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| 1,323, 000 square feet of exquisite space that hugs the river at 600 W. Chicago (JWB, 2010) |
Aaron Montgomery
Ward was born in February of 1843 in Chatham, New Jersey to Sylvester and Julia
Ward. When he was eight-years-old,
the family moved to Niles, Michigan where he went to public school until he reached
the age of 14. At that point he
went to work in a barrel factory for 25 cents a day before moving on to work in
a brickyard. Several years later
he moved to St. Joseph, Michigan where he worked in a general merchandise store
for five bucks a month plus his board. Within three years he was put in charge
of the establishment and his paycheck had increased 20 times over – to 100
dollars a month.
Ward moved to
Chicago in 1865 with this merchandising experience to recommend him. He entered the employ of Field, Palmer
& Leiter, where he remained for two years. With the experience he gained from working with three men
who would become giants in Chicago merchandising and industry, he left, first
to work in a wholesale dry goods business and then to serve as a traveling
salesman for Walter M. Smith & Co., a St. Louis firm.
A year after the
Chicago fire of 1871, Ward’s life changed. He married Elizabeth Cobb of Kalamazoo, Michigan and he
started the first big mail order business in the world in a loft over a livery
stable on Kinzie Street between Rush and State. Forming a partnership with his brother-in-law, George R.
Thorne, Ward began working on his goal of eliminating the middleman and selling
directly to the thousands of rural customers flooding the rapidly expanding
western United States, people who were at the time being charged exorbitant
rates for goods of inferior quality.
The firm began with one clerk.
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| Schmidt, Garden & Martin designed the sprawling complex on the river at Chicago Avenue with no apologies for the unadorned way that it mirrored the function of the business inside (JWB, 2011) |
By the time of his death on December 7 of 1913, the little one-clerk operation above the livery stable on Kinzie Street had become a business that generated 40 million dollars a year. The company had branches in Kansas City, New York, Portland and Fort Worth and employed 6,000 workers.
Perhaps even more
important than his unrivalled success as a merchant was the legacy he left to
Chicago, his one-man crusade to save the city’s lakefront. But that’s a story
for another time . . . perhaps when we work our way down to 6 North Michigan Avenue, an 1898 tower
that Montgomery Ward built from a design by Richard Schmidt and Hugh Garden,
the same partners who, along with Edgar Martin, would design the sprawling
warehouse for Ward on the edge of the river.
And how about that
warehouse? Finished in 1908, it
was the largest reinforced concrete building in the entire universe, the
largest floor space under one roof in the United States with 30.5 acres of
room. Influenced heavily by the
Prairie Style with which Hugh Garden was so familiar after his association with
the young architects in the Steinway Building, the warehouse sprawled along the
river, such a large structure that workers in the building wore roller skates
while filling orders.
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| When it was completed, this was the largest reinforced concrete building in the world (JWB, 2010) |
Just after it was
finished The Architectural Record
wrote of the new warehouse, “. . . there is evidence of a definite attempt .
. . to express the function of the
different buildings and more particularly there is a sincerity in the use of
materials in expressing the structural facts that is a step toward the
fulfillment of the hope just expressed.”
A definite attempt
to express the function of the buildings?
A sincerity in the use of materials in expressing the structural facts?
Sound familiar?
That’s right . .
. “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.”
Schmidt,
Garden & Martin followed THE LAW.
It was the law Louis Sullivan brought down from his tower on Congress and
handed to the young men and women who worked together on the top floors of the
Steinway Building just around the corner.
And
that law was applied to Montgomery Ward’s massive warehouse on an unparalleled
scale. The floor area measured
1,323,000 square feet. The
building was 731 feet long, 275 feet deep at its widest point, tapering to 153
feet on Chicago Avenue. Nine
stories high, The Architectural Record called It “a repetition of a monotony truly
appalling.”
That
last statement was not meant to be nearly as damning as it sounds today. The journal in which it appeared made
the point that this was a new kind of building . . . “It will be noticed that these qualifications are
functional, structural and economical, uninfluenced by any consideration for
architectural display or effect.
Indeed, beyond a natural desire for an effect of stability and order,
one might say that in this building architectural expression was not wanted.”
 |
| Notice the clear division between office space on the first three levels and utilitarian space above (JWB, 2011) |
The
obvious division of the building further advances our understanding of how it
functioned when it opened. The
first three floors of the structure, for example, feature larger windows than
the floors above and these lower floors are grouped together with piers that run
through all three stories. Here is
where we find what little ornament there is on the building . . . the terra
cotta details that top the piers on the third level and the terra cotta
spandrels between the windows on the second and third levels.
These
floors were given up to the executive and working departments of Ward’s vast
enterprise and their treatment distinguished them from the storage floors of
the six floors of warehouse space above them.
Again
The Architectural Record recognizes that this is a new kind of design, “It states the
facts with perfect candor; of repetition and order it makes rhythm; from
monotony it draws repose, and always in its form it is plastic.”
Rhythm,
repose and plasticity . . . you can see those three attributes in this great
building to this day. It is, over
a hundred years after is was built, as vital as it was back in 1908.
Back
In February of this year the building sold for big bucks, not surprising since
the immense space inside 600 West Chicago is almost fully leased. In 2003 the
city invested $28 million in Tax Increment Financing funding to redevelop the
building, and the plan took hold.
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| Over a century later . . . still an imposing presence in the city that grew up around it (JBW, 2011) |
The
building today houses a variety of businesses – ranging from the upscale Asian
restaurant, Japonais, to the unbelievably successful Groupon, which began in
just a couple of offices at 600 West Chicago in November of 2008 and as what Forbes
Magazine called
“the fastest growing company ever” attracted 13 million subscribers while
expanding its operation to 85 North American markets and 29 countries, hiring
more than 1,200 people in the process.
In
2010 Eric Lefkofsky, one of Groupon’s founders, said, “600 West is a triumphant
example of the entrepreneurial spirit of our city.” It is today just as it was back in 1908.
The
law hasn’t changed.
Posts
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