of party-wall brick, are nicely softened by horizontal bands of glass that draw light into the family lounges on the building's east side and corridors throughout. An aluminum cornice simultaneously evokes the lid-like tops of Chicago's 19th-century skyscrapers and gives the building a modern flourish.

While the intentions are noble, the exterior outcome is less so. The brick cladding looks flat, like wallpaper, as though it were a veneer on preassembled concrete panels. The brick (left) lacks depth and texture, a shortcoming that is particularly irksome at street level, where articulation might have appealed to passersby. Street-level aluminum storefronts are equally banal. The east and west facades, resemble stacked layer cakes, putting them at odds with the appealing verticality of the bay windows.

This isn't a bad building. It's just mediocre, a neither-fish-nor-fowl design that lacks the sleekness of modernism or the richly animated surfaces of traditional architecture.

But it redeems itself by being thoroughly attuned to the needs — practical, emotional and social — of the people who use it. For that, credit goes to Antunovich; Doug Porter, the CEO of Chicago-area Ronald McDonald House Charities; and Chicago-based Gettys, whose interior designers gave the building its furnishings.

This attentiveness begins at the building's main entrance, which is not along busy Grand Avenue, but off an alley to the south, providing an appropriately secluded entry for families arriving by vehicle and shuttle buses from Lurie Children's. The entrance is recessed, enabling visitors to stay out of the rain, snow and wind. There's little artful design here, but glass walls offer a glimpse of a reassuring symbol in the foyer, a life-size likeness of Ronald McDonald sitting on a bench. (A secondary entrance, for pedestrians, is off Grand.)

The repetitive sameness of the building's exterior masks a variety of functions within: The private guest rooms are stacked above a series of communal zones, including handsomely appointed kitchen and dining areas on the third floor, a collection of comfortable living rooms on the fourth and a reception area on the fifth. Interestingly, there are no TVs in the guest rooms. The idea is to discourage people from cocooning in their rooms so they'll bond with — and support — other families.

A glassed-in roof deck (above), with a serene healing garden on one side and an active play and cookout area on the other, furthers the aim of building a community of healing.

The interior isn't about uber-chic modernism. Instead, it offers a middle-brow palette of warm colors, comfortable seating and representational artwork. Some of the moves, like the tiny, colorful mailboxes in the reception area, offer playful reminders of home. Others, like an internal stair (left) that links the third and fourth floors, enhance the building's domestic feel and are enlivened with interactive sculpture that's a hit with kids. Others, like the easy-to-reach plugs in the bases of table lamps, are refreshingly commonsensical. Still others, like the family lounges, provide homelike venues for gathering or checking email late at night.

As important as these tangible features are, the most important amenity is intangible: abundant natural light and views, which are present throughout, though not, sadly, in the building's chapel. For families buffeted by a child's life-threatening illness, such expansiveness may help them hold on to hope. While the concrete superstructure of a David Hovey-designed residential tower now rising to the south (below) is cutting off some of the building's openness, Porter says he has not received complaints from families. They obviously have more important things to worry about.

(Tribune photos by Michael Tercha)

The 46,000-square-foot museum will give Michigan State a counterpart to the much-praised, Brad Cloepfil-designed addition to the University of Michigan's art museum. But it is entirely different from Cloepfil's understated modernism. 

According to a news release, the Broad museum will feature "a striking facade of pleated stainless steel and glass, distinguishing the new building from the traditional brick Collegiate Gothic north campus and signaling the museum and the university's forward-looking approach."

Seventy percent of the interior will be reserved for art display. The museum will focus on international contemporary art. It was supposed to open last spring, but the university pushed back the opening, citing construction delays. 

From today's print edition

Long before Frank Lloyd Wright became a professional great man who costumed himself in a porkpie hat and a flowing cape, he signed his drawings “Frank L. Wright” and carried out such humble tasks as preparing drawings of buildings for real estate ads in the Chicago Tribune.

His mentor and lieber Meister, acclaimed architect Louis Sullivan, would scold Wright for using drafting tools to create a strongly geometric ornament. Sullivan preferred the spontaneous freehand sketch, the better to create ornament in which squares and circles would flow directly into an organic swirl of leaf forms.

“Make it live,” he would urge his young charge.

These are among the vivid details of a small but thoughtful and altogether delightful exhibition about Wright's early years in Chicago, which came at the end of the 19th century. Rather than a mere prelude to such later triumphs as the cantilevered Fallingwater House in southwestern Pennsylvania, the show argues (mostly persuasively) that these years produced seeds which would later flower into greatness.

The exhibition, “Wright's Roots,” has been curated by Chicago's cultural historian, Tim Samuelson. A former staff member of Chicago's landmarks commission and a walking encyclopedia of the city's history, Samuelson has a knack for making the past seem as fresh as the latest Twitter post.

Two years ago, he organized a spectacular exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center, “Louis Sullivan's Idea,” which powerfully revealed one of Sullivan's core concepts: That the architect should imbue the inert materials of steel and stone with the vibrant force of nature. Blowing up photos of the architect's buildings to massive scale and displaying his extraordinary collection of architectural fragments, many of which were obtained as wrecking crews tore down Sullivan's buildings, Samuelson made viewers feel like they were right on the sidewalk, experiencing Sullivan's building's firsthand. They even were free to touch the ornament, a form of behavior that might get them kicked out of the Art Institute.

The new show, which appears across the street from the Cultural Center at the city-run Expo 72 gallery, follows the same winning approach.

It charts the years from 1887, when the aspiring architect (just 19) left his independent-thinking family in Wisconsin, to 1897, four years after Wright broke with Sullivan, when he entered a new phase of aesthetic maturity and began using his memorable three-part name. The decoration on display (above) is dazzling. But it would be mere eye candy without Samuelson's clear-as-a-bell wall text and an exhibition design by architect John Vinci that cleverly picks up on the gallery's angled walls to carve out comfortable niches of viewing space. (Artist Chris Ware helped design and arrange the text panels.)

Throughout, Samuelson excels at the art of juxtaposition, as in the deliberately loaded pairing with which the show begins. We see, side-by-side, what is widely considered Wright's first great Prairie Style home, the 1902 Ward Willits House in north suburban Highland Park, and an unbuilt beaux-arts (yes, beaux-arts) 1893 competition design for a combined public library and museum in Milwaukee (left). Anyone familiar with Wright's later expression of disdain for the classically inspired architecture of Chicago's 1893 world's fair is bound to exclaim: “This is Frank Lloyd Wright?”

The drawing foreshadows one of the show's key themes: That Wright had to resolve inner struggles between tradition and modernity, the classical past and the machine aged-present, before he could arrive at his precedent-shattering Prairie homes, with their freely organized floor plans, ground-hugging horizontal lines, and smooth surfaces free of Victorian bric-a-brac. Like other geniuses — Picasso comes to mind — he didn't so much discard tradition as he incorporated it into his own transcendent vision.

The show's other big idea, that Wright's formative years in Chicago led to his later triumphs, is also expressed through side-by-side pairings and is, for the most part, compelling. The stairs that revolved around the sky lit well of the sharply-gabled, 1894 Roloson Row Houses at 3213-19 S. Calumet Ave. (left) are imaginatively portrayed as anticipating the vertical movement up and down the spiraling ramps of Wright's Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

While other pairings gild the lily, ascribing more weight to Wright's Chicago buildings than they deserve, they are still a visual delight. Among them: a sequence that showcases Sullivan's now-demolished Schiller Building skyscraper at 64 W. Randolph St. alongside an oversize rendering of Wright's 1956 plan for a mile-high Chicago skyscraper and an old photo of two Chicago icons — a wily Wright showing the mile-high plan to a smiling Mayor Richard J. Daley (below). The architect died in 1959.

To be sure, there are faults. The wall text cloyingly refers to Wright as “Frank” and it's marred by the occasional missing word or excess verbiage that is sloppily covered. Wright's recent biographers — Brendan Gill, Meryle Secrest and Ada Louise Huxtable — have covered these years in greater detail and with more piercing insight into the myriad deceptions with which the architect constructed his public image.

But in contrast to these East Coast authors, Samuelson brings something special to the game: A local's intensive knowledge of these buildings and their broader significance in the arc of Wright's career. Yes, there have been an endless string of Wright exhibitions in recent years. This one, however, is well worth your time.

“Wright's Roots” appears at the Expo 72 gallery, 72 E. Randolph St., through Sept. 30. Admission is free. explorechicago.org

The vote backing a $110 million plan to rehab the vacant Rosenwald Apartments in the 4600 block of South Michigan Ave. came despite opposition from several neighboring property owners who argued the project will concentrate too many low-income people in the area.

“Putting more than 1,000 people in a confined space, without the proper resources, is foolish,” said Terryn Murphy, who lives in the 4500 block of S. Michigan.

But the commission, whose members are appointed by the mayor, overwhelmingly approved the plan after the developers assured them that residents would be carefully screened and that the complex would be rigorously managed.

“I see this building as a tremendous catalyst,” said Ald. Pat Dowell, 3^rd, whose ward includes the complex.

In 1929, Sears president Julius Rosenwald built the complex of five-story inter-connected buildings to provide attractive housing for African-Americans confined to the city’s “black belt.”

But as the surrounding neighborhood succumbed to crime and disrepair, so did the Rosenwald Apartments. It’s been vacant for more than a decade. In 2003, the National Trust for Historic Preservation named it one of America’s 11 most endangered places.

The rehab plan calls for preserving the complex’s brick exterior and a gut rehab that would provide 331 rental apartments for seniors and families. Most of the family apartments would be for households making 60 percent or less of the area median income.

The City Council still must approve the project.

“This is exactly what TIF was intended for: To combat blight and to create economic development,” said Jonathan Fine, president of Preservation Chicago.

The vote backing a $110 million plan to rehab the vacant Rosenwald Apartments in the 4600 block of South Michigan Ave. came despite opposition from several neighboring property owners who argued the project will concentrate too many low-income people in the area.

“Putting more than 1,000 people in a confined space, without the proper resources, is foolish,” said Terryn Murphy, who lives in the 4500 block of S. Michigan.

But the commission, whose members are appointed by the mayor, overwhelmingly approved the plan after the developers assured them that residents would be carefully screened and that the complex would be rigorously managed.

“I see this building as a tremendous catalyst,” said Ald. Pat Dowell, 3^rd, whose ward includes the complex.

In 1929, Sears president Julius Rosenwald built the complex of five-story inter-connected buildings to provide attractive housing for African-Americans confined to the city’s “black belt.”

But as the surrounding neighborhood succumbed to crime and disrepair, so did the Rosenwald Apartments. It’s been vacant for more than a decade. In 2003, the National Trust for Historic Preservation named it one of America’s 11 most endangered places.

The rehab plan calls for preserving the complex’s brick exterior and a gut rehab that would provide 331 rental apartments for seniors and families. Most of the family apartments would be for households making 60 percent or less of the area median income.

The City Council still must approve the project.

“This is exactly what TIF was intended for: To combat blight and to create economic development,” said Jonathan Fine, president of Preservation Chicago.

By Corilyn Shropshire

Tribune reporter

They've got them in Times Square. Tokyo too.

Under a measure pending in a City Council committee, some of Michigan Avenue's toniest shopping venues could end up sporting eye-catching jumbo signs.

Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42nd, has introduced an ordinance that would allow centers of at least 300,000 square feet with at least 10 tenants to erect flashing signs. Based on those parameters, that could include Water Tower Place, The Shops at North Bridge and 900 North Michigan Shops.

The proposed ordinance, submitted late last month to the committee on Zoning, Landmarks and Building Standards, does not say how many signs per center could be erected, but it stipulates that the displays could not be larger than 1,000 square feet and must not be more than 80 feet off the ground. In addition, the images must be static for at least 20 minutes, and the retailer's name has to be as large or larger than the product name advertised.

Reilly could not be reached for comment.

With walk-in, walk-out, street-level shopping increasingly in favor, the proposed ordinance could drive traffic to retailers in Michigan Avenue's malls.

"If this ordinance was finalized and approved, it would be of great interest to us," said Mitchell Feldman, general manager of Water Tower Place, declining to comment further.

A spokesman for 900 North Michigan Shops declined to comment, and representatives for The Shops at North Bridge were not immediately available.

The move comes not long after public space advocates voiced dismay about the city's decision to allow advertising on a variety of city property, including historic bridges.

Even though the Magnificent Mile's glitzy malls aren't old enough to be considered historic gems, one local activist is concerned that it could morph into a boulevard of Jumbotrons.

"I'm not convinced that it's appropriate for a boulevard that is renowned for its elegance," said Jonathan Fine, executive director of Preservation Chicago.

Fine learned of the proposal upon returning a phone call from the Tribune, and he is looking forward to public meetings about the possibility of flashing lights on Michigan Avenue.

"I don't know if its something we accept or fight," he added, recalling the battle to preserve the avenue's historic Farwell Building, which his group lost. (The building was dismantled and is being resurrected into the new Ritz-Carlton Residences with pieces of the old facade.)

Fine added that he understands the economic necessity of shopping malls showcasing themselves to lure shoppers off the street. But "once you give the special privilege to one person, everyone's going to want a Jumbotron," Fine said. "Does it end when Michigan Avenue becomes Times Square?"

The city's Community Development Commission votes today (Tuesday) on a plan to provide up to $25 milllion in tax-increment financing to developers who want to turn the vacant complex into 331 units of housing for seniors and families. The project's total cost would be $110 million.

In a staff report, the Department of Housing and Economic Development is recommending approval of the TIF assistance, as well as the sale of nearby city-owned land to the developers for a nominal cost. The land would provide parking for the redeveloped complex.

Some neighbors, who have organized the group Rosenwald for All, are opposing the project, saying it would bring too many lower-income families to an area that already has a heavy concentration of them.

The Rosenwald Apartments were built in 1929 by their namesake Julius Rosenwald, a philanthropist and president of Sears, Roebuck & Co. Designed by architect Ernest Grunsfeld Jr., the complex of inter-connected, five-story buildings provided attractive housing for middle-income and working-class families who were restricted to Chicago's South Side "black belt."

From yesterday's print edition

By Kristen Samuelson

Tribune reporter

John Chipman saved his architecture firm during the recession by cutting his staff in half.

To compensate, employees at Chipman Design Architecture, then in Park Ridge, started working 12- to 14-hour days while the firm eliminated bonuses and 401(k)-matching, shrank office space and renegotiated a shorter lease for about 40 percent less rent, which allowed them to move sooner to a less-expensive office in Des Plaines.

"In 2009, we kind of bumped along, we paid the bills," Chipman said, but reducing the 65-member staff to slightly more than 30 in 2009 "was the reason (the firm) made it" through the downturn.

Janina Kojs, a 16-year veteran at Chipman and vice president, said that after the downsizing, the entire staff "went through a shock phase" and would come in early or stay late to answer phones, clean, and pitch in on accounts that were not previously its responsibility.

"We were just trying to finish stuff from jobs because there was no one there from that account anymore," Kojs said. "We were all multitasking. If a job had to get out, you'd stay until it was done. You wanted the quality to keep that client."

During the recession, employers were in the driver's seat, demanding and getting the most out of thinned-out staffs. But now that some sectors have begun to hire again, human resources managers say, employers need to take steps to retain key employees who worked extra hard.

Above: Free breakfast is one of the perks that Chipman Design Architecture implemented as its business stabilized after the recession. (Tribune photo by Alex Garcia)  

"A lot of companies have been using the recession as their retention strategy," said Kristen Lamoreaux, president and chief executive of Lamoreaux Search LLC, a Collegeville, Pa.-based information technology  executive search firm. She has seen workloads increase up to threefold because of "left-sizing" at companies — as in "Everybody's gone, but we're left."

Those employees deserve to be in high demand, said Todd Thibodeaux, chief executive of the Downers Grove-based Computing Technology Industry Association, because they "have shown the ability to skill themselves up (and) take on additional responsibilities, including managing teams."

Yet Lamoreaux said she has seen few companies taking the steps to reward and retain workers.

"Unfortunately, the overwhelming amount of companies are not recognizing what they're asking of their employees," she said. "But as the market continues to get better, these (employers) are in for a huge wake-up call."

Employee retention is not only good for a company's culture, but also its bottom line. Anushree Fomra, vice president of finance and operations at Chicago-based recruitment firm Brill Street and Co., said that for a smaller company with 50 to 100 employees on a team, the financial impact of retaining an employee could be $100,000 to $150,000 per employee over the average lifetime of their employment, or about 30 to 35 percent of human capital costs, which include recruiting, hiring and training new employees.

A Careerbuilder.com survey of 5,770 nationwide employees found that 63 percent of them are stressed in the workplace and 26 percent plan to look for new employment now that the job market seems to be easing.

"Employers are going to have to make some shift, whether it be work-life balance or compensation" to retain their employees, said Michael Erwin, senior career adviser at Careerbuilder.com, which is partly owned by Tribune Co., parent of the Chicago Tribune.

A news release follows:

SPRINGFIELD – Two historic districts in Chicago were among several properties recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places during the quarterly meeting of the Illinois Historic Sites Advisory Council June 29 in Springfield.

The Auburn Gresham Bungalow Historic District is one of several intact clusters of this ubiquitous building type that will be recognized in the National Register.  Chicago is the home of literally thousands of brick bungalow’s that occupy a great swath of the city’s west and south side.

The West Loop LaSalle Street Historic District has long been recognized as the core of the city’s financial district, but the area will now be recognized for its historic value.  The street has a number of noteworthy buildings that have previously been listed in the National Register individually.  The new district takes in both sides of LaSalle Street from the Chicago River bridge at the north to the Chicago Board of Trade Building at the south. 

The Illinois Historic Sites Advisory Council’s recommendations have been forwarded to the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, and Agency Director Amy Martin will forward the nominations with her concurrence to the National Park Service in Washington, DC for a final determination. 

The Illinois Historic Sites Advisory Council is the body that votes on new National Register of Historic Places properties in Illinois. The council meets quarterly and is comprised of 15 members.  There are at least three historians, three architectural historians or architects with a preservation background, and three archeologists on the council.  The remaining six members must have a historic preservation interest and are drawn from supporting fields such as planning, law, local government, and historical geography.  All members are appointed by the director of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency and approved by agency’s Board of Trustees.

The  National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the nation’s historic places worthy of preservation.  Thousands of Illinois historic and prehistoric places have been designated and each year more places are added by applicants who want the prestige, financial benefits, and protections that National Register designation provides. Every one of the 102 Illinois counties has at least one property or historic district listed in the National Register.  High-style mansions, vernacular houses, burial mounds, military aircraft, canals, and historic downtowns together represent a cross section of the Prairie State's history from its early settlement to the mid-20^th century. In general, properties have to be more than 50 years old to be eligible.  Listing on the National Register places no obligations on private property owners but does make properties eligible for some financial incentives.  For more information on the National Register application process, visit http://www.illinoishistory.gov/PS/applynr.htm.