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| The Montgomery Ward Warehouse on the Chicago River at 600 West Chicago (JWB, 2011) |
In
his Kindergarten Chats Louis Sullivan, the great architect and thinker, wrote: “it is the pervading law of all things
organic, and inorganic, of all things, physical and metaphysical, of all things
human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the
heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form
ever follows function. This is the
law.”
At
the beginning of the twentieth century this may have been the law to
Sullivan. But the law didn’t apply
to everyone. Architecture during
this period, a period that followed the first generation of great buildings in
Chicago, by the collision of two forces.
On
one side Sullivan and his crew argued for an architecture that spoke of its
time and place . . . and its
purpose. On the other side were
the keepers of tradition, who argued for design that ennobled the place where
it was built, a style that created a “city beautiful.”
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| Schmidt, Garden & Martin's design for the largest reinforced concrete building in the world when it was finished in 1908 (JWB, 2011) |
Of
course, this oversimplifies the case, and the temptation is to praise one or
damn the other, depending on how one’s tastes run. The bottom line is that the first ten or fifteen years of
the twentieth century were an amazingly eclectic and vital time in
Chicago.
This
vitality and eclecticism can be seen in a remarkable series of designs by a firm
that came together in 1906 – Schmidt, Garden & Martin. And none of the designs that the
partnership produced is more impressive than the Montgomery Ward warehouse at
600 West Chicago.
Richard
Ernest Schmidt was born in Bavaria in 1865 and came to Chicago with his family
after the Civil War. He studied
architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the first
architectural program in the country, a course of study patterned after the
curriculum at the Ecole des Beaux Arts.
He worked for a number of firms, including that of Charles Summer Frost,
before starting his own practice in 1887.
It was Schmidt who brought the business knowledge to Schmidt, Garden
& Martin that led to its great success.
Hugh
Mackie Gorden Garden was born in Toronto in 1873. At the age of 14 he moved with his family to Minneapolis,
where his father died, necessitating the young man’s employment as a draftsman
to support the family. The family
moved to Chicago in the 1880’s where the building boom promised better opportunities. Garden worked in the offices of some of
the greats – Sheply, Routan and Coolidge, Howard Van Doren Shaw, Henry Ives
Cobb, and Frank Lloyd Wright. His
association with the Chicago Architectural Club and the young designers at
Steinway Hall with their “Prairie Style” preferences influenced his career
immeasurably. (FInd more about the Steinway Hall designers here.) As the talented
designer, Garden complemented the business sense of Richard Schmidt perfectly, and they combined their talents
in 1895.
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| Modest terra cotta ornament, echoing the organic designs of Louis Sullivan and the Prairie Style designers (JWB, 2011) |
Eleven
years later Schmidt and Garden added a partner, Edgar Martin. The new partner was a skilled
structural engineer, a man well-versed in the problems of designing and
building large industrial buildings with state-of-the-art (in 1906) materials.
These
were the three men to whom Montgomery Ward, immersed in a decade-long struggle
to save Grant Park from those who would have it filled with great public
buildings that adhered to the classical tradition, turned. He must have made the decision
consciously, perhaps thinking . . . I’m asking for a warehouse here, a huge
warehouse, the biggest warehouse in the world. I don’t want a monument . . . I want something that will do
the work for which it is suited, an honest building that will say we’re moving
forward as a company and not looking back at a time when praetors and consuls
turned the lions loose on the gladiators.
It
was a great business decision, and it produced a great structure about which
Carl Condit, the architectural historian, has said, “This building stands by
itself as one of the most powerful works of utilitarian architecture that our
building art has produced.”
In
the next blog . . . a look at Montgomery Ward and his grand building at 600
North Chicago.
Posts
4 comments:
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My dad worked there,very interesting.
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