So, Wolman suggested combining the two buildings.Īt the time, high-rises weren’t built for mixed uses. The Casino Club hemmed them in and people living in the apartments wouldn’t want to be looking straight into the windows of the office building, the architect said. Originally Wolman wanted to do two 70-story towers, one for apartments and the other for offices and retail.īut Graham, the architect, told Wolman two buildings wouldn’t work well. Prior to the February 1965 announcement, Khan, Graham and Wolman had been working together on a design for the site. The 22 months in between make up a fascinating chapter in Chicago’s architectural history. Construction began in December 1966, but Wolman was out after selling his interest to his major funder, the John Hancock Company. Wolman was a successful real estate developer in Washington, D.C., who had recently bought his favorite NFL team, the Philadelphia Eagles, when he swept into Chicago in February 1965 with news that he was going to build a 100-story tower at Michigan and Chestnut for $95 million. ![]() The Xes on the outside of the building provide all the structural support. The Hancock name remains an interesting part of the tower’s origin story, which involves not only Khan and Graham but also a brash developer named Jerry Wolman. The Boston-based life insurance company didn’t request help keeping the name alive. So while diehards may insist on continuing to call the building some version of “the Hancock,” they’re not doing anybody any favors. This was five years after the company’s naming rights deal expired. really is an icon of Chicago architecture, a field that has exported so many innovations to other cities and countries.Ī history lesson on the building’s name: The John Hancock Life Insurance Company, which built the tower and kept its name on it for half a century, in 2018 specifically requested its name be removed from the North Michigan Avenue tower. The Xes are part of the transformative change structural engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan and architect Bruce Graham, both working for the Chicago firm Skidmore Owings & Merrill, brought to the design of tall buildings in the mid-1960s. Some interesting videos about Marina City:įor more amazing architecture check this and other amazing buildings of Chicago on the map below or download my Free Architecture Guide of Chicago.Visually, those Xes climbing up the tower’s four sides combine with the structure’s trapezoidal shape and give the high-rise a memorable presence on the skyline. Find out more about living in Marina City at Nathan Choe’s Blog. The first of its kind, it truly was a city within a city. This is the symmetrical unit type where my friend lived.Įvery amenity imaginable could be found within – such as a swimming pool, gym, ice skating rink, bank, barbershop and even a grocery store. This is very symbolic because to Goldberg, this point of union was exactly where the core structure was: with the elevators, the meeting point. The structure is composed by a central reinforced concrete core (where the elevators are) and a radial disposure of the beams. Marina City is notable in that it is the first building in the United States to be constructed with tower cranes. The circle gave the highest ratio of usable floor space to exterior skin. Its total height is 587 feet (179m).Įach tower contains more than four hundred apartments and a continuous, upward-spiralling ramp of parking spaces. It is actually a complex of five structures: two residential towers (65 stories each, with the first 18 stories reserved for parking), an office building (10 stories), and a theatre building all standing upon a large commercial platform. Marina City was part of an effort to reintroduce downtown Chicago as an attractive place to live. It was designed as a self-contained town, full of residential and commercial units. The building complex, with its iconic corn cob towers, has identical floor plans. Built between 19 at a time when Chicagoans were fleeing to the suburbs, the hugely ambitious project was Goldberg’s collaborative attempt at urban revitalization, as he called it, “a city within a city.” Marina City is a 65-story mixed use residential and commercial building. What I really like about this building is that you can see how it looks by watching the tower next to you. ![]() I was very lucky to have a friend who lived there last year,so I had the chance to take this tour in person. One of the most iconic towers in the skyline of Chicago is the Marina City complex.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |