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Historic Preservation Lab,
Champlain Bldg.
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Pleasant Home Habs Title |
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Michigan Bldg. Ballroom
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1920s Chicago Bungalow |
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Student Work
Students in the Historic Preservation program pursue coursework in
four key areas: Design, Conservation, History, and Planning. Our program
works with the historic preservation community in Chicago and beyond
to insures that student work can have an impact on real projects. The
following are examples of recent student work in each of the four areas
of concentration.
Design
Peterson and Pipal
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Instructor Charlie Pipal’s Physical Documentation class continues
to produce award-winning HABS measured drawings of historic properties
in and around Chicago. In 1999, the students’ drawings of Quinn
African Methodist Episcopal Church were honored by a visit from John
Burns, FAIA and an Honorable Mention in the national Peterson Prize
competition. In 2000, the drawings of the National Historic Landmark
Pleasant Home (1897, George W. Maher) won a John Hedges Preservation
Award from The Pleasant Home Foundation. The 2001 drawings of Frank
Lloyd Wright’s incomparable Coonley House in Riverside (1908)
received a very high score (but alas no prize!) from the Peterson committee.
The Fall 2002 class has undertaken the Grosse Pointe lighthouse with
equal vigor!
Old Heidelberg
Restaurant Facade |
Our Restoration Design Studio, taught by Program Founder Don Kalec, has consistently
produced high-quality restoration drawings that can guide building owners
seeking to recapture the historic qualities of their landmark buildings.
Students prepared drawings of the 1933 Old Heidelberg Restaurant facade,
which were used by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago when it
preserved the facade as part of its redevelopment of Block 36 in the
Loop, featuring a new student dormitory.
Conservation
A new elective course taught by Neal Vogel, provides a fabulous hands-on
preservation experience for our graduate students. Complimenting existing
courses such as Surface Conservation, Building Pathology, and Building
Conservation,
Restoration Methods exposes students to real world work environments via
company visits and tours, hands-on projects, and team collaboration. Individual
projects enabled students to research an architectural element and either
research the methods required to restore it, or actually restore the piece
back to its original condition.
A sadly neglected rowhouse on south Wabash was used as an initial worksite.
The students mixed lime mortar, ground out damaged mortar, and repointed
after a demonstration by U.S. Heritage and Marion Construction. A visit
to Dutka Design Studio illustrated the fine points of recreating balustrades
as well as the criteria involved in pricing - and yes, the students all
had a chance to operate the lathe.
Machinery encounters were continued at Galloy Van Etten, where everyone
took turns texturing stone surfaces with pneumatic tools. The afternoon
was spent at the private studio of Atelier Jouvence Stonecarving, where
elaborate carving techniques were demonstrated. Later in the semester
a visit was paid to Bill Klopsch's stained glass studio in Skokie. The
detailed discussion of art/ stained glass history and repair techniques
was coupled with the opportunity to work on a few windows from St. Luke's
Church in Evanston. The class also took a field trip to observe stained
glass production at the Kokomo Opalescent Glass Company in Indiana.
According to alum and Program Assistant Heather Plaza-Manning: "Students
who hunger for a more intimate experience with buildings and materials
should most definitely take this course!" History
729 Maxwell
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Students study not only architectural and social history to develop
insights into the important cultural aspects of historic preservation.
While preservation spent much of the 20th century focused on architecture,
the conservation of cultural milestones and social landmarks is defining
preservation in the 21st century.
Architectural history classes investigate more than artistic innovations
and grand public buildings. Much preservation focuses on the vernacular,
the everyday places where people lived, worked, worshipped and relaxed
through history. Chicago provides not only examples of the first skyscrapers
and the first Prairie Style houses, but myriad ordinary buildings inspired
by these major works. As these everyday buildings become more rare,
their preservation becomes more important. Today more people are trying
to preserve postwar America as well. Our popular course From Lustron
to Neon: Evaluating the Recent Past is taught by architects Anne Sullivan,
Carol Dyson, and Anthony Rubano.
Planning
Knowing how to preserve a building is useless if no buildings are being
saved. Preservation planning courses convey an understanding of the
legal, political, and economic circumstances surrounding the act of
historic preservation. Students in the 1999 Preservation Planning Studio
class prepared a survey of historic structures for Berwyn, an historic
suburb with the largest concentration of 1920s Chicago bungalows. The
final study was presented to the City Council and Mayor as a tool for
local preservationists.
Automobile Row
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The Fall, 2002 Preservation Planning class of first-year students and Preservation
Planning Studio class got together several times this semester to hear
lunchtime lectures by alumni practicing in the field. Michael Fus (1995),
architect for the Chicago Park District, talked about his restoration
of the 1907 Prairie Style Humboldt Park boathouse, while Jim Guelcher
(2000) discussed his work manning the Calumet Regional office of Historic
Landmarks Foundation of Indiana. Ellen Shubart (2000) talked about fighting
sprawl with the Campaign for Sensible Growth in November.
31 Street Studio |
The two classes got together once more in December to hear from the Commissioner
of Planning for the City of Chicago, Alicia Berg. Invited by Planning
Studio Instructor Jim Peters, himself a former Deputy Commissioner for
Landmarks, Commissioner Berg was refreshingly candid about the importance
of preservation to her own planning experience and to the department as
a whole. Berg came up in the Chicago Planning Department and worked on
economic incentives for landmarks in the 1990s. Her key moment came when
the department was proceeding toward a façade preservation of the early
artist’s studio Tree Studios and Berg “couldn’t believe it.” She then proceeded
to figure out an economic and financial plan that allowed the city to
go back and fashion a new deal that preserved not only Tree Studios but
the adjacent Medinah Temple, a 1912 masonic auditorium that will become
a furniture showroom. Berg noted that Medinah Temple - which preservationists
had been willing to sacrifice - was more popular with the general public.
More importantly, Berg opined that the current popularity of preservation
in Chicago was a reaction to the poor quality and high density of new
development during the current building boom. Students also got an insight
when she offered that the city would “do something soon” about the “orange” rated
buildings in the city’s comprehensive landmarks survey, a currently unprotected
category. Sure enough, two days later, Commissioner Berg and Mayor Daley
announced a new 90-day demolition delay that could help save some 6,000
“orange” buildings citywide. The issue grew in the last year after an "orange"
building, the 1927 Chicago Mercantile Exchange, was issued a demolition
permit.
Jim Peters’ Planning Studio class presented
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their survey and report to the Glen Ellyn city council, completing
a semester-long project in the western suburb, which is beset by teardowns
like so many other communities nationwide. Last year, Peters’
class completed a survey and designation report for the Ukrainian Village
neighborhood district in Chicago, and the district was then made an
official city landmark this year. This is the second Chicago Landmark
district proposed and adopted following groundwork by School of the
Art Institute preservation students. The other district, Motor Row,
became a Chicago Landmark in 2000.
Tours and Lectures
This fall also featured several special events, including guest lecturers
and special tours. The highlight was an end-of-semester tour of Mr.
Seymour Persky's architectural collection in Chicago. Mr. Persky, a
longtime Chicago preservationist, has amassed an unparalleled collection
that includes numerous Frank Lloyd Wright designed windows and furnishings,
including a full dining room set; many fragments from demolished buildings
by Louis Sullivan, including the Chicago Stock Exchange and the 1907
Babson House. Students got a chance to see original renderings by Wright,
Hugh Ferris, Marion Mahony Griffin; grillwork from Hector Guimard; and
a series of Mies van der Rohe chairs and furniture. The stunning collection's
highlights the sculpture of Alfonso Ianelli, including his famous sprites
from Midway Gardens and a frieze panel for the Woodbury County Courthouse.
Program Director Vincent Michael presented Mr. Persky with a small replica
of the lions that stand outside the Art Institute's museum, inscribed
to Mr. Persky as a "Lion of Preservation". His name is familiar
to members of the Society of Architectural Historians from the 1892
Charnley-Persky House (designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for Adler &
Sullivan) which he donated for the Society's headquarters.
Instructor Rolf Achilles again offered several special extracurricular
tours this fall, including a trip to MIlwaukee, and an overnight excursion
to Nauvoo and Bishop Hill, historic communities that represent the communitarian
impulse that swept across America in the early 19th century and led
to the creation of several utopian towns. Bishop Hill was founded by
Swedes and resembles contemporaneous Shaker communities in the aesthetic
of its furniture designs and communal production techniques. Nauvoo
was the first Zion of the Mormons, the Church of Jesus Christ of the
Latter Day Saints. A massive temple was erected in the 1830s, only to
be destroyed after the murder of Mormon founder Joseph Smith and the
migration of most of the community west to Utah with Brigham Young in
the 1840s. Students visited the recently rebuilt temple and the many
historic buildings in Nauvoo, which provide a living encyclopedia of
Greek Revival architectural details and forms.
In November 2002, Helene Lipstadt of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology spoke on Memory and What Are We to Make of it?, discussing
the interesting topic of collective memory and memorialization with
a focus on Luytens' World War I monument at Thiepval in the Marne. In
December 2002, Christopher Vernon of the University of Western Australia
gave an excellent talk on the landscape architecture of Walter Burley
Griffin, who designed the new capitol of Canberra in 1913.
Thesis
Every student completes a master's thesis for graduation. The thesis
represents an original research project in one or more of the four program
areas. Projects range from the documentation and re-use analysis of
a single structure to plans for historic districts, building materials
study and analysis, design projects, and studies of the legal, philosophical
or economic underpinnings of historic preservation.
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