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| JWB, The Bard, and The Shakespeare Cooperative in Background (JJB, 2009) |
Just west of William Ordway Partridge’s sculpture of William
Shakespeare, a statue that was, by the way, created for the 1893 World’s
Columbian Exposition and which now sits across Stockton from the zoo, is a neat
little 24-unit courtyard co-op at 2236-2244 Lincoln Park.
It’s easy to pass it by . . . its muted palette is partially
obscured by trees in warm weather and blends in with the
gloom during the winter season.
It’s the kind of building you could walk past dozens of times and not
even notice that it was there.
Walk past it often enough, though, and, like any good work
of architecture, it will reach out and speak to you. At least it did to me . . . largely, I think, because of its
transitional elegance. Finished in
1910, the building combines the ending of one era with the beginning
of another.
The architect of what some sales brochures call The
Shakespeare Building was Simeon B. Eisendrath, a guy whose name doesn’t often come up in discussions of Chicago architecture.
Born in Chicago in 1868, Eisendrath was educated in the
public schools and while in high school “was elected by the teachers to receive
the honorary scholarship of a full course at the Chicago Manual Training
School.” [Eliasoff, Herman. The Jews of Illinois. 1901.] The
school eventually became the University of Chicago Laboratory School.
Not long before Eisendrath entered the school, its director,
Dr. Henry H. Belfield, said in an 1884 address to the Chicago Manual Training
School Association: “The fact should never be lost sight of for an instant that
the product of the school should be, not the polished article of furniture, not
the perfect piece of machinery, but the polished, perfect boy. The acquisition of industrial skill should be the
means of promoting the general education of the pupil; the education of the
hand should be the means of more completely and more efficaciously educating
the brain.” [wisdomofhands.blogspot.com]
That was the environment in which Eisendrath spent his
formative years, an environment that echoed the philosophy of John Ruskin,
whose criticism and philosophy served as principle influences in the Arts and
Crafts movement.
One of Ruskin’s principles, summarized by Kenneth Clark,
stated that Art is not a matter of taste, but involves the whole man.
Whether in making or perceiving a work of art, we bring to bear on it feeling,
intellect, morals, knowledge, memory, and every other human capacity, all
focused in a flash on a single point. [wikipedia]
With this background Eisendrath went east to study architecture
at M.I.T. In 1888, at the
ripe old age of 20, he secured a position in the office of Dankmar Adler and
Louis Sullivan. It must have been
an exciting time as the Auditorium Building was nearly completed, Adler and
Sullivan’s masterpiece that would be for a short time the tallest, largest,
heaviest building in the world.Also working in that office as a draftsman for Sullivan was a young architect who would go on to a reasonably successful career of his own -- Frank Lloyd Wright.
Think about working in that environment for a couple years!
In 1890 Eisendrath hung up his own shingle, and in that same
year the county engaged him as an expert in its attempt to convict a number of
contractors who had enriched themselves by bribing government officials. Some architecture is timeless; so, it
seems, is some boodle.
Probably as a result of the boodle case,
Eisendrath was appointed Commissioner of Buildings in Chicago in 1893, a
job which he didn’t hang onto long, giving it up in 1894 because of “the
pressure of private business.”
Eisendrath’s plans can be seen in buildings across the city
and across the country. The 1896
Plymouth Building which stands immediately to the north of William LeBaron
Jenney’s Manhattan is Eisendrath’s most well known work in the city. It’s now a
newly renovated dormitory.
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| The Plymouth (right) and the Old Colony on Dearborn, south of Van Buren (JWB, 2007) |
But he also designed the Michael Reese Training School for
Nurses and the Michael Reese annex for women and children. Works outside Chicago range from Deadwood,
South Dakota where he designed the Franklin Hotel to New York City where he
planned the Stephen Wise Free
Synagogue at 30 West 68th Street in Manhattan.
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| Michael Reese Training School for Nurses (forgottenchicago.com) |
Eisendrath’s building on Lincoln Park shows the influence of
the two years that the architect spent with Louis Sullivan at the very onset of
his career. The building’s
entrances are set off with decorative terra cotta that are reflections of much
of Sullivan’s ornamental work.
The building also looks forward, combining many of the
characteristics of the Arts and Crafts movement and the influences that would
be so instrumental in the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. The low-pitched roofs, along with the pronounced,
overhanging eaves clearly are elements of this style. The decorative brackets under the eaves further emphasize
the style. Then there are the
design motifs in the brickwork at the top of the building, clearly hand-crafted
and labor-intensive, designs that Frank Lloyd Wright’s work picks up and expands
upon.
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| Shakespeare Coop -- Note the low pitch of the roof, overhanging eaves, decorative brackets under eaves, and horizontal orientation. (JWB, 2010) |
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| Arts and Crafts detailing at Shakespeare Coop (JWB, 2010) |
And . . . how beautifully the building fits its
location. This would have been
even more pronounced back in 1910.
Just across the street, built in 1908 sits Dwight Perkins’s Lincoln Park
Refectory, also in the Arts and Crafts style. Two years later the Perkins-designed Lion House at the zoo
was finished. Cutting edge design
– all three buildings – all within sight of one another.
All within sight of the next phase of architecture styling in the new century.
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1 comment:
The Shakespeare Building was building designed by Dwight
Perkins and John L. Hamilton former employees of the renowned architect Louis Sullivan. Simeon B. Eisendrath was the architect of the Plymouth Building.
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