Connecting the Windy City

If you look back to my March 24 blog entitled The Fountain and the University, you will see the connection of New York architect Charles A. Platt to the planning of the University of Illinois.  

I first learned of Platt when I did some research on a fountain in the southwest corner of Bryant Park in New York City.  In the process I learned that Platt designed the master plan for the University of Illinois along with nine buildings that line the campus "quad."

Not bad for a guy who started his career as a landscape artist.  The connections continue.


Today, I began to research a building in my neighborhood that I love -- the Meeker Mansion at 3030 Lake Shore Drive.  The elder Meeker, Arthur Sr., doesn't radiate a lot of information.  Like the meatpacking and feed grain industries he controlled for Philip Danforth Armour, he lived, he prospered, and he died.







The Meeker mansion, a place that I have passed a hundred times, a brick and limestone gem, was designed by  -- Charles A. Platt.


That's right . . . the same Charles A. Platt who did the fountain and the university.

Now in its third life, the Meeker mansion is looking good these days. 


In 1945 the Helpers of the Holy Souls acquired the property and converted the mansion and coach house into living quarters while adding a chapel and a dormitory.  Then in 1993 the sisters invited AIDSCare, a residential facility for folks suffering from AIDS, to move in with them.

"We needed housing," said AIDSCare founder Jim Flosi, "and they had room . . . They only asked that we pay the utilities--gas, electricity, water." [Chicago Reader, July 8, 2005]

Then in April of 2005 the sisters sold the mansion to LR Development Co. for $21 million.  The chapel that the sisters added when they acquired the property along with an addition of the same vintage was torn down. [Chicago Tribune, August 14, 2005]


The mansion sits on a beautiful piece of property, removed from the hustle and bustle of the lakefront path, located on the other side of an underpass just across the street.  


The danger was that this block-wide piece of prime lakefront real estate would explode into another high rise property or a series of rowhouses and upscale single family homes.


That didn't happen, thankfully.  The mansion has been divided into  four and five-bedroom condominiums with 3.5 to 5.5 bathrooms in each of the four units.  It looks as good today as it must have looked when the Meekers moved in close to a hundred years ago.



Arthur Meeker's son, Arthur Meeker, Jr., was a writer whose most famous book, Prairie Avenue, was published in 1949.  He ended the book with these words, "Chicago was still there, though the strong old roosters had disappeared, leaving little to show for their efforts but their businesses, which, like Frankenstein's monsters, seemed to have achieved a ruthless life of their own, quite independent of their founders' undistinguished descendants."


The strong old roosters have disappeared.  Disappeared long ago.  But in many places throughout the city, their homes still proudly stand.  The Meeker mansion is one of them.

 
 

It's amazing the directions that I head when I sit down to think about some of these old buildings. I start one place, end up another, and the next thing you know I'm ordering a century-old hand colored print of Charles Tyson Yerkes's house from an archival joint in the hinterlands of Minnesota, an artifact that has absolutely nothing to do with the subject with which I began.

That's what happened couple nights ago when I started thinking about a photo I took a while back of the oldest public school building in Chicago. It's now an apartment building, all fixed up, looking good among the reclaimed homes on Magnolia just off Clybourn. It was called the Headley School -- that name still is on the façade.


It carried the name Nickersonville Primary School from its opening in 1875 until 1883, at which time it was named after Joel T. Headley, a respected author of several books on European history. As the memory of Headley faded, it was named the Mulligan Branch from 1918 to 1929 and the Thomas Branch from 1929-1933.

Somebody downtown must have gotten tired of answering questions about why the name of the school didn't match the name above the front door, because the school was named again after Headley in 1933 and carried the name until it closed in 1976, a little over a century after it opened.

We don't know the names of the original architects of the building. We can see, though, that the design is an attractive, yet efficient (and therefore economical) one. Thoughtful touches prevent it from being a three-story bore.

The center of the building is pulled away from the main mass, providing visual interest as well as an invitation to move through the front door. And look at the windows. How much different would this school be if the design had called for rectangular windows, rather than what we see here?

Notice that the curve of the windows becomes more dramatic on the third level, a small change that lifts our eyes toward the fine cast iron cornice that finishes the building. The cornice even includes a pediment over the central section, a nice classical touch that sets a tone -- this is a place for serious business. The pediment, as well as the cornice, would have cost a few extra bucks, but it makes a statement to the students and to the community.

The curved sandstone lintels, especially the large one over the front door that proclaims Public School, along with the carved name of the school a little higher and the date of its completion above that, help to break up the expanse of brick and windows while, again, focusing our attention on the front entrance.

Another nice touch is the string cornice that wraps around the building, an outward indication of the separation of functions within the school. Everything above the white cornice would have been classroom space; everything below it would have been for administrative and other specialized functions.

Headley looks like it would have been a good place to spend one's primary years. The windows are huge -- the classrooms would have been filled with natural light. If I had been a student here, I would have spent much of my time looking out those windows.

Now here's where one thing leads to another. A Google here -- a Google there -- the next thing you know you've been at the computer for three hours, your butt hurts, and you're still digging.

I found the 22nd Annual Report of the Chicago Board of Education for the Year Ending July 31, 1876 -- the first year of the school's operation. The Board put the school up for $27,153.82. The largest share of the cost, $9,924.25 was for masonry; carpentry came in second at $7,496.50. That iron cornice atop the building? It set the taxpayers back $1,339.50.

The school had 12 classrooms and eight teachers. $5,210.87 was the sum allotted for the teachers' salaries -- that's $651.86 a year for each teacher. The janitor was paid $700. But he had to keep the furnace running. That took 77 tons of hard coal at a cost $695. for that first year.

In 1985 the architectural firm of Bauhs and Dring designed a conversion that turned the old schoolhouse into upscale condominiums.

For just a shade under $800,000 you can grab a penthouse unit. A rooftop deck circles the entire roof, providing a 360-degree view of the city. Promotional photos for the unit clearly show how much light those old school windows allowed.




Pets are welcome, which is a change from the old days, another discovery I made.

On December 24, 1894 The Chicago Tribune reported that Justice Everett fined John Noonan, the janitor of the Headley School, ten bucks for violation of the humane statute. Apparently, sometime toward the end of November of that year Noonan threw a dog from a second floor window.

The teacher in the room probably couldn't have done much to stop him . . . he made more than she did.

Every time I look out my window I see him. Every time I walk to the bus stop I see him. And every time I head up the street to the grocery store or the drugstore I see him.

Alexander Hamilton.

Dressed in threadbare gold leaf and standing on a pedestal at the northernmost section of Lincoln Park in the triangle formed by Diversey, Sheridan and Stockton.

How the statue ended up in this place, 31 floors beneath our living room window, is a story that goes back over 80 years.

In 1928 Kate Sturges Buckingham put one million dollars into an Alexander Hamilton Trust Fund, the purpose of which was to mount a memorial to a man she felt was an underestimated American hero.

Of course, you recognize Buckingham’s name -- the most popular attraction in Chicago’s Grant Park is the Buckingham Fountain, a one million dollar gift to the city from Buckingham along with a $300,000 endowment to support the fountain’s continuing operation. Dedicated to the people of Chicago, the fountain was built to honor her brother, Clarence, who died suddenly at the relatively young age of 58.

Buckingham, who never married, was born to a family that was very much a part of Chicago history. The Fulton elevator, the city’s first grain elevator, was built by her grandfather, Solomon Sturges. Her father, Ebenezer Buckingham, was also responsible for the construction of grain elevators and elevated railroads in the city.

Buckingham eschewed the life of the wealthy. Instead, she turned to philanthropy. She was called “Godmother to opera” and was a generous patron of the arts. Whenever the subject of her generosity was raised, she responded, “I did no more than I ought to do as a good Chicagoan.” [Owens, Carole. Pittsfield—Gem City in the Gilded Age]

When she died in 1937, she left $500,000 to her friends and relatives and $126,000 to her maid and chauffeur, the children of her caretaker, her nurses, and the doormen and elevator men at her Chicago residence. In today’s dollars, that’s over $8.9 million. Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, is the former estate of Kate Buckingham.

Anyway, Buckingham pledged the million bucks to the Chicago Park District to honor Hamilton, who she felt had put the United States on a sound financial footing and had made “its glorious future possible.” [Chicago Tribune, October 28, 1993] Park District officials suggested a number of locations, but Buckingham, for one reason or another, found each one unsuitable.

Work began, however, on the statue and the architectural setting on which it was to be placed. John Angel, one of the most prolific and highly regarded sculptors of his day, was selected to create the figure of Hamilton. Angel’s work can be found at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and St. John the Divine in New York City, at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., and on the Cook County Courthouse right here in Chicago.

The architect chosen was Eliel Saarinen. His groundbreaking entry for the Tribune Tower competition of 1923 was widely viewed as the best entry even though the New York firm of Hood and Howells was awarded the commission.

Saarinen created an extraordinary monument with 115-foot columns, a tad oversized for the nine-foot statue John Angel had been hired to create. You can see Saarinen’s design. It hangs in Architecture and Design Gallery 285 at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Well, you can imagine how the design tickled the fancy of a woman so understated that she had her name removed from the Social Register. To say the least, Ms. Buckingham was not pleased. “My statue would be lost,” she said, noting that the monument to Hamilton "shouldn’t look like a modern skyscraper.” [Chicago Tribune, October 28, 1993]

Then in December of 1937, after spending over $41,000 on the project, Kate Sturges Buckingham joined Alexander Hamilton in the Great Beyond. Her will directed the trustees of the Alexander Hamilton Trust Fund, two of whom were directors of the Art Institute of Chicago, to carry out the work that she had started. The will stated further that if contracts for the project were not completed within ten years, the one million big ones would go to the Art Institute. [The Milwaukee Sentinel, May 13, 1951]

Conflict of interest? What conflict of interest?

Within four years after Buckingham’s death, a larger 13-foot statue had been cast in bronze at the cost of $50,000. Still, no agreeable sight could be found after continuing meetings with the Chicago Park District, and Hamilton was carried off to a warehouse.

In 1943 came the inevitable lawsuit. The States Attorney for Cook County sued the Board of Trustees, accusing them of slowing the progress of the Hamilton project so that the lions of the Art Institute could wrap their paws around the million.

On April 16, 1943 Judge Benjamin P. Epstein decreed that the years of the war, however long it lasted, should be regarded as a moratorium with the terms of the will to be resumed at the war’s end.

Judge Epstein, by the way, once held an entire jury in contempt of court after the individual on trial, along with the sheriff in charge of the jury, took the panel on a day trip of local saloons which included “many a beer, dancing, attempted petty larceny of a radio and a bar stool.” [Time Magazine, May 3, 1937]

What’s not to love about Chicago?

On May 7 of 1947 the project received yet another setback when Park Board President, James H. Gately, announced that the trustees of the fund and the board could not come to agreement on placing Hamilton’s statue in Grant Park as part of a larger music court. [Chicago Tribune, May 8, 1947]

Then, finally, 24 years after Kate Buckingham made the offer, the statue was unveiled in its present location on July 6, 1952, just five months short of the deadline that Judge Epstein handed out years earlier.

Chauncey McCormick, chairman of the Alexander Hamilton Memorial Trust, acted as master of ceremonies. John Angel was on the dais along with the architects of the new memorial, Samuel A. Marx, Noel L. Flint, and Charles W. Schonne. Brigadier General Pierpont M. Hamilton, a descendant of Alexander Hamilton and holder of the Congressional Medal of Honor gave a speech along with Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen. [Chicago Tribune, July 5, 1952]

The Tribune described the architectural setting for the statue as a “modern fortress of limestone and granite.” A pylon of polished black granite rose 78 feet above the ground. It towered above a three-level plaza of Indiana limestone and polished black and red granite.

They had to surface poor Alex in 14-karat gold leaf so that someone would notice he was there.

In late 1993 the whole affair was dismantled. Neighbors had complained that it attracted a bad element. It was marred with graffiti. And it had deteriorated so badly that a half-million dollars was needed to make it structurally sound again.

Julia Sniderman, the Park District’s preservation planning supervisor at the time, said, “I’ve gotten a lot of calls from people in the neighborhood who have wondered what was going on. But when I tell them that the statue will be back on a smaller pedestal, they’re relieved. I keep waiting for someone to be really upset, but so far it’s been really positive.”

Erna Tranter, director of Friends of the Parks, said, "That thing was horrible."

Today Alexander Hamilton, as much bronze as he is gold, the man whose life prompted the philanthropic Kate Sturges Buckingham to pledge a million dollars to honor him, sits in the northwest corner of Lincoln Park atop a simple polished red granite base, dwarfed by the dark and menacing muscularity of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and his eagle just to the north.

Just my opinion, of course, but looking out my window at Mr. Hamilton's coat tails, I don’t think old Kate got her money’s worth.