Tour of Hyde Park Modernist Architecture Aug. 19

 

-posted by chicago pop

From Forgotten Chicago, a walking tour of Hyde Park's legacy of modernist architecture - everything from the Keck & Keck house on University to the I.M. Pei boxes and, uh, Regenstein Library. It all deserves our respect. Thanks to HPP reader I. for passing this along.

Go beyond the gargoyles: From Bertrand Goldberg to Edward Dart, Edward Durell Stone to Edward Larabee Barnes, and Helmut Jahn to Mies van der Rohe, the patrons and builders of Hyde Park have enthusiastically embraced (briefly, in some cases) everything from the International Style to New Formalism, Brutalism and the current preference for sustainable design.

There are few places in the United States with a more encyclopedic and concentrated overview of the last 75 years of modernist architecture than Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. From George Fred and William Keck’s minimal 1937 cooperative apartments (below left) to Tod Williams and Billie Tsien’s towering new Logan Center for the Arts (below right, formally opening in October 2012), Hyde Park offers a comprehensive collection of 75 years of modernist masterpieces (and a few misfires). Additionally, Hyde Park offers a living example of the benefits and perils of large-scale land clearance and urban renewal. 

 

Join Forgotten Chicago as we explore Hyde Park for the first time with a walking tour on Sunday, August 19. Venturing far beyond the cliche (Collegiate Gothic and gargoyles), the beloved (a low-slung Prairie School house), and the familiar (a long-gone fair and tales of those swept up in its dark side), our exploration of Hyde Park will show an incredible array of lesser-known and often remarkable projects from the past nine decades. 

Details:

When? Sunday, August 19, 2012 at 12:50 PM. Rain or shine (severe weather will cancel tour).

Where? The tour will start in front of Powell’s Books at 1501 East 57th Street; Powell’s is a short block west of the Metra Electric District 57th Street station.

How Long? A little more than three hours and three miles of walking. The tour will conclude at 4:05 PM at the corner of 55th Street and Hyde Park Avenue, near the Metra 55th Street Station to allow participants to take the inbound 4:10 PM Metra train from Hyde Park, which arrives at Millennium Station at 4:26 PM. The 55 Garfield bus can also take those on the tour back to the Green and Red Lines.

Local Sex Shop has Vibe Sale

posted by chicago pop

Vibe Sale at Drawers Intimates
1450 E. 52nd Street

Every neighborhood needs a decent sex shop, and perhaps none more so than rather top-heavy Hyde Park. Well, we have one, and they're glad to be here ("located in historic Hyde Park"), but not only that, they're having a major Vibe Sale.

Drawers Intimates was closed the bright winter morning I happened past their storefront signage, but this did not keep me from speculating, in true University of Chicago style, upon what might be the ideal-typical, theory-laden inventory of Vibes best suited to the Hyde Park market -- Vibes, that is, sold by an independent, small business, and custom-tailored to the unique clientele of our diverse and sophisticated neighborhood.

Number one on this inventory would be the black, vinyl-coated, and cordless Wrecking Ball, with two adjustable settings: one for "Harper Court" (Low) and another for "Doctors Hospital" (High). The Wrecking Ball would be perfect for aging NIMBY matriarchs who, though outwardly demure when pedaling their bicycles down 56th Street in long skirts and owlish glasses, fantasize (in stolen, private moments) of wanton acts of architectural demolition.

For the high-powered academic set -- and in particular for the misfit Men and Boys of the Committee on Social Thought -- we envision the pink, jelly-filled, and life-sized Platonic Boy, designed to provide years of durable consolation to terminal Masters students facing the bleak prospect of guaranteed academic unemployment, supervisory neglect, and endless revisions of their reactionary theses on Al Farabi. The Platonic Boy comes with detachable laurel wreath, an inflatable Greek vase (with insulated beer cup) cast in the 6th century Attic Style, and is equipped to utter Heroclitian aphorisms when embraced.

Likely to be the most popular item for the grass-roots and horticultural market segment would be the battery-powered (two lithium D cell rechargeable) Jack's Beanstalk. The Beanstalk, in the form of an organic -- and sizable -- community-grown, latex zucchini, would come with a set of three rotating "Promontory Point" attachments, a camel hair "vegetable brush," and a simulated "limestone block" extender. Unlike Platonic Boy, or the Wrecking Ball, Jack's Beanstalk can be left in plain sight on a kitchen countertop -- leaving the owner free from fear of the disapprobatory glances of children, friends and neighbors -- but also readily available for use in one of the many impromptu (and some might say "notorious") Hyde Park "vegetable parties."

Called away moments later by the obligations of the day, here ended my reflections upon this simple set of three ideal-typical Hyde Park Vibes. I hope they provide free inspiration and commercial success to another of our proud, local retailers committed to serving all of Hyde Park's needs. Feel free to suggest your own (or to contact me for questions of industrial design and patenting).

HyPa's Official Launch

posted by Elizabeth Fama

The Hyde Park Alliance for Arts & Culture was officially launched this past Thursday (9/10/09) at the Hyde Park Art Center. The group calls itself "HyPa," which is...kind of not an acronym? (I think it's more like a rap album title, and they should have gone all out with the letter H on the end: "Hypah.") They've existed informally for about 10 years, but now they're an official 501c3, and rarin' to go.

The goal of the organization is awesome, even if the tagline contains about three too many business-speak words, and starts with a participle: "Leveraging collective resources to promote Hyde Park as a cultural destination."

It's a consortium of (so far) 30 arts and cultural organizations in the neighborhood -- from behemoths like the Museum of Science and Industry (possibly the single south-side tourist destination that north-siders can name off the top of their heads) to gems you haven't heard of yet, like the South Shore Opera Company.

Lunch and networking in the exhibit space of the Hyde Park Art Center.

The general idea is this: we already have a vibrant and attractive cultural destination in Hyde Park, we just have to get people to realize it and start coming here. The meeting itself was a living example of this phenomenon: it took months of cajoling for Irene Sherr to get the Chicago Cultural Network to consider having this -- one of their more than bimonthly meetings -- here, in the bright exhibit space of the Hyde Park Art Center. The young woman sitting next to me worked for the Austrian Consulate General downtown (she is planning an exhibition in conjunction with the Joseph Regenstein Library), and was wide-eyed about how simple it was to get here on the number 6 bus.

HyPa's first achievement is the Hyde Park Jazz Festival (in its 3rd year, Saturday, Sept. 26), which features world-class acts for free in 12 of Hyde Park's existing cultural venues. HyPa is also developing a "Passport to Jazz" program, which they envision as an annual pass to a variety of jazz events (financial support provided by Boeing).

Sheryl Papier, President of HyPa, and VP of Marketing for the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust, with Chuck Thurow, outgoing Executive Director of the Hyde Park Art Center.

After Sheryl Papier spoke, the rest of the meeting involved Stuart Flack showcasing the new web site for the Chicago Humanities Festival. The interesting Hyde-Park information I gleaned from his presentation is that the October 17 kickoff of the CH Festival is an all-day extravaganza in Hyde Park. (But maybe you all knew that already.)

Open Rehearsal: New Court Theater Blog

posted by chicago pop

There's yet another neighborhood blog up and running, and this one is pretty interesting. Court Theater's Open Rehearsal began less than a month ago (August 12, at 11:40 AM) but it's already clear that it's got a lot of love to share with Hyde Park. How could it not, given the Court's longstanding history in the neighborhood?

There are shout-outs to local goings on that theater-goers and literary types might appreciate, like readings at 57th Street books, and the weekly, Wednesday "Dean's Men (the University's resident Shakespear troupe) [which] holds court over "Shakes and Shakespear." Grab a $1 milkshake from the C-Shop and see a free Shakespear performance on Bartlett Quad at high noon. UChiBLOGo has the story." (And that's another new blog, by the way; we'll get to it next).

Open Rehearsal is dedicated primarily to theater rehearsals, which are as fascinating as any behind-the-scenes dish on a big production, but along the way you find all sorts of little nuggets that HPP readers might savor, such as this flyer from the days ca. 1963 when the Court "was an outdoor festival in Hutch Courtyard on the university campus."


On the back of which is to be found the following advert:

Popular Food, Unusual Prices?

And guaranteed to win our affection here at HPP, Open Rehearsal is willing to throw in its 2 cents on the occasional theater-related development issue. Here's what it has to say on the question, first raised by HPP's Elizabeth Fama, of whether the old Harper Theater at 53rd and Harper is historically significant:

Hyde Park Progress rightfully asks, is Harper Theater really historically significant? However, you can always count on the Regenstein Library’s Special Collections Research Center to have something, and indeed they do: this playbill from the very first Harper Theater production, Pirandello’s Enrico IV.

The playbill gives a brief but utterly bizarre history of the theater:

The Harper Theater was built in 1914 as a vaudeville house. The architects were H.R. Wilson and Company. The theater originally had 1200 seats. The balcony has been closed off and the coffee house built in the rear of the main floor.

The lobby and entrance were remodeled in the 1930’s, changing the entrance from 53rd Street to Harper Avenue. The Harper closed as a movie house in 1956 [!]. The rear half of the main floor, (under the balcony), was walled off in 1964 to create a coffee house.

The lights over the lobby counter were the original store lights for Finnegan’s drug store.

Fixtures in the coffee house are from Finnegan’s drug store, formerly located at 55th Street and Woodlawn Avenue. The fixtures were built in Boston in 1911 and then shipped to Chicago and installed in the drug store where they remained until being moved to the Harper last year.

The grill work in the lobby and coffee shop is from the fire escapes of the Hyde Park Hotel, 51st and Lake Park Avenue. The French marble of the counters came from a Fred Harvey restaurant at Canal and Madison Streets. The lobby’s stained glass windows are from a Dorchester Avenue home in Hyde Park demolished by Urban Renewal.

The chandeliers in the theater are believed to be original and were electrically rebuilt and rehung. (p. 134)

You can't be too hard on drama people (and I have been, at times, one of them) for having a soft-spot for theaters. It would certainly be nice to keep the old building if possible, but at least Open Rehearsal took a few minutes to go dig up some documents to attempt firm up Harper Theater's historical bona fides.

In any case, I like their plan for a renovated Court Theater of the future. Be sure to check it out.