FEATURE image: FISHER BUILDING, 343 S. Dearborn Street, view from the south. Author’s photograph, December 2017.
The 1895–96 Fisher Building represents a pivotal triumph in early skyscraper design, demonstrating how Charles B. Atwood’s flamboyant Gothic Revival aesthetics combined with Edward Clapp Shankland’s rapid steel-frame engineering to evolve the glass-and-terra-cotta formulas pioneered by the Reliance Building (1895) into Chicago’s oldest surviving 18-story-plus landmark.
Fisher Building (1895-1896), looking east. To the left is Burnham & Root and Holabird & Roche’s Monadnock Building (1891-1893) and to the right is Holabird and Roche’s Old Colony Building (1893-1894). In the background is Graham, Anderson, Probst & White’s bright red international style CNA Center (1972). September 2015. Author’s photograph,
Structural engineer Edward Clapp Shankland managed the deep-pile foundation design and rapid steel-framing work, allowing the building’s first 13 stories to rise in just two weeks.
Daniel Hudson Burnham, c. 1890. In 1873 Burnham and Root entered into partnership in Chicago. In 1894 Burnham reorganized his office to include, among other partners, Charles B. Atwood who designed the Fisher Building.
The success of the 14-story Reliance Building at 32 N. State Street built by Daniel H. Burnham (1846-1912) and John Wellborn Root (1850-1891) in 1890-91 and Burnham & Co. in 1894-95 led directly to the construction of the 18-story Fisher Building in 1895. (The final two stories were added over a decade later during its 1907 expansion).
The Fisher Building was also designed for Burnham & Co. by Charles B. Atwood (1849-1895). The Fisher Building was three stories taller than the Reliance Building and possessed even more flamboyant Gothic detailing as it is sheathed in golden terra cotta on its visible façades.
Reliance Building (1890-1895), Chicago. September 2015. Author’s photograph. 87% 7.78mb DSCN1939 (2)
Built directly following the success of the landmark Reliance Building, the Fisher Building was constructed four stories taller (originally standing at 18 stories compared to the Reliance’s 14) and sheathed in a highly decorative golden terra cotta.
Charles B. Atwood c.1880. Public Domain.
The Fisher Building’s façade with its depictions of sea creatures in homage to the building’s namesake, Lucius G. Fisher (1843-1916), an Illinois paper company magnate and architect, was painstakingly restored and adapted for contemporary use in 2001. The rectangular prism with its Gothicized ornamentation sits on 25-foot piles under spread foundations engineered by Edward Clapp Shankland (1854-1924).
Ed Shankland was Daniel Burnham’s structural engineer through 1898 and worked on the Reliance Building and the Fisher Building. Public Domain.
In the mid-1890s, the skyscraper was erected quickly with pride. The steel frame’s first 13 stories were erected in two weeks. The building has oriel windows and engaged colonettes at its corner piers. In 1907, a 2-story vertical addition was built, raising the building to 20 stories, alongside a matching 20-story northern tower expansion by architect Peter J. Weber with Shankland as structural engineer.
Lucius Fisher (1843-1916). Born in Wisconsin, Fisher was an Illinois paper magnate who commissioned Daniel Burnham and Company to build the 18-story, 275-foot-tall Fisher Building in the Chicago Loop in 1895. Completed in 1896, the structure was later expanded in 1907 with a two-story vertical addition and a matching northern tower. Following this expansion, the landmark Fisher Building stands today as the oldest extant 20-story building in Chicago. Public Domain.
In 2002 the main entrances on Dearborn Street and Plymouth Court were recreated. Over 1000 wood-frame windows were replaced or repaired and over 6000 terra-cotta pieces were also replaced. May 2015. Author’s photograph.
Reorganized into Daniel Burnham’s office in 1894, partner Charles B. Atwood designed the Fisher Building with intricate Gothic details and whimsical sea creature motifs as a nod to paper magnate Lucius G. Fisher.
Fisher Building (1895-86) at Plymouth Court and Van Buren Street, looking northwest. October 2017. Author’s photograph,
Completed in 1896, the structure claims the title of the oldest surviving 20-story building in the city of Chicago.
SOURCES:
AIA Guide to Chicago, 2nd Edition, Alice Sinkevitch, Harcourt, Inc., Orlando, 2004, pps. 62-63.
The Sky’s The Limit: A Century of Chicago Skyscrapers, Jane H. Clarke, Pauline A. Saliga, John Zukowsky, New York: Rizzoli, 1990, pps. 33-35.
Chicago’s Famous Buildings, 5th Edition, Franze Schulze and Kevin Harrington, The University of Chicago Press, 2003, pp. 82-83.
Frank A. Randall, History of Development of Building Construction in Chicago, Second Edition, Revised and Expanded by John D. Randall, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1999, pps. 37 and 164-65.
FEATURE Image: 124 Scottswood Road, Riverside, Illinois, 1871, by William LeBaron Jenney (1832-1907). A full description of this house is in the post. June 2022. Author’s photograph.
Riverside, Illinois, is not simply an early suburb of Chicago but one of America’s most significant planned communities, where the visionary landscape design of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux created a setting that attracted generations of distinguished architects, producing an extraordinary architectural legacy that spans Gothic Revival, High Victorian Gothic, Queen Anne, Richardsonian Romanesque, Prairie School, and other styles.
John P. Walsh, 2022-23. All rights reserved. All text and photos are the property of the author, except for materials explicitly credited as public domain or licensed content.
INTRODUCTION.
The location of today’s Riverside, Illinois, has been an active and important historical area since before the 17th century. It was part of an active trading route and the center for Native American Indian settlements – The Green Bay, Barry Point, Portage Trails, and numerous smaller Indian trails, all passed through the area. It was only a couple of miles from the so-called Chicago Portage which connected Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River centuries prior to the building of the I&M Canal before 1850. French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet passed by Riverside in 1673 when they were shown the portage by Native Americans. The Chicago Portage is a National Historic Site because it opened the western continent to trade and settlement as well as became the key to the founding and development of Chicago, just 11 miles away.
Riverside was originally inhabited by the Illinois and Miami Indians. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries the Potawatomi became the dominant tribe together with the Chippewa and Ottawa and formed an alliance called the “Council of Three Fires.” These tribes lived on wild game and roots, but later adapted to farming, with fields of corn, beans, and squash.
During these many centuries, Indian burial grounds and encampments were located in Riverside on grounds besides the Des Plaines River and towards the east to today’s Fairbank Road.
The state of Illinois was founded in 1818. For the next 24 years, the Illinois volunteer army fought local native American tribes and forced them to sign treaties and migrate west of the Mississippi.
After the Indians were first forced off their land by treaty in the early 1800’s, brothers David and Barney Lawton (or Laughton) came to the area from Michigan and established an outpost in Riverside in 1827 or 1828. Into the 1840s Illinois was the edge of the wilderness. These fur traders chose the area for similar reasons that the Native Americans had – its proximity to the Chicago Portage and the convergence of established trails whose traffic made it conducive to a thriving trading business.
Riverside grew from an important Native American and transportation corridor into one of America’s earliest planned suburban communities.
The Scout Cabin on the Des Plaines River in Riverside, Illinois, is situated in an historic area of Native American and pioneer settlements. February 2023. Author’s photograph.
In July 1832 the U.S. Government sent General Winfield Scott (1786-1866) to help with the Black Hawk War that started in April of that year and ended in August. That short war also involved a young 23-year-old captain from New Salem, Illinois, named Abraham Lincoln. Upon leaving Chicago, Scott and his army camped in Riverside along the Des Plaines River for several days and then marched further west. Scottswood Road, one of Riverside’s primary residential arteries, is named after the general.
In 1831, the first white permanent settlers came to Lawtons’ Tavern in Aux Plaines (the name for Riverside then) and settled in the first houses west of Chicago. Once Gen. Scott’s military campaign was over, he returned to Chicago and dispersed the volunteers. Federal law required the state to have a standing army, so the state legislature passed a law requiring counties to form militia. In 1834, Cook County formed the first militia when Stephen Forbes, Cook County’s first sheriff, called up volunteers to Laughton Tavern. Over 1000 enterprising men assembled in Riverside and elected Jean Baptiste Beaubien (1787-1864) the first colonel of the Cook County Militia.
The first stage of modern transit development was the Southwest Plank Road (later Route 66) completed from Chicago to Riverside in 1849. The road, called Ogden Avenue today, was eventually extended to Naperville, Illinois. It was operated as a toll road whose proceeds went to the private concerns that built it. Toll amounts depended on whether the traveler was a four-horse vehicle or a single horse and rider. Since its installation, the plank road has been a successful endeavor as it was the only road through areas that were often inaccessible.
Commercial enterprises in this period included additional taverns that offered lodging and board for travelers and their horses. There was also a brewery and distillery.
A bend of the Des Plaines River in Riverside, Illinois. February 2023. Author’s photograph.
Riverside was mostly wooded tracts and farmland until the Civil War when the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad built a rail line through the area in 1863. With the rail a group of businessmen in 1869 formed the Riverside Improvement Company and set out to develop “a perfect village in a perfect setting.”
These Riverside businessmen hired landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) and Calvert Vaux (1824-1895), who had previously designed Manhattan’s Central Park, to design one of America’s first planned suburban communities. Their innovative plan set a template for suburban community planning such as curvilinear streets and modern amenities. Their vision was to design a mostly rural community with the conveniences of urban life such as utilities and broad streets. Whereas these curvilinear streets were utilized to fit an expansive community into limited open space it was also inspired by the community’s relationship to its natural environment, particularly the curves of the abutting Des Plaines River.
In addition to its legendary landscape architects (like Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux) and world-renowned residential architects (such as Frank Lloyd Wright), the development of Riverside, Illinois relied heavily on civil engineers, sanitation and drainage planners, and bridge/infrastructure architects.
Portrait of Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903). Public Domain.
Calvert Vaux (1824-1895). Public Domain.
The 1869 plan by Olmsted and Vaux established curving streets, parks, and a design philosophy that integrated architecture with the natural landscape of the Des Plaines River.
The design of Riverside included important public spaces including a central square and park system that contained several large parks and scores of small triangular parks scattered through the village.
General Plan of Riverside · Olmsted, Vaux & Co. Landscape Architects 1869. Public Domain.
By 1871, Riverside had several larger homes, the water tower, and one of the country’s first multi-shop arcade buildings. There was a church, train depot, and grand hotel. Following the Chicago Fire in October 1871 there was a time of regional financial panic accompanied by frenzied renewed building. In the wake of Riverside Improvement Company going out of business, local Riverside residents came together to see Olmsted and Vaux’s design plan completed and built upon.
The Wesencraft residence is Riverside’s oldest home. It is located at 78 Pine Avenue on the north side of the railroad tracks. Public Domain.
Riverside grew slowly in its first decades but by the 1920s and 1930s had doubled and tripled its population of mostly middle class and upper middle Chicago commuters. This bedroom community grew steadily until its peak in 1970 (10,357 residents). Since then, Riverside’s population has dropped slightly and leveled off to a lower growth number so that by 2020 there were nearly 9,300 residents. (See – https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census.html – retrieved 3.3.23)
Since its incorporation as a village in 1875, Riverside also attracted increasing numbers of eminent architects to contribute to the diversity of Riverside’s historic architecture. These include Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), William Le Baron Jenney (1832-1907), Charles Frederick Whittlesey (1867-1941), Joseph Lyman Silsbee (1848-1913), R. Harold Zook (1889-1949), Frederick Clarke Withers (1828-1901), Howard Van Doren Shaw (1869-1926), and William Eugene Drummond (1876-1948). Much of their work remains today evident in scores of historic landmark structures in Riverside.
Riverside became a showcase for the work of major architects including Frank Lloyd Wright, William Le Baron Jenney, Frederick C. Withers, Howard Van Doren Shaw, R. Harold Zook, Joseph Lyman Silsbee, and William Drummond.
Frank Lloyd Wright in 1903, likely a self-portrait. Public Domain.
William Le Baron Jenney (1832-1907). Public Domain.
Charles Frederick Whittlesey (1867-1941). Public Domain.
Frederick Clarke Withers (1828-1901). Public Domain.
William Eugene Drummond (1876-1948). Public Domain.
Howard Van Doren Shaw (1869-1926). Public Domain.
Public buildings such as the Water Tower, Arcade Building, train depot, Town Hall, and churches are as significant as the residential architecture.
OLD WATER TOWER, 1869, 10 Pine Avenue. Designed and built by William Le Baron Jenney of Jenney, Schermerhor & Bogart, Architects and Engineers.
The original Water Tower had a Gothic Revival wooden tank. The tower is accompanied by two round stone well houses built in 1898 and designed by George William Ashby. When the original tank was destroyed by fire in 1913, a steel tank was installed and the tower was raised 20 feet. It was topped by a canopy designed by William Mann.
Riverside Railroad Depot, c. 1901, 90 Bloomingbank Road and 15 Pine Avenue. Designed and built by the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad.
A railroad through Riverside came in 1863, 6 years before the Olmsted/Vaux plan and 12 years before the village’s incorporation. William Le Baron Jenney designed the first depot in 1871. This main depot with open covered extensions on the south side of the tracks was connected by a tunnel to the north platform.
The view above shows the expansive tile roof-covered main entrance. The two large columns with variegated brick gives columns design and texture. There are many windows to allow natural light from its south exposure and a view of the tracks to the north.
Looking east, the orange-brick-colored main depot has open covered extensions for commuters to be protected from the elements during their wait outdoors for a train connection.
Looking west, a view of the train depot with one of its open covered extensions and peaked snow-covered tile roof. The northern platform is visible across the railroad tracks on the right. Author’s photograph taken in February 2023.
The same view as above over 100 years ago. Riverside Train Depot, 1919. Public Domain.
Interior, Riverside Train Depot, c. 1901, includes a waiting room and, at right, ticket agent window. The ceiling has wainscotting and there are period light fixtures to accent the natural light pouring in from the series of encased large rectangular windows.
On the brick-paved platform, another of the train depot’s open covered extensions.
The Lake House, a 2006 fantasy romance film from Warner Brothers, was shot in Riverside, Illinois. A doctor (Sandra Bullock) who occupied a lakeside home exchanges letters with its newest resident, an architect (Keanu Reeves). When they discover that they’re actually living two years apart, they must try to unravel the mystery behind their romance before it’s lost in the midst of time.
While several scenes in the movie were shot in Riverside, Illinois—including at the local train station and the bridge on Riverside Road—the lake house was built from scratch for the movie and its scenes were filmed on the shores of Maple Lake within the Palos Forest Preserve in nearby Willow Springs.
Riverside Town Hall, 27 Riverside Road, Riverside, Illinois, 1895, designed by George Ashby.
In 1891, the Village of Riverside and Riverside Township reached an agreement so that the village donated the land for a town hall and the township paid for its construction.
In 1893 the township authorized $15,000 for construction (about $500,000 today) and this picturesque and stately building, designed by George Ashby, was completed in 1895. The clock was added to the main tower in 1941.
The building is Richardsonian Romanesque at a time when that style, very popular in the 1880’s, had begun to wane among contemporary architects in preference for the Beaux-Arts.
There is a steeply pitched hipped roof with brick for the top floor and rough faced stone for the ground floor. The turret is polygonal and the windows are of various sizes on all three floors. There are many delicate design elements such as copper cornices, colonettes, stringcourses and dressed stone.
Arcade Building, 1 Riverside Road, Designed and built c. 1871, Frederick C. Withers.
The Arcade Building is the first commercial building built in Riverside following Olmsted and Vaux’s plan and is associated with the village’s original developers, the Riverside Improvement Company.
The Arcade Building – a multi-color brick and limestone building with pointed arches and projecting cornices and stringcourses – is High Victorian Gothic. It was designed by architect Fredrick C. Withers, an associate of Olmsted and Vaux. With its mansard windows between tower pavilions, the simple building references the elaborate and decorative Second Empire architecture.
Riverside Presbyterian Church, 116 Barrypoint, 1872, Frederick C. Withers.
The church building was designed by Fredrick C. Withers who designed the Arcade Building at around the same time. Like that early commercial building the church is an amalgam of styles and forms, including Gothic Revival and Italianate.
The stone building has a series of pitched gable roofs that cover and form the transepts and chancel. The corner tower rises to a timber belfry with moldings and pointed arch openings whose original manual pull bell as well as modern chimes still mark the hours. Extensions to the left and right are mid-20th century additions done in harmony with the original design.
100 Fairbank Road, 1869, by Calvert Vaux.
This clapboard Carpenter Gothic style house was designed as a model home for the Riverside Plan by that plan’s designer, Calvert Vaux. It is an example of East Coast architecture transplanted into the heart of the Midwest. The ground floor is higher than the second floor. The low-pitched roof is punctuated by a projecting porch with Gothic Revival carpentry supported by struts and a gabled roof.
Two other second floor porches are on the short sides of the building extending across that width above a ground-floor projecting bay. The clapboard sheathings are meticulously and variedly cut for decorative effects throughout the building’s exterior.
Curved sidewalks follow their own direction and along a mostly wooded landscape.
107 Bloomingbank Road and 111 Bloomingbank Road, both c. 1890.
This neighboring pair of Queen Anne style homes are variations of the same building design. The buildings’ design shares a porch across the entire front, arched enclosed second floor porch, and front-facing attic windows. Both share the same kind of clapboard and shingle sheathing.
Houses on Bloomingbank Road face the Des Plaines River.
The Des Plaines River has flooded Riverside repeatedly, causing major damage at least seven to ten times in modern history. Record-setting floods struck in April 2013, August 1987, September 1986, and September 2008. Additional significant flood crests reached major or moderate flood stages in 2007, 2017, and 2020. As suburban development and impervious surfaces such as concrete have expanded throughout the surrounding region, flood risks and impacts within the village have generally increased over time. February 2023. Author’s photograph.
143 Bloomingbank Road, c. 1869.
This house is set back from the road and built in 1869 which was the year that Olmsted and Vaux were commissioned to design the suburb. The Italianate-style house has tall windows and large brackets with feet and shoulders for their jambs and segmental points. The second-floor windows are met by a first-floor transomed window. A steeped pitched roof and complex massing is Gothic Revival. A subdued color palette blends into the natural surroundings. The porch veranda is original.
201 Bloomingbank Road at Scottswood, c. 1870.
The above 1870 house is a T-shaped Gothic revival with the stem of the “T” facing the street. The stem is surrounded by a veranda whose porch columns are Italianate with Gothic style “carpenter” capitals. The tall windows and lintels are Italianate. The façade’s windows are under a hood molding and the attic has a small window with a pointed lintel. The T-stem’s pitched roof in the Gothic Revival style is slightly lower than the T-cross’s pitched roof behind it.
213 Bloomingbank Road, c. 1905.
A frame clapboard and shingled 4-square cube from 1905. There is a front porch held up by four huge piers with ornamental moldings that cover expansive first-floor polygonal bay windows. Below the hipped roof are two center windows with round heads. The painted dark green and yellow mix is stately and blends into the nature setting.
253 Bloomingbank Road, c.1890.
The Queen Anne house from 1890 has a lot of windows. It is a basic cube with a gambrel roof with a wing that also has a gambrel roof. The front porch is covered on one side with a flared roof and on the other side with a pitched gable roof. The second floor has an open porch that looks over the Des Plaines River. The original clapboard and shingles have been covered on the first floor by later stucco.
Bloomingbank Road, Riverside, Illinois.
Riverside’s architecture remains inseparable from its landscape setting, fulfilling the original vision of a “perfect village in a perfect setting.”
Riverside, Illinois. June 2022. Author’s photograph. 6.21mb.
Avery Coonley Estate, 1909, Frank Lloyd Wright.
Avery Coonley House, 300 Scottswood Road, 281 Bloomingbank Road, Riverside (Cook County, Illinois), 1910. Public Domain.
281 Bloomingbank Road, 1909.
281 Bloomingbank Road, 1909. From the street.
What became the nationally-recognized Avery Coonley School was founded in 1906 to promote the progressive education theories of John Dewey (1859-1952). It was founded as The Cottage School by Queene Ferry Coonley (1874-1958) on her estate in Riverside, Illinois, for her 4-year-old daughter.
The school, which continues to thrive today, has occupied several structures in its history. This included a literal small cottage on the Coonley Estate in Riverside to larger buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1909. The school moved to Downers Grove in 1916 and, on a 11-acre campus there designed by landscape architect Jens Jensen (1860-1951), became the Avery Coonley School in 1929.
This section of Wright’s 1909 design is set back well off the street and mostly hidden by trees. Behind an iron fence, it is difficult for the public to perceive the full extent of the estate. Wright’s design begins at the street with a low stone urn.
On June 11, 1978, the courtyard’s swimming pool heater exploded and started a fire. The fire destroyed the main house’s living room and a bedroom. The exterior was later meticulously restored to its original appearance which included the school’s stucco walls, simple board trim and multi-color tile façade, all beneath a broad, tiled, hipped roof. At the time of the restoration the swimming pool was re-converted to its original function as a lily pond.
The Avery Coonley Estate represents one of the finest Prairie School expressions in suburban America.
336 Coonley Road, 1909, is another major section of the Coonley estate.
290 Scottswood Road, after 1909.
A free-standing L-shaped domestic structure with a broad hipped roof, the house was added sometime after 1909. Within its setting in the highly-designed suburb of Riverside, this Prairie style house sets a template and direction for much of what would be 20th century suburban development across the country.
300 Scottswood Road, 1909.
This is the main block of the Avery Coonley estate. The house is the epitome of the Prairie School style of broad horizontals, here using stucco boards, tile and glass beneath a low hipped roof. Wright’s design starts at the street with the low stone urn.
Avery Coonley Playhouse, 350 Fairbank Road, Riverside, Illinois, 1909, by Frank Lloyd Wright.
Avery Coonley Playhouse, 350 Fairbank Road, 1909, by F. L. Wright.
Basic plan of the playhouse (above) is a T-shaped building with higher T-stem to the street. A simple stucco structure, the playhouse’s flat roof and lower wings provide the Prairie style’s broad horizontality. Flat roof of the T-stem extends over three elongated windows while lower wings have clerestory windows.
William E. Drummond (1876–1948). Public Domain.
308 Fairbank Road, Riverside, Illinois, c. 1910, Guenzel and Drummond.
Drummond began his career working for architect Louis Sullivan (1856-1924). Later, working for Frank Lloyd Wright, Drummond became the chief draftsman for many of Wright’s well-known commissions. In 1912 Drummond went into partnership with Louis Guenzel who had been a draftsman for Dankmar Adler (1844-1900) and Louis Sullivan (1856-1924).
The house is a one story hipped roofed cube or block with a broad brow of stucco soffits with eaves. The original casement windows include three in the front for the living room with geometric Prairie patterns. The lower portion of the façade is board siding and the top section is stucco.
314 Scottswood Road, Riverside, Illinois.
322 Scottswood Road, 1897.
The simple stone house in an English country cottage style was built in 1897. It has diamond-patterned casement windows and a single half-timbered gable poking out of a gambrel roof. The timber entrance porch that abuts stone achieves an overall craftsman effect.
144 Scottswood Road, c. 1870, William LeBaron Jenney.
Attributed to William LeBaron Jenney, the house is an early building in Riverside. It is a fusion of two styles – the Stick Style and Gothic Revival. The carpentry is solidly masterful. The roof has a low pitch and is punctuated with a massive chimney, dormers and gables with filets, spars and kingposts. The spurs or brackets supporting the overhanging eaves rest on boards intersecting with the clapboard. There is a broad veranda with turned posts supporting a lintel that supports small pointed arches with struts. The porch railing has tightly aligned balusters extending to a below-porch skirt with complementary cut-out patterns. The veranda roof extends over the angled main entrance to become a porte-cochère for the driveway.
124 Scottswood Road, 1871, William LeBaron Jenney.
In the Gothic Revival style, the design and board-and-batten construction of the house is grand and appealing. With steeply pitched roofs, there are several gabled wings of varying distances and directional faces from the building’s core. Windows include long tabernacle windows and others with more elaborate extending jerkinhead roofs that are supported by boards incised with decorative cuts. There are pointed head windows on the second floor over the main entrance while the veranda stretches across two sides of the house supported by slope cut square posts with milled brackets. These and other rare trim and other details, including two massive chimneys, have survived in this house that is today over 150 years old.
118 Scottswood Road, 1880s.
112 Scottswood Road, 1870s.
SOURCES:
Book (with Page Range)
Bach, Ira J. A Guide to Chicago’s Historic Suburbs on Wheels and on Foot. Athens, OH: Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 1981, 664–679.
FEATURE image: Oriental Theatre completed in 1926 and renamed the Ford Center for the Performing Arts in 1997. It became the Nederlander Theatre in 2019. December 2017. Author’s photograph.
The Oriental Theatre, designed by Cornelius Ward (C.W.) Rapp and George Leslie Rapp in 1926, represents both the architectural extravagance of America’s movie-palace era and the enduring cultural vitality of Chicago’s Loop entertainment district. Through its exotic design, long performance history, and successful restoration, the theater serves as a living monument to the evolution of popular entertainment in Chicago across nearly a century.
Ford Center For the Performing Arts/Oriental Theatre, Chicago. December 2017. Author’s photograph. 5 mb.
Rapp & Rapp designed nearly four hundred theatres in the United States between 1906 and 1926.
In Chicago’s Loop, the Oriental Theatre opened on May 8, 1926. During the first half of the 20th century, Randolph Street was one of the city’s most bustling entertainment districts.
Designed by the architectural firm of Rapp & Rapp—brothers Cornelius Ward (C.W.) Rapp (1861-1926) and George Leslie Rapp (1878-1941)—the Oriental Theatre was one of their many ornate movie palaces that they built. As its name “Oriental” suggested, it was imagined in a style inspired by a Western fantasia of India and South Asian themes and motifs. Inspired by this architecture of India and the Far East, lights consisted of elephant heads with tusks, walls were adorned with soft silk and regal velvets, and the ceiling was garishly decorated with plasterwork elephants and other exotic beasts.
The theater’s architecture embodied a fantasy interpretation of Indian and Far Eastern motifs, featuring elephants, rich fabrics, elaborate plasterwork, and lavish ornamentation.
Rapp & Rapp were alumni of the University of Illinois School of Architecture. The firm designed scores of theatres across the country in the first decades of the 20th century. The Rapp brothers were born in Carbondale in southern Illinois. Twenty-eight-year-old C.W. Rapp formed a partnership in 1889 with older architect, Canadian-born Cyrus P. Thomas (1933-1911) and they practiced together in Chicago until 1895. C.W. Rapp operated his own office for a decade until he formed a partnership with his brother G.L. Rapp in 1906. With stage entertainment and the boom of moving pictures after 1910, the firm of Rapp & Rapp quickly developed a reputation for their fantastic designs for silent film theatres in the Chicago area. Drawing on a large palette of architectural revival styles, Rapp & Rapp designed nearly four hundred theatres in the United States between 1906 and 1926.
In Chicago Rapp & Rapp designed State Street’s Chicago Theatre (1921) and the Bismarck Hotel and Theatre (1926). In New York City they built the since demolished Paramount Theatre (1926) in Times Square and the still-standing smaller-scaled Paramount Theatre (1931) in Aurora, Illinois.
Rapp & Rapp were among America’s premier movie-palace architects and designed such landmarks as Chicago’s Chicago Theatre and New York’s Paramount Theatre.
In the mid1990s, after the Oriental Theatre had been closed and shuttered for over a decade, it underwent a multi-million-dollar restoration and expansion by Daniel P. Coffey & Associates. It reopened as the Ford Center for the Performing Arts in 1998. Following its expansion, the former Oriental Theatre seats over 2,000 patrons.
Entertainment legacy
In the 1920s, the Oriental Theatre presented both movies and vaudeville acts. When talkies arrived, the Oriental Theatre became predominantly a movie house in the 1930s. Live stage, theatrical, and concert performances continued for mid20th century Chicago audiences during an era when Randolph Street was a mecca for crowds seeking out their favorite star performers. It also hosted smaller and vibrant live entertainment venues where one could seek out up-and-coming talents.
Duke Ellington and his orchestra made frequent appearances at the Oriental Theatre which welcomed patrons by way of an exotic ornate style. Some big names and legends in entertainment were seen at the Oriental Theatre including Judy Garland, George Jessel, Fanny Brice, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Cab Calloway, Eddie Cantor, Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Jean Harlow, Billie Holiday, Bob Hope, Al Jolson, Danny Kaye, Jerry Lewis, The Marx Brothers, The Three Stooges, Frank Sinatra, Sophie Tucker, Sarah Vaughan, Henny Youngman, and a cast of thousands.
The Oriental Theatre closed in 1981 and remained shuttered for the rest of the 1980’s and into the early 1990’s depriving many young urban professionals from enjoying entertainment in a venue that, with its reopening in 1998, has operated continuously for nearly 100 years.
Ford Center for the Performing Arts in 1997 and the Nederlander Theatre in 2019
In 1997 the Oriental Theatre was renamed the Ford Center for the Performing Arts and restored and expanded for its re-opening in 1998. In 2019 the theatre was renamed in honor of James M. Nederlander (1922-2016), Broadway theatre owner/producer and Broadway In Chicago founder.
Today’s James M. Nederlander Theatre hosts touring pre-Broadway and Broadway shows whose résumé included a long-running production of Billy Elliot: The Musical. From June 2005 through January 2009, the theater housed a full production of Wicked, making it the most popular stage production in Chicago history. In December 2017, when the feature photograph was taken, a traveling national tour of Wicked had started its Chicago run.
After years of closure, the theater underwent a major restoration and expansion in the 1990s and reopened as the Ford Center for the Performing Arts in 1998. Renamed the James M. Nederlander Theatre in 2019, it continues to host major Broadway and touring productions, demonstrating the building’s enduring relevance.
Oriental Theatre sign, Chicago. July 2016. Author’s photograph. 4.63 mb.
Major entertainers such as Duke Ellington, Judy Garland, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, and many others appeared there.
Oriental sign at night, Chicago. December 2015. Author’s photograph. 6.51mb DSC_0866 (1).
SOURCES: Alice Sinkevitch, AIA Guide to Chicago, 2nd Edition, Harcourt, Inc., Orlando, 2004, p. 54.
Feature Image: THE MENTOR BUILDING, 1906, 39 S. State Street (6 E. Monroe Street), Chicago. Howard Van Doren Shaw (1869-1926), architect. Author’s photograph, 7/2015.
Howard Van Doren Shaw’s Mentor Building (1906) stands as a pivotal anomaly in Chicago’s architectural history, serving as the architect’s sole foray into skyscraper design while masterfully bridging the horizontal warmth of the Prairie style with idiosyncratic classical motifs.
Mentor Building. July 2015. Author’s photograph. 2.93 mb DSC_0111 (2)
Street Appearance
The lower portion of Howard Van Doren Shaw’s Mentor Building functions as a four-level retail and commercial base designed to anchor the high-rise while maximizing street-level storefront interaction in downtown Chicago. At street level, the building presents an open, highly transparent urban storefront that wraps around the corner of State and Monroe Streets. It is dominated by large showroom windows framed in dark, minimalist metal sash work.
Structural Function
Structurally, the lower portion serves as the open-perimeter foundation for a 17-story mixed-use skyscraper. Supported below by deep rock caissons, the skeleton framework allows the building’s immense weight to be carried by internal columns rather than thick, load-bearing exterior walls. This engineering feat allows the exterior facade of the first four floors to be completely opened up for massive windows without compromising structural stability.
Decorative Choices
The lower levels are clad in a light tan stone or terra cotta, creating a visually distinct, monumental “pedestal” that contrasts with the dark brown brick of the upper floors. Inspired by the Prairie style, the masonry piers emphasize strong horizontal bands and clean lines that anchor the building’s massive height to the ground.
Restrained Motifs.
While the windows are clean and modern, classical elements—such as subtle geometric molding patterns and small decorative brackets under the window transitions—subtly hint at classical motifs without cluttering the storefront displays.
Howard Van Doren Shaw (1869-1926), 1906, THE MENTOR BUILDING, State and Monroe Streets, Chicago, from the southwest. July 2015. Author’s photograph, 7/2015.
Structural Profile and Purpose
A Mentor building has stood on the northeast corner of State and Monroe Streets since 1873. Until 1906, a 7-story building was erected here.1
The 1906 building by Howard Van Doren Shaw (1869-1926) is 17 stories high with two basements on rock caissons.2 Shaw’s only skyscraper presents an unusual mixture of styles, a talent for which Shaw built his practice’s reputation starting in 1897. The building was designed as a mixed use skyscaper, including retail sales and commercial business.3
Architectural Elements and Materials
Inspired by the Prairie style, there are windows grouped in horizontal bands between a four-level base of large showroom windows. The top is classically inspired with details that are strong and idiosyncratic. The brown brick and terra cotta building retains the character of its classical sources though they are used as large-scale motifs.4
The Architect’s Biography
Howard Van Doren Shaw (1869-1926). Public Domain.
Shaw studied architecture at Yale University and apprenticed in Chicago for William Le Baron Jenney (1832-1907). In Chicago and its northern suburbs Shaw had an illustrious career designing major commercial, church, and museum buildings and projects as well as mansions for the area’s elites.5
By blending conflicting design movements into a functional, early 20th-century mixed-use commercial space, Shaw challenged the rigid stylistic boundaries of the Chicago School and solidified his reputation as a master of eclectic architecture.
1 Frank A. Randall, History of Development of Building Construction in Chicago, Second Edition, Revised and Expanded by John D. Randall, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1999, p. 196.
2 Ibid., p. 265.
3 Saliga, Pauline A., editor, The Sky’s The Limit A Century of Chicago Skyscrapers, Rizzoli New York, 1990, p. 73.
4 Alice Sinkevitch, AIA Guide to Chicago, 2nd Edition, Harcourt, Inc., Orlando, 2004, p. 59.
