goyablog

Out of the blue a couple weeks ago I got a request to use a photo I took a few years ago of the McGraw-Hill Building in Chicago. This one:

The requester was gathering images for a blog in association with the construction of The Ritz-Carlton Residences, Chicago and needed an example of a successful (i.e., aesthetically acceptable) execution of what has become known as a “facadectomy” — i.e., the preservation of the facade of a historic building by dismantling it, building the new structure, and then reconstructing the old facade over it. As you can imagine, this practice is controversial among hardcore historical preservationists because the integrity of the entire building is not respected and sometimes the results of mashing the old facade on a new core turns out horribly (like some facelifts). 10 S. LaSalle (formerly the Otis Building) is one example of a bad facadectomy where a 37-floor cobalt blue skyscraper was crammed into and over the four floors of the original building’s facade. I took my photo of the McGraw-Hill Building as part of my Art Deco Chicago photo shoot, not knowing it was only a facade. Which I guess means that it was a good example of a facadectomy done right. The Ritz-Carlton Residences developers are supposedly taking their cue from the McGraw-Hill example. The writer of the article, Wayne Lorentz, concludes his interesting piece as follows:

While there will always be die-hard naysayers who complain that such procedures violate the historical integrity of a property, others point out that sometimes it’s unavoidable. Sometimes old buildings have to die so that others may be born in their place.

Someday, the Empire State Building and the Willis Tower will meet their ends, too. And while it’s sad to think that such icons will one day see the same fate, it cannot be denied that since the beginning of time, destruction has been the necessary predecessor of creation. Time changes all things and between a photograph or a facade, the transplant may very well be the better architectural heritage to leave for the next generation.

Well, maybe, but I don’t accept the sense of inevitability implied here. In general, I don’t know where I stand on this form of “preservation.” As an academic (quasi-)historian, I should side with the hardcore preservationists, but I don’t like such knee-jerk extreme positions (unless I adopt them). I suppose if the alternative is to let an old building crumble or simply to tear it down, a properly done facadectomy is a compromise we have to live with. Makes me think of the Robyn Hitchcock song “My Favourite Buildings” which goes:

My favourite buildings are all falling down
Seems like I dwell in a different town
But why should I bother with
painting them brown
When they’ll all be pulled down in the end
My favourite buildings
stretch upwards for miles
Remind me somehow of your favourite smiles
Like oak leaves in autumn cascading on stiles
In the rain
Nobody seems to know how long
All of these buildings belong
Till they become part of you
People get down on your knees
Buildings are like a disease
You could wind up in a zoo
And most people do
(cha)
My favourite buildings are all laid to waste
One might as well sculpt a
statue from toothpaste
And someday I could have a fifty-inch waist
It’s all free
For my favourite buildings
And me

But then again I think of all those wonderful — albeit creaky, drafty, inefficient, hard-to-maintain — buildings in Europe that have lasted far longer than the Empire State Building and I wonder if American city planners and developers have their priorities straight. Well, yes, they have their priorities straight (make money and lots of it), but not those of the greater cultural community. (Now, if someone bought me one of the planned penthouses in the The Ritz-Carlton Residences, Chicago I would probably be happy to live in it….). See my now-famous photo in the article here.