Richard Nickel's Chicago: A Review

This article first appeared in the Winter 2007 issue of the NewsLetter of the Society of Architectural Historians, Missouri Valley Chapter.

David Norris, friend of photographer, salvager and historian Richard Nickel, once said that "I think what Richard had to teach was that if you find some way to express your deepest convictions, you should exercise that talent to the very utmost of your ability. . .even if it leads somehow to your destruction." Nickel died in 1972 while rescuing interior ornament from Louis Sullivan’s Chicago Stock Exchange building, then under demolition. The attitude toward life’s work that Norris summarizes is readily apparent in the vivid, arresting images in Richard Nickel’s Chicago: Photographs of a Lost City, published at the end of 2006. The book amasses many of Nickel’s images of condemned Louis Sullivan buildings, as well as his glimpses into other long-gone parts of Chicago: Chicagoans enjoying the carnival at Riverview Park; a Loop landscape prior to the Congress Expressway; downtown offices with stenciled lettering on frosted glass doors; youth making a strong show of protest at Grant Park in 1968; other hallmarks of a vibrant urban culture in which the built environment is both backdrop for human action and a pivotal character.

Richard Nickel’s body of work is the result of chance. After serving in the Army immediately after World War II, Nickel was seeking a mission in life and use of the free tuition the GI Bill offered. Newly-divorced, the young man happened upon photography classes at the Institute of Design, founded and directed by Bauhaus transplant László Moholy-Nagy. There his primary instructors were noted photographers Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. Siskind taught a class in which he assigned to his students to photograph the surviving buildings of Louis Sullivan. Because he was draft-exempt, Nickel was put in charge of the students’ efforts and an exhibition held at the Institute in 1954. No matter; the young photographer had enthusiastically taken up his assignment, and took steps that made the study of Sullivan’s architecture his life’s work. Under Siskind’s direction, Nickel embarked upon a still-incomplete book entitled The Complete Architecture of Adler and Sullivan. After completing his courses, Nickel continued the book project but began to get sidetracked. Chicago seemed to be disappearing around him, and Nickel responded by documenting doomed buildings (Sullivan’s and others’) through drawing floor plans and taking photographs and then, when demolition was certain, salvaging ornament.

Most of the images in Richard Nickel’s Chicago were never printed in Nickel’s lifetime, making the book a remarkable document. Nickel took some 11,000 photographs in his life, but mostly made contact sheets unless a client was willing to pay for development. Even more remarkable than the book is the way in which Nickel was able to capture so carefully each scene without ever seeing a large print. Somehow Nickel was able to deftly find the drama in the still life of many architectural scenes, and carefully transmit the sorrowful scenes he witnessed directly. Those images are his best known, although most in the book are new to even his admirers. Less known are Nickel’s gentle shots of people at festivals, expressing the glee, anger or longing in what seem to be private moments between subject and photographer. Those images show a breadth to Nickel’s body of work previously unknown.

The architectural images convey both respect and resignation – a painful combination. The parade of lost masterpieces is staggering – Adler and Sullivan’s Schiller Theatre, Meyer Building, Rothschild Building, Babson Residence and Stock Exchange; Burnham and Root’s Church of the Covenant and First Infantry Armory; Holabird and Roche’s Republic and Cable building. Even the photographs of surviving landmarks like the Rookery and the Auditorium Building have a weary gaze, as if the photographer has doubts of their permanence at the hands of his society. Nickel conveys the glory of these buildings while making statements about Chicago’s arrogant disregard for them; he poses wry scenes that are statements of protest in which the beauty of the building makes the loudest statement. Ever faithful to his subjects, Nickel avoids taking photographs that are easily digested or ignored. Nickel prefers wide views and the occasional vivid close-up to iconic images. At first glance, the photographs can seem carefully workmanlike. Then, a detail jumps out – the postures of men standing in the foreground of a demolition scene, words on a church wall next to a gaping hole made by wreckers, the appearance of a church steeple in a photograph of a roof. As one studies the photographs, the intentional nature of the details becomes apparent. Nickel thought though his capturing of the details of every building he shot, just as the architects who designed them conceived of the intricate parts. Every foreground, background and shadow was chosen. The genius of Nickel emerges; he has taken photographs that reward a multitude of viewings and whose technique emulates the subjects’ complexity as much as any documentation can. Nickel’s photographs teach us the values of patience and observation, and of the power of making careful choices. These were the values that led Nickel to study and defend the works of Sullivan and other Chicago masters. These were the values that could have kept the buildings around as long as the photographs.


Cahan, Richard and Michael Williams, editors. Richard Nickel’s Chicago. Chicago: CityFiles Press, 2006. ISBN: 0-9785450-2-8.

STOP

This neat feature alerts drivers in an alley headed north toward Ontario Street between Linden and Euclid avenues in Oak Park, Illinois. Embedded tiles form a sturdy, enduring stop sign.

A Lonely Stand

The future is always doubtful to that last historic house on a block in a neighborhood whose primary land use has changed. Neighborhoods just outside of the central business district of American cities that were residential walking neighborhoods typically lost their character in the twentieth century as commercial use crept outward. Large new buildings went up on main thoroughfares, followed by mixed use and apartment buildings on other streets. Old houses became rooming houses, offices and even small factories -- until their narrow lots were added to adjacent lots to make sites for larger buildings. Secondary streets often kept much of the old housing stock, but the main streets emerged from second wave development looking more like downtown than ever.

On some blocks, like the one shown above on North Avenue just west of Milwaukee in Chicago, one will find the houses that survived the development waves. Some of these houses stand alone, adjacent to parking lots. Their futures are doubtful, since they stand apart from the historic context that would make their defense likely should a developer want to take the house and the adjacent lot and build a new building. In Chicago, tear-downs like that seem to happen weekly. The new construction is often an insipid four or five story building with street level retail and condominiums above, rendered in a bland minimalist style or a gaudy postmodernist mess.

Other survivors are more fortunate, like this old Romanesque Revival house. When the building to the right went up in the 1910s, the developer didn't need, want or buy the house. When the building on the left went up, the same story. Neighbors came down, but not the erstwhile little house. The house slipped through both times. With such a small site, and the house being so close to the neighbors, one could guess that the house has escaped demolition. Then again, in urban real estate, nothing is ever certain.

There were years in recent memory when this stretch of North Avenue were devoid of much development interest, and then things changed rapidly. Even if the market is in downturn now, that won't last forever. Some locations hold inherent value that survives the market's cycles. Some buildings do too. Is this house one of those now, by virtue of its escape?

Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago Awaits Reconstruction

Last month while I was visiting Chicago I stopped by the Pilgrim Baptist Church at Indiana Avenue and 33rd Street in the Bronzeville neighborhood. Built in 1891 as the Kehilath Anshe Ma'ariv Synagogue, this Prairie School masterpiece was designed by Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler. In January 2006, a devastating fire struck the building, leaving nothing intact save the limestone and brick walls. The photos below show steel bracing against the street-facing walls. The bracing was required by the Chicago city government to prevent collapse into the public right-of-way. Engineers have determined that collapse is unlikely since the walls remain sound.

Although the church has yet to be able to start reconstruction, they have made some progress with raising money and securing the structure. In 2006, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich pledged $1 million in state funds to the church school (since the state can't directly fund the church) to rebuild. Earlier this month, after his administration gave the money to the wrong school, the governor pledged an additional $1 million on top of the previous pledge. Last year, Pilgrim Baptist chose architects Johnson & Lee of Chicago and Quinn Evans of Ann Arbor, Michigan, to design the reconstruction of the ornate Sullivan building. How much of the intricate interior gets rebuilt is undetermined, but the exterior should be brought back fully to original appearance.

Under the Layers

While driving on Ridge Avenue in Chicago over the weekend, I spotted this building. Look at it! We have a Spanish Revival gem hiding out under wooden siding and a coating of gray paint. I like how the owners painted the braided terra cotta finials white to make them stand out. Apparently, the building is in use by an automobile repair shop. Perhaps some day the owner will take off the siding and strip the paint to reveal the full glory of the building. For now, though, the building's soul still manages to whisper through the layers.

Watching and Waiting

City of Destiny offers insightful commentary on the failure of Chicago preservation groups to reach their logical audiences and actually spotlight endangered buildings. Katherine, author of the blog, takes as her starting point the annual endangered buildings lists of Preservation Chicago and Landmarks Illinois:

I feel I should join both these preservation groups because I support their goals, but I'm so frustrated at how little opportunity there seems to be for interaction, for publicizing other buildings that deserve attention, for getting updates on the status of buildings they've put on the lists.

Read all of it here: "Watching the watch lists"

Preservation Chicago's "Chicago 7" List Includes City's Landmarks Ordinance

Preservation Chicago just released its annual Chicago 7 list of the city's most endangered historic resources. Topping the list is not a building or bridge but the city's Landmarks Ordinance. According to Preservation Chicago, "several recent redevelopment projects endorsed by the city’s planning department and approved by the Commission on Chicago Landmarks call into question whether the integrity of the ordinance itself is in danger of being destroyed."

The ordinance date sto 1968 and has led to local landmark status for 255 buildings and 49 historic districts. Yet recent decisions by the Commission on Chicago Landmarks to allow such travesties as the demolition of the landmarked Farwell Building and the reassembly of its facade on a new, much taller building call into question the level of protection the ordinance provides.

Rounding out the list are the American Book Company, Grant Park, the Devon Avenue commercial district, the Daily News Building, the Booker Building and Norwood Park. The full story is available here.

Past the Margins of Chicago

Rob Powers (creator of Built St. Louis) has launched A Chicago Sojourn to chronicle the non-iconic corners of his new home. In his first post, Rob writes that "I've always gravitated to the forgotten: in St. Louis, in Milwaukee, everywhere I go. And so it shall be here."

Beautifully-designed Forgotten Chicago features photo essays on those traces of Chicago's past few celebrate, let alone investigate. Recent topics the Schoenhofen Brewery, pre-1909 street numbering system and Chicago's largest vacant lot, the site of US Steel's South Works. Jacob Kaplan and photographer Serhii Chrucky are the editors.

I would have called it "Ben Joravsky is all in a TIFf"

There's a nice lil' piece about TIFs and Chicago city government by Ramsin Canon over at Gaper's Block. Behold: Why is Ben Joravsky So Mad? For those of you not so keen on reading about development financing, I assure you this is a nicely readable essay.

St. Louisans, some of the stuff outlined in the article about Chicago shore sounds familiar, hm?

A building as useful as it was beautiful: Losing Riis School

My heart broke this morning when I saw this image on Gaper's Block:

http://gapersblock.com/rearview/archives/2007/10/17/

Jacob Riis School in Chicago is finally on its way down. Didn't quite make it to 100.

A 2004 article by Ben Joravsky in The Chicago Reader noted that Mayor Daley plans to build 100 new schools within Chicago in the next several years. Why not make that 99, and revive this sturdy gem? Demolition of such a beautiful and solid building is plainly, foolishly, callously wasteful. The Reader article also noted that the building can't be condo-ized essentially because it's too well built--the internal walls are masonry, and therefore make it tricky to reconfigure. Not only does that mean the building is amazingly structurally tough, but it also means that the structure ought to be used for what it was built to do: Be. a. school.

With Hull House and Maxwell Street already gone (or, um, demolished and repeatedly relocated, at any rate) thanks to my alma mater, the University of Indifferent Commuters, it seems extra cruel somehow to tear down a school named after Jacob Riis. The name of the school always had seemed to me like a nice nod to the area's heritage as a neighborhood of tenements and poor immigrants, and also as a place that had been home to some of the greatest social institutions for the poor in the history of the city of Chicago. In his day, Jacob Riis's photographs brought to light the conditions in which many of New York's poorest immigrants in the later 19th and early 20th century lived. He is probably best known for his book How the Other Half Lives. One more nod to the area's actual heritage, wiped off the map. But I'm sure Chicago needs another faceless, flimsy condo development much more than it needs a sturdy, beautiful brick public school named after a man who devoted his life to improving the lives of the poor.

More Riis shots from Carey Primeau here.

And thanks to David Schalliol for confirming my "Please don't tell me this is what I think it is."

Preservation Chicago's 2007 "Chicago 7" List

Preservation Chicago has released its annual "Chicago 7" list of endangered buildings. Far from a useless cry, the list has always been a measured and prescient examination of true threats to historic buildings of all ages and types. For Chicago urbanists, the list is a rallying cry. For those of us elsewhere, it's the best reference for preservation issues in Chicago. (It's also an inspiring model, much like Landmarks Association of St. Louis' annual Eleven Most Endangered and Eleven Most Enhanced lists.)

One of the great things about the list is that its creators are flexible in what make sup a list item. Often, an item can be a district or neighborhood and this year has a few larger districts.

This year's list features the following buildings:

Farwell Building

Rosenwald Apartments

Archer Avenue District

Wicker Park Commercial District

Julia C. Lathrop Homes

North Avenue Bridge

Pilgrim Baptist Church

I'm delighted that Preservation Chicago is focusing attention on the Archer Avenue district amid Bridgeport's gentrification boom, which may lead to massive demolition for admittedly urban new construction. And I'm doubly delighted to see anyone champion the Julia C. Lathrop Homes, an early low-rise federally-funded housing project that is a descendant of St. Louis' Neighborhood Gardens Apartments. Chicago's loss of the ABLA Homes went largely unmourned, although both the design and construction quality of mid-century low-rise housing projects make them great candidates for reuse.

See the Chicago 7 list here.

Rehabbing in Chicago

While searching for information online about coping tiles and flat roofs on historic buildings -- we are preparing to make the leap and add them to our building, which likely has never had them -- I found very few resources.

No matter, because I stumbled upon the delightful Chicago Two-Flat, a rehab chronicle that deals with one couple's efforts to restore one of the blog's namesakes. Their effort is further along than our own, replete with permanent roof, floors one can walk across with bare feet and other comforts. However, their detailed and compelling accounts of the little projects that always overtake any notion of "completion" are so true to life that I can't stop myself from reading despite being in a much more rudimentary stage of rehabbing.

I'm astounded to find such a familiar project from Chicago, which doesn't have the visible and well-organized do-it-yourself rehab community that St. Louis has. A relatively newer housing stock, higher prices and greater population density may keep Chicago from being a major rehab mecca that St. Louis has become, but that doesn't mean no one there is trying. In fact, Chicago Two-Flat's blogroll offers links to other Chicago house blogs covering the twists and turns of taking old buildings into healthier lives.

Another Lost Chicago Diner

I barely had time to appreciate DeMar's Coffee Shop on Chicago Avenue in Chicago during the three months that I lived there, but I enjoyed my handful of visits. Chicago is a great city for diners and greasy spoons, ranging from the stand-by Golden Nugget chain to the excellent, now-shuttered Zorba's on Halsted (which had Greek food in addition to diner mainstays) to the more obscure ones like DeMar's. A city that gets as cold as Chicago had better be able to provide filling food at all hours.

DeMar's seemed to have everything the cinematic imagination desired: cheap food, salty wait staff, no crowds, a big menu, great coffee and one of the coolest neon signs I have seen. The only drawback was the hours, which had been cut from all-night to a fairly early close for a diner. Unfortunately, now there are no hours at all, because DeMar's closed in 2005. I had not managed to swing by on subsequent trips to Chicago, but through Flickr I found not one but two photos of DeMar's windows boarded by Chiacgo's ubiquitous Buzy Bee Board Up.

Alas, the little diners in Chicago seem to be dropping like the flies around the grill. Please tell me that Golden House in Uptown is still open.

Fire Strikes Adler & Sullivan's Harvey House

Yet another Adler & Sullivan building burns in 2006, scarcely a week after the Wirt Dexter Building fire. This time it's the George Harvey House, built in 1888 and the last remaining frame structure designed with either Louis Sullivan or Dankmar Adler involved. The house is a total loss.

The owner of the home, Natalie Frank, had discussed demolition earlier this year, meeting with opposition from preservationists. She eventually announced plans to renovate the much-altered house using the full original blueprints Richard Nickel rescued from a previous owner.

The Chicago Sun-Times has the bad news here.

Lynn Becker has commentary here.

Blogging: It runs in the family.

You may note that there's a new blog in our Chicago blogroll named Blue Kitchen.

It is written by none other than MY DAD, Terry Boyd.

Blue Kitchen is about food, Chicago, music, life, and, um, food. It's updated on Wednesdays, and the very first post was this past Wednesday. Check it out.

Bull

Terra cotta ornament, Stony Island Boulevard, Chicago. (Taken July 2005.)

Demolition Started on Chicago's Wirt Dexter Building

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that emergency demolition of the Wirt Dexter Building began today. The building, designed by Adler & Sullivan and built in 1887, burned in a huge fire on Tuesday.

Try to stanch the pain of tragedy by reading Carl Sandburg's poem "Skyscraper." The poem invokes the golden age of American tall buildings, started by rapid architectural innovation in which the Wirt Dexter Building was an integral part. The roots of the American skyscraper pass back through what is now a blackened wreck and what will next week be nothing but rubble. Although the building is falling, it was one of many that -- through narrow piers, wide windows, pronounced height and embrace of the metal frame -- proclaimed to Chicago and the world that a new soaring architectural form was being born in America. That legacy remains vibrant, even as the Wirt Dexter building dies a senseless death.

Another Fire Hits a Sullivan Building

Tragedy strikes Chicago with yet another devastating fire at a building designed by Louis Sullivan. This time, the damaged building is the 1887 Wirt-Dexter Building on Wabash Avenue in the Loop, a formative work by Adler & Sullivan. The Wirt-Dexter Building possesses a lightness of form with vertical emphasis that Sullivan would develop further with the Wainwright Building in 1891. The building also has a unique exposed system of iron piers on its rear elevation, long before the expressed forms of Mies Van Der Rohe's buildings and almost a century ahead of the postmodern exposed structure fad.

There is no conclusive report on structural integrity after the fire. However, press quotes from Chicago Transit Authority head Frank Kruesi seem to indicate that the building, which abuts an El line, may be demolished soon.

Read more about the fire and the building in an incisive essay by Lynn Becker, Chicago's leading architectural critic.

The Wirt-Dexter Building has been vacant for nearly twenty years, and there was little political will to find a new use for it. There may be Louis Sullivan key chains at the Chicago ArchiCenter gift shop, but that is no guarantee of the safety of any work designed by his hand. In today's Chicago, time and time again we see that no pedigree guarantees protection of a historic building.

Time Out Chicago Publishes Preservation Issue

Time Out Chicago has an excellent preservation issue now out. Read it online here.

There's the expected section of endangered buildings, with featured sites ranging from worker's homes in Humboldt Park (our neighborhood when we lived in Chicago two years ago) to the mid-century Meigs Field Terminal building to the Acme Coke Plant. Those are three examples not types often seen on preservationist lists. Then the magazine gives suggestions on how to lobby various officials and owners for preservation -- very smart! The issue continues with examples of buildings rescued from demolition, and a longer article on a community center group that took a fire-damaged building on the brink of collapse and rebuilt as its home.

The features here are positive and action-oriented. The writers aren't particular preachy or condescending. Instead, they are presenting historic preservation as a cultural necessity, and showing that even those most damaged buildings can be brought back to life. Rather than simply tell the reader that old buildings should be saved, the writers of these articles show the reader that these buildings can be saved, and let the reader choose to act.

This issue is some of the smartest preservation journalism that I have read lately. Wouldn't it be great if a St. Louis newspaper did the same thing?

(Found via The Place Where We Live.)

Louis Sullivan at 150

Louis Sullivan was born in Boston on September 3, 1856. Admirers have launched Louis Sullivan at 150, a series of tours, lectures and other events that celebrate the Sullivan sesquicentennial. The festivities happen in Chicago, although there is no stopping folks in cities with other Sullivan buildings of some importance of coordinating celebrations.

Part of the Sullivan at 150 program is a three-day symposium October 13-15; a tour of the interior of the Charnley-Persky House led by John Vinci, who oversaw the home's restoration; and, most impressive although mostly coincidental, the completion of the replication of the cornice on Sullivan's 1899 Schlesinger & Meyer Department Store Building (now the Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building).