Bertrand Goldberg’s (former) Prentice Hospital

Bertrand Goldberg, one of Chicago’s most innovative architects

Like any major US city, Chicago has wonderful architecture.  And like these other cities, it citizens appreciate their architectural heritage.  But no other city’s inhabitants are as knowledgeable and as passionate about its architecture.  Even the European tourists, especially Germans, seem to have been drawn to Chicago because of its buildings.  And I don’t think it is simply because the German architect Mies van der Rohe spent his most productive years in Chicago.

While still in Germany, in the early 1930’s, Mies had an American working in his office, Bertrand Goldberg (1913-1997).

Goldberg’s Marina City One and Two (1960-1964) are the most distinctive structures along the Chicago Riverfront, with their petal shape and  parking on the lower levels.  Another variation on that bunched cylinder  theme is the former Prentice Women’s Hospital completed in mid-1970’s.  No longer used by Northwestern, the university wants to demolish it.  But a prominent Chicago architect proposed building a shimmering tower block above it so it could continue to function as a modern hospital.  Those interested in saving it have mounted a petition drive (www.saveprentice.org).

Like Mies’s early visionary, and unrealized, drawings for German skyscrapers,  Goldberg was exploring new structural expressions.  While Goldberg succeeded in being cutting edge, Mies preferred to refine his aesthetic of the grid facade, as most famously seen in New York City’s Seagram’s Building (1958) or in Chicago’s 860-880 Lake Shore Drive (1949-1951).

German Ambassador’s Residence

Thirty years after the chancery, designed by Egon Eiermann, opened, the ambassador’s residence opened in 1994, designed by Eiermann’s former student O. M. Ungers (1926-2007).   At the summit of  a landscape of manicured lawn and near forest, the building sits like a stern classical temple.

follow-up post with interior photograph

Conference room with furniture designed by the building’s architect, Professor Egon Eiermann.

funky architecture

funky architecture

Georgetown is best known for its rows of Federal period brick residences, polished and so polite. But on Foxhall Rd in Georgetown there is an interesting mix of more modest residences approaching folk art with their funky shapes and colors.