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| The Reid-Murdoch Building of 1914, a George C. Nimmons design that follows the tenets of the Chicago Plan of 1909 (JWB, 2011) |
Let’s return to the Reid-Murdoch story, a tale of
two merchants who became millionaires in the rapidly growing city of Chicago
and the great building that ultimately came to grace the north side of the
river between LaSalle and Clark Street.
Constructing a new warehouse at this location
made sense. The river in the early
1900’s still teemed with ships delivering hundreds of tons of produce each day
and the railroads ran almost directly to the site. On February 9, 1912 the Chicago Tribune
glowed about the selection of the site, “From a purely real estate point of
view the transaction is of notable importance, because of the fact that it
marks the removal of another large wholesale concern form the central district
to the north side.”
The paper also mentioned that the new warehouse
would me “made to carry out the idea of the “Chicago plan” in connection with
the buildings on the river. The
architect, George C. Nimmons, would set the building back a short distance from
the water’s edge, leaving room for a concrete dock. But that dock would be different from the unsightly affairs
that lined the river. It would be
built on a level with Clark and LaSalle streets and would extend the length of
the building so that people could enter the structure at any point along the
riverfront.
The plan was exactly what the Chicago Plan of
1909 specified for buildings along the river, and it was the plan that would
dictate the plans for most of the great river buildings that were to
follow. Just look at the open
spaces that separate such great buildings as the Wrigley Building, the
Merchandise Mart, The Chicago Daily News Building, and Tribune Tower from the
river. The new warehouse for the
company was planned as a trend-setter. And it was.
George Nimmons, the architect who designed the
million-dollar warehouse building, was prominent in Chicago architecture for a
half-century. He served as a
transitional figure, connecting the classical Beaux Arts style of the 1880’s
and 1890’s to the more streamlined style that would eventually lead to the
great Art Deco buildings of the 1920’s.
He was born in Wooster, Ohio in 1867 and began his study of architecture
in Europe before he had reached the age of 20.
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| Sleek, streamlined, functional -- the new style of design that the second generation of Chicago architects was looking for (JWB, 2011) |
He returned to the United States in 1885 and
entered the firm of Burnham & Root, where he worked as a draftsman for ten
years. In 1897 he left to form a
partnership with William K. Fellows, an association that lasted for 13 years. Nimmons & Fellows concentrated
largely on commercial and industrial designs. Sleek, An example of one such design can be found on the east side
of the North Branch of the Chicago River, today a residential building known as
River Bank Lofts. In 1903 the firm also designed the 20-room Prairie style home
for the President of Sears, Roebuck and Company, Julius Rosenwald, at 4901
South Ellis Avenue.
From 1910 until 1917 Nimmons worked alone,
forming a larger practice after that period known as Nimmons &
Company. The Franklin Building of
1912 (720 S. Dearborn), the C. P. Kimball & Company Building of 1913 (39th
and Michigan), the American Furniture Mart between 1923 and 1926 (680 N. Lake
Shore Dr.), as well as Reid-Murdoch were all designed during this phase of his
career.
From 1933 until 1945 Nimmons was the senior
partner in the firm of Nimmons, Carr & Wright. During this time he spent much of his time in Florida and
developed a new interest in designing and building scale-model sailing ships,
one of which was displayed at the Century of Progress Exposition. The architect died on June 17, 1947.
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| The soaring tower that holds the most notable feature of Reid-Murdoch, the four-sided illuminated clock (JWB, 2011) |
Of the style he used in the Reid-Murdoch
building, Nimmons wrote, “The characteristics of the style of treatment of
industrial buildings that is mostly in favor now are Gothic in character and
consist usually of piers marked on the exterior of the buildings, carried up
only to the point where the concentrated loads disappear, similar to buttresses
and also walls continued up without projecting cornices and terminated with
ornamental copings; the corners of the building are strengthened by the use of
piers heavier than the intermediate ones, the entrances emphasized by the use
of ornamental tracery and ornament, and the sprinkler tank enclosed in a tower
often placed at the main entrance and including one of the principal stairways. While such designs are Gothic in
character they are more and more exhibiting a freedom and originality that
promise in time to develop into a well-defined architectural style for American
industrial buildings.” [United State Department of the Interior, 1997]
And THERE is the point: a newfound freedom and originality that
would develop into a well-defined architectural style for American industrial
buildings. That’s what Louis
Sullivan was talking about. That
is what Perkins, Griffin, Mahoney and Wright were striving to achieve. And that’s what is going on in
Reid-Murdoch.
So the beautiful new addition to the old, working
river got built, and less than a year after its completion the river sent death
to its doors. The S. S. Eastland, docked across the river from the warehouse
was packed with 2,572 passengers on July 25, 1915 when at 7:28 a.m. it rolled
sharply to port, ending up on its side with hundreds of passengers trapped
underwater. 844 passengers, many
of them women and children, along with four crew members, died in the
disaster. The basement and first
floor of the Reid-Murdoch building were used as a temporary hospital and
morgue.
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| Reid-Murdoch was the first project on the river to adhere to the Chicago Plan of 1909 with the building set back from the river, a trend that would be repeated over and over (JWB, 2011) |
Business resumed after the ordeal and
Reid-Murdoch operated successfully until 1945 when it was acquired by the
Sprague Warner-Kenny Corporation and became part of Consolidated Grocers, one
of the nation’s largest food companies.
The plans were to operate Reid-Murdoch as a separate company but it
would become part of vast empire that included 52 branches in every part of the
country, a goliath that included 19 canneries, 15 pickle stations, and seven
grocery processing plants.
In effect, the story that began way back in
Dubuque in 1853 had come to an end.
A great building can have many lives, though, and
on March 7, 1953 the Tribune announced that Chicago
municipal court and county officials had agreed to ask the City Council to rent
three floors of the building to consolidate three traffic courts. Under the proposal three floors of the
building would be rented for $300,000 a year with a ten-year lease in effect. One million bucks was provided for the
necessary remodeling. When the
bids were opened in 1954, they came to twice that amount: $1,962,737.
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| Subtle Arts and Crafts brickwork decorates the upper reaches of a building designed as a warehouse (JWB, 2011) |
That was a pretty good chunk of change for a
building that Consolidated Foods would still be colleting rent on, so in 1955
the city agreed to buy the building for $2,130,000. There was some controversy about the plan with a group of
aldermen lobbying to build a new building along the just completed Congress Expressway, but Mayor Kennelly
eventually got what he wanted. It
served as the principal Traffic Court for the city until 1998.
Today the Friedman Properties (Preserving the
Past. Building the Future) owns
the property, and the firm’s corporate offices are located there. According to its website, Friedman put
extensive work into re-purposing the structure, “replacing missing historic
elements such as the large storefront windows with transoms, the original
pier-and-bay spacing, pedimented terra-cotta panels in the end bays, and the
transom above the banks of double-hung windows.” Principal tenants include the Britannica Corporation and the
World of Whirlpool, with a 30,000 square foot product experience center.
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| Chicago's Leading Lady glides past the nearly century-old Reid-Murdoch building on a beautiful early September afternoon (JWB, 2011) |
One thing that the restoration could not
accomplish was the replacement of the building’s westernmost corner bay, which
was gobbled up when the city embarked upon another project influenced by the
Chicago Plan of 1909, the widening of LaSalle Street. When that project began in September of 1927, the corner
pier was shaved off and a new corner pier was created to resemble the eastern
corner of the building. It was a
fairly sensitive attempt, and many people miss the fact that to the east side
of the tower there are five bays between the tower and the corner pier while
the west side only has four.
One thing that you can’t miss, though, is the
beauty of this river queen, still reigning over the river nearly one hundred
years after she was built.
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