Inside the Chicago Motor Club: a preview of openhousechicago, October 15 and 16, a celebration of architecture giving access to 130 sites, many rarely open to the public

 

It started with OpenHouse London, almost twenty years ago, a weekend of public access to great spaces that are usually private and inaccessible.  By this year's edition, which took place just last month, they were  up to "700 buildings of all kinds opening their doors to everyone - all for free," and estimates of the number of participants is edging up towards a quarter million years.

"I don't think we'll be quite as big this year," said Bastiaan Bouma of the Chicago Architecture Foundation, "but we have ambitions to be just as large as London."  Bouma was talking about openhousechicago - he's managing director - which is bringing what's now an international program to Chicago this Saturday and Sunday, October 15th and 16th. opening up over a hundred locations, most rarely, if ever, open to the public.

And not just downtown.  Bouma estimated that about 40 of buildings are in or around the Loop, with another 90 spread out across the city, from Loyola on the far north, to the square-mile U.S. Steel site on the far south.  It's an opportunity to showcase not just the usual suspects downtown, but to introduce people to the Chicago's lesser-known jewels in the outlying neighborhoods, many of which have now been doubled-battered, first by the tsunami of foreclosures, and now with banks turning increasingly to demolition as the best way to cut their losses.

click images for larger view

Tours are grouped into five diverse neighborhoods, each with their own tour hub.  In Bronzeville, its K2 Architects' Little Black Pearl Art and Design Center on Greenwood just north of 47th, in Rogers Park, the Warren Park fieldhouse, etc.  Participants are responsible for getting themselves to the neighborhood, but once there, "hop on-hop off" shuttles will be available to move them from site to site.  Most, however, are within walking distance of each other, and, as Bouma suggested, the bicycle may be the ideal way of navigating the festival.

We've written about this fantastic festival before.  The great, keep-sake quality guide that ran in the Thursday Trib should also be available at many of the event sites, but even better is the very top-notch openhousechicago website, which is packed with information, great photographs, and maps - it even lets you create your own itinerary. 

Victoria Thornton, who founded the original Open House in London and has led the growth of the Open House Worldwide into what is now a dozen cities, from New York (also this weekend) to Helsinki to Tel Aviv, was on hand yesterday at the press launch for the Chicago edition at the long-shuttered Chicago Motor Club building on east Wacker.

The 17-story story 1928 skyscraper by Holabird & Root was picked up at auction this past June for $9.700,000 by Aries Capital, whose Chairman and CEO Neil Freeman was also on hand Thursday.  Aries has been involved in projects from the Whitehall Hotel in Chicago to the renovation of the century-old Hotel Roosevelt in New Orleans.  In Chicago, they're pairing up with Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture, whose portfolio includes the renovation of the former Chicago and Northwestern Power House west of the river, and the former Goldblatt's store in Uptown.

Yesterday, the Chicago Sun-Time's David Roeder reported Aries estimates the cost of bringing the Motor Club building back up to speed as a hotel as somewhere between $42 to $62 million.  As a hotel, the Motor Club has at least one great advantage: sitting just to the east of Harry Weese's Seventeenth Church of Christ Scientist, it offers great, largely unobstructed views down the river to the west.

We didn't get a chance to sample those views on Thursday, but did get to see the three-story, light-filled lobby.

 

Even with the current peeling paint and cracked glass, it's splendor endures in the Art Deco ornament and chandeliers, and a northern wall largely covered by John Warner Norton's massive mural depicting an abstracted map of the United States.

This Saturday and Sunday, October 15 and 16, you can check out the Motor Club lobby for yourself, as well as over 130 other sites, from churches, to swimming pools, to architects offices, mansions, shops, and everything in between, including a truly rare chance to climb to the top of the original Sears Tower.

Get your walking shoes and check out the full list of choices for openhousechicago.

Gill, Gang, and Kamin today at Ideas Week, Erika Allen at Access Living on the 25th - more for the October calendar

Still more additions to the October Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

As of this writing, there were still tickets ($15.00) for a panel on Architecture, 4:00 to 5:30 p.m., at the Chicago History Museum featuring Gordon Gill, Jeanne Gang, the Trib's Blair Kamin, plus Andrew Kotchen, Matt Berman and photographer Scott Frances.  It's a part of Chicago Ideas Week, which includes such other attractions as Bill Clinton on Tuesday, and a tour of Millennium Park with former Mayor Richard M. Daley (sold out).

On Wednesday, there's a all-day conference, GreenTown - the Future of Community, at Unity Temple in Oak Park, and on Tuesday, the 25th, Archeworks has added a lecture by Erika Allen of Growing Power Chicago, Closing the Loop: Planning and Implementation of Community Food Systems, at Access Living.

Also this week, Chicago Women in Architecture have a reception with Jeanne Gang on Tuesday, and a Wednesday logjam includes The City as Campus author Sharon Haar at CAF,  architect Stanley Allen at IIT, and Kevin Harrington discussing H.H. Richardson at the Glessner House Museum.  On Thursday, Carolyn Armenta Davis talks about Designing for the 21st Century: Germany's Black Architects, at the Goethe Institut.  Friday brings MAS Context: Analog, and Saturday and Sunday, the spectacular openhousechicago, with behind-the-scenes of over a hundred Chicago building.

Check out all the over fifty events still to come on the October Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Help Me: I've Been Urbanized - preview of documentary from Director of Helvetica among 80 events on October calendar

We just posted the October Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events yesterday, and already we're adding.  The big addition is an advanced screening of Urbanized, the new documentary from the director of Helvetica, which explores the question, "Who is allowed to shape our cities, and how do they do it?" and offers up a massive, star-studded cast including Amanda Burden, Ricky Burdett, Norman Foster, Rem Koolhaas, Oscar Niemeyer and the five marvelous pretzels.

Urbanized plays at the Music Box on Sunday the 9th at 7:00 p.m., and it's only one of what's now approaching 80 great events in October.  Just today, Tuesday the 4th, we've got the 3,300 meter Strait of Messina Bridge discussed at this month's Structural Engineers Association of Illinois dinner meeting, at the Cliff Dwellers, and a 6:00 p..m. panel discussion at the Chicago Architecture Foundation in conjunction with its new Design on the Edge exhibition, with everyone from Darryl Crosby to Jeanne Gang, John Ronan, Stanley Tigerman and five other leading Chicago architects.

Want more?  We've got Maya Lin, Millennium Park, architects doing other things, Sharon Haar and The City as Campus, Stanley Allen and Juhani Pallasmaa at IIT, Kees Christiaanse and John McMorrough at UIC, Carolyn Armenta Davis discussing Germany's Black Architects, Arup's Ryan Biziorek on Modeling Sound in Space, a tour of the EnV Tower,  John Tshirch on McKim, Mead &; White's Isaac Bell House, Ben Weese receiving AIA Chicago's Lifetime Achievement Award at this year's Designight.

Take a breath,  OK.  There's a Bertrand Goldberg-Contemporary Perspectives symposium at the Art Institute with John Ronan, Robert Somol, Elizabeth Smith, Sarah Whiting, Zoë Ryan and Alison Fisher, Adrian Smith interviewed by Bill Kurtis, the Richard Driehaus Preservation Awards, MAS Context: Analog with everyone from Sarah Dunn, to Cheryl Towler Weese to Jason Pickleman, Lee Bey, Strawn and Sierralta and a dozen others, the extraordinary openhouseChicago giving you entry to a hundred-plus great sites, as well a murder mystery at the Driehaus Museum/Nickerson Mansion, and Edgar Allen Poe readings and ghost sightings at Glessner House for Halloween.

What are we up to?  A couple dozen? Well, we've got nearly eighty of 'em.  Check out the full October 2011 Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events and fill out your dance card.

October's spectacular openhousechicago needs a few good men and women (800, actually, but who's counting, and what a view!)

Adrian Smith+Gordon Gill Architecture (click images for larger view)

Architecture, no matter the focus on exterior form, is not a wrapper, but an environment. And while we usually experience architecture by walking by or standing in front of it, on October 15th and 16th, you can soak it in, both inside and out.  The Chicago Architecture Foundation's extraordinary event, openhousechicago, will let visitors enter into some of the city's most distinctive and compelling interiors.

And they need your help.  Jump to the bottom of the post for more info, but first let me show you some of the wonder with which you'll surround yourself.

Some of the 126 buildings, from Rogers Park to Hyde Park, Garfield Park, downtown and all points in between,  are "walk-by" only, but the vast majority offer rare opportunities to experience some of Chicago's greatest spaces.  You can tour online, with photographs, the full roster of locations here, but among the highlights are the architectural office of Goettsch Partners, Perkins+Will, Adrian Smith+Gordon Gill, and VOA Associates.  There's Corpus Christ Church . . .

. . . the 1897 Grant Memorial AME Church, Dankmar Adler's last commission, the 1899 Isaiah Temple (now Ebeneezer Missionary Baptist church),The Chicago Motor Club and its 29-foot wide John Warner Norton mural, a historic courtroom at 26th and California, the Del Prado Hotel, Frank Lloyd Wright's Emil Bach house, and the interior of the auditorium space at the Abraham Lincoln Center, the Art Noveau murals of the Fine Arts Building, the spectacular Sears Roebuck Power House that is now the Power House High School . . .

.  . . an empty floor of the Inland Steel building, Alfred Caldwell's rooftop garden at Lake Point Tower . . .

 . . . the Martinez Funeral Home, Meyers Ace Hardware (the former Sunset Cafe where Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman and Earl 'Fatha' Hines played in the 1920's), the 1912 Monroe Building and new Pritzker Military Library, the private pool of Jens Jensen's Park Castle apartment building . . .

 . . . KAM Temple/Rainbow PUSH, the Art Moderne 2nd Federal Savings . . .

. . . Krueck and Sexton's Spertus Institute, the Gustavus F. Swift mansion . . .

. . . the Michigan Room overlooking Millennium Park in the University Club, Helmut Jahn's South Campus Chiller Plant at U of C, the 1893 Samuel Karpen mansion (now Welcome Inn Manor).

You get the idea.

As you might imagine, covering 126 sites all across the city, takes a lot of volunteers . . .

In order to make this weekend a success, we need many volunteers to play a variety of roles. Volunteering for OHC is simple and the benefits are pretty great.  We're looking for volunteers to provide visitor welcoming assistance at all OHC2011 sites. Volunteers will also help control admission to sites and track visitor attendance. You can volunteer for one 4 hour shift on either Saturday or Sunday, or both. Either way, volunteers receive a commemorative shirt, a discount at the CAF shop, a free walking tour pass and priority access to all OHC 2011 sites.

You can get more information on how you can volunteer here,  or contact openhousechicago's volunteer coordinator, Patrick Miner, via email.