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| Photo courtesy of the Chicago History Museum |
Resolved: the Wrigley Building is a beautiful, beloved jewel of Chicago, though not great architecture. Discuss.
"Beautiful" is a value judgment, one I endorse fully. Glazed terra cotta in six shades of white, shifting toward creamy yellow as it nears the top. Festooned with dragons, griffins, cherubs, rams. That four-faced clock, 20 feet tall.
"Beloved" is not open to debate — any survey of popular Chicago buildings includes the Wrigley Building.
"It was made to be liked," said Robert Sharoff, whose new coffee table book, "The Wrigley Building: The Making of an Icon," (Rizzoli Electa) with photographs by William Zbaren and commentaries by Tim Samuelson, shines a spotlight on a structure that's been well-illuminated for over a century.
"The more I shot it, the more joyous it became," said Zbaren. "It's so playful."
The Wrigley Building is just fun. Perched at the confluence of Michigan Avenue and the north bank of the Chicago River, the historic heart of Chicago — the outlines of Fort Dearborn are in brass across the street — the tower has always been a font of fascination, to me anyway,
Starting with it being in reality two buildings, built at different times, with different addresses, 400 and 410 N. Michigan, connected at the 14th floor by that metal skybridge, a rococo detail that seems pulled from those dreamlike early 1900s fantasies of the urban future, with plump zeppelins and streamlined elevated trains and mustachioed gentlemen in bowler hats pedaling through the air on penny-farthing bicycles with wings.
"The Wrigley Building" bristles with glorious facts that even I didn't know, starting with the clock initially being hand-wound by someone turning an enormous crank, winching up weights that once drove the mechanism.
The authors come down firmly in favor of "great architecture," not surprising in a book bankrolled by Wrigley Building owner Joe Mansueto. Though they insist the Morningstar billionaire gave them a free hand, which they use to massage the life of the architect, Charles Beersman, who does not have a deep portfolio — his other building of note is Cleveland's Terminal Tower. Both of his signature structures are riffs on the Giralda Tower in Spain, with notes of New York's Municipal Building stirred into Wrigley.
To me, he had one idea, and it was someone else's. But in this book, Beersman might as well be Michelangelo — we're given nine of his 11 childhood addresses in San Francisco, in a note.
What we get far less of are the critics who lined up over the years to give the Wrigley Building the backhand. Lewis Mumford referred to its "safe mediocrity." The Wrigley Building is "just what the name implies," sniffed Frank Lloyd Wright — admittedly not famous for kindness toward other architects — noting it “illustrates the principle that an ugly building by day, if illuminated, will be ugly by night as well.”
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Chicago has so many beautiful buildings. I must confess, I'm not crazy about the Wrigley building. It's too much, everything. Maybe I'm biased because I am a big fan of FLW. I wouldn't call it mediocre. That sounds like plain old envy.
ReplyDeleteBest or maybe worst use of the Wrigley Building is in the terrible 1957 SF movie, "Beginning of the End" with giant grasshoppers climbing up the side of it!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.chicagomovietours.com/one-shot-wednesdays/beginning-of-the-end
Yes, but crawling on a *photo* of the Wrigley Bldg., obvious even to me as a tween movie-goer. If I remember right, it starred Peter Graves of later “Mission Impossible“ fame.
DeleteYes, it did. He was a star in "Fury"--that Saturday morning horse opera that my kid sister never missed. The hoppers appeared one Saturday night on Channel 5, around 1961 or so. Munched their way northeast, up U. S. 45, wiping out all the small Downstate towns: Rantoul. Ludlow, Paxton, Gilman.
DeleteWhen they got to Kankakee, the Army was waiting for them. They swept on through, passed through the suburbs and the South Side, and conveniently attacked a deserted Loop, on what looked like a weekend.
A luckless GI manning a machine gun nest was devoured, which meant another voiceover for the perennial "agonized scream guy." When the insects crawled up the photo of the Wrigley building, I shouted with glee (was 13-14) and laughed out loud. Woke up my father, who was pissed. When he saw the screen, he laughed out loud, too. Father and son bonding time. Extremely rare.
Imagine what a Steampunk feverdream the city would be if architecture continued to be so funky and daring. Surrounded by all the glass and steel boxes, that thing really pops. The book cover doesn't do it justice. Wrigley is best viewed from the highrise window of a neighboring building.
ReplyDeleteNeil, I would be interested to know if you ever finagled your way atop the Wrigley Building? Specifically, did you get up inside the observatory that has been closed for many years? And even higher up? I imagine you as a young reporter having an interest there. Visiting obscure spaces around town, etc.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was writing "You Were Never in Chicago" I arranged to go through the skybridge — that was high on my bucket list. Very underwhelming — lined with carpet, with little windows high up I had to stand on tiptoe to look out. I didn't think to want to go to the observatory. Particularly since I'd stayed across the street at the Intercontinental, with a balcony having a similar view.
DeleteI love that photo.
ReplyDeleteWe often forget what we came from. It's easy to say make no small plans, its hard to actually do it.
most buildings we put up now a days are versions of mediocrity. Love it or hate it, the Wrigley building was bold.
The history of modern architecture is tied to Chicago as tightly as the yarn wrapped around the 'pill' of a baseball and as steadfastly as the name Wrigley is to the Chicago Cubs. The Wrigley Building holds a very import place on that evolutionary ladder, in part because it reflects the Beaux-Arts period of conservatism that predated the Art Deco movement. It is hard to imagine how different the view of Michigan Ave. would be without that anchor. If it were taken away, that location would be nothing more than a blip on a map. As you said, Neil, "That alone is reason to love it."
ReplyDelete