Thursday, May 1, 2014

Miami Herald Building Update

Back in the day when Hancock had no top (Google image)
Been good to know you . . . (Wikipedia photo)
Some time ago I wrote about the Miami Herald building and a push to protect it by providing it with some sort of historic designation.  At the time I compared the that challenge to the effort to save Bertrand Goldberg’s Prentice Women’s Hospital in Chicago through a similar strategy.  You can find that blog here.

Well, Prentice is just about gone now, the towers licked down to the base of the structure like a child’s ring pop.  And the other day the Miami Herald building, at least part of it, got itself blown up.  So it’s on the way out, too.

Beside the unfortunate demolition of the two buildings that links the two cities, there is another architectural tie-in.  The Miami Herald headquarters was designed along the same Mid-Century Modern lines that the Sun Times building brought to the Chicago River in 1958, the two buildings designed by the same firm, that of C. F. Murphy.  Look at the two side by side, and the pedigree shows.

The Sun Times building is gone now, kicked off the lot to make room for Trump Tower, which seems like a fair trade.  Maybe the extermination of the Miami Herald building will yield similar results.   It’s hard to argue against a $236 million dollar resort complex in ritzy-glitzy land.

Still it’s tough to see the thing blown up.  We might have accepted the building somewhere in Chicago if they had just asked. 


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