10/20/11

Nov. 8TH Book Presentation at AIA Chicago: THE LOST PANORAMAS: When Chicago Changed its River And the Land Beyond



Society of Architectural Historians Chicago Chapter Presents

THE LOST PANORAMAS:
When Chicago Changed its River And the Land Beyond
by Richard Cahan and Michael Williams, City Files Press, 2011

Reception, lecture and signing with the authors at American Institute of Architects Chicago Office

When:  Tuesday, November 8
               5:30 p.m. Reception - 6:00 Program

Where: AIA Chicago, 35 E. Wacker Dr, #250

Cost:      SAH Chicago Members $10.00; Non-members $15.00.  Pay at door.
               Reservations Required.

In 1894, photographers set out to document the reversal of the Chicago River, an engineering feat known at the time as the eighth wonder of the world. They took 22,000 photographs that are more meaningful today than ever before. And like all evocative photographs, they act as metaphors. This is the untold story of an audacious scheme as well as the consequences. It is the story of how a big city sacrificed the natural world in order to survive and prosper.

RESERVATIONS REQUIRED.

RSVP to:   sahchicago@gmail.com or by phone to  708-358-1394 

Space is limited.   Reserve early.


Images (Top to Bottom): Chicago River at State Street - 1902, Chicago River at Adams Street - 1911,
All images courtesy City Files Press.



10/10/11

John Storrs: Machine Age Modernist (Ceres Explained)

The Chicago Art Deco Society Presents, with community partner SAH Chicago Chapter:
John Storrs: Machine-Age Modernist
with author Debra Bricker Balken
October 15, 2011 – 1:30 pm
Roosevelt University, 430 S. Michigan Ave. Chicago
Chicago Art Deco Society Members - $20.00, Non-members - $25.00
John Storrs (1885–1956) was one of the most important modernist sculptors to emerge in the early 20th century.  During the 1910s and ’20s, he divided his time between his native Chicago and Paris, where he found a community of like minded artists committed to invention and to redefining traditional art forms. After studying with Auguste Rodin in 1913, Storrs re-invigorated the largely academic medium of sculpture with a radicalism then unknown in America. 

The recent exhibition John Storrs: Machine Age Modernist was curated by Debra Bricker Balken and organized for the Boston Athenæum by David B. Dearinger, Susan Morse Hilles Curator of Paintings and Sculpture.





9/21/11

Two In October: Dart with DOCOMOMO & Prairie Avenue with Bill Tyre

DOCOMOMO/SAH TOUR of Architect Edward Dart’s Houses of Worship on October 8, 2011

When: Saturday, October 8 at 9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.

Meet: American Girl store (north entrance) Water Tower Place
Cost: $65.00 for members of Docomomo, SAH, CCSAH & Interfaith Forum on Religion, Art and Architecture of the A.I.A., $75.00 non-members; tour bus and box lunches provided.
RSVP: Please send your check made out to CCSAH, c/o SAH, 1365 N. Astor St, Chicago IL 60610-2144 by Monday, October 3, 2011.
Tour four significant works by postwar modernist architect Ed Dart (1922-1975). Trained at Yale University, Dart designed Water Tower Place and Pick-Staiger Auditorium in Evanston as a partner at Loebl, Schlossman, Bennett & Dart, also designing many houses and 26 churches. We will be touring St. Michael’s Episcopal Rectory in Barrington, St. Matthew United Church of Christ in Wheaton, St. Procopius Abbey in Lisle, St. John of the Cross, Western Springs, and First St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church on LaSalle Street in Chicago, as part of the 5th Annual National Study Day for DOCOMOMO, the working party for the Documentation and Conservation of Buildings, Sites and Neighborhoods of the Modern Movement.

For more information, please contact Susan van der Meulen at 312-944-5798 or email sahchicago@gmail.com.

PRAIRIE AVENUE TOUR with Historian William Tyre of Glessner House Museum

When: Sunday, October 30th from 2:00-4:00 p.m.
Meet: Glessner House Museum, 1800 S. Prairie
Cost: $15.00 members; $20.00 non-members Please join CCSAH and historian William Tyre for a fascinating glimpse and interior tour of two19th century mansions which are back to back, the neoclassical W.H. Reid house of 1894 by Beers, Clay and Dutton architects, at 2013 S. Prairie (first steel-framed house in the city), and the Wheeler/Kohn boutique hotel of 1870 by Otis Wheelock, architect (Second Empire style), rescued from demolition in 1997. If time permits, we are also touring the Second Presbyterian Church at 1936 S. Michigan Avenue, by architect James Renwick (1874; rebuilt by Howard Van Doren Shaw, 1900).
Here’s an opportunity for a “walk through time” of Chicago’s gilded age on Hallowe’en eve, with exterior tours of Glessner House (H.H. Richardson, 1886), Kimball House (Solon Beman, 1890), and the Clarke House Museum (1836), plus the nearby Purdy, Rees and Keith houses.

RSVP by October 18th to sahchicago@gmail.com or to Judy Freeman at (773)929-0329.

8/29/11

Thinking Into the Future: The Robie House Series on Architecture, Design and Ideas

The Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust and the University of Chicago present the inaugural Thinking into the Future lecture series by architect Stanley Tigerman.

Date: Friday, September 9, 2011
Time: 6 to 7 pm cocktail reception. 7 pm lecture.
Location:
Glen A. Lloyd Auditorium
University of Chicago Law School
1111 East 60th Street, Chicago
$30 for FLWPT members and U of C alumni
$35 for non-members

Stanley Tigerman, FAIA is principal of Tigerman McCurry Architects along with his wife, Margaret McCurry. He received both his architectural degrees from Yale University.
A Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago for twenty-one years, he also served as Director of the School of Architecture for eight years. Founder of the Chicago Architectural Club as well as Co-founder and (former) Director of ARCHEWORKS, a socially oriented design laboratory, Tigerman remains the "architectural voice and conscience" of Chicago as a commentator on, and critic of, his city's architecture, fighting to save historic buildings, criticizing bad architecture, condemning public inertia and working with community activists and the local AIA to achieve affordable housing, among other goals. The author of six previous books on architecture, Tigerman has two books being released this fall: Schlepping Through Ambivalence: Essays on an American Architectural Condition (Yale University Press) is a collection of his previously unpublished papers on Chicago architecture, architectural theory, and commentary on contemporaries; Designing Bridges to Burn (Oro editions) is a memoir of his career.

Thinking into the Future: The Robie House Series on Architecture, Design and Ideas will engage leading international, national and Chicago voices in architecture, design and contemporary culture that point the direction to a bright and promising future for the next generation. This partnership program with the University of Chicago will begin with a lecture event in 2011 and include an architecture walk in 2012.
The annual program will take place during September each year. As the program evolves and grows, it will add film screenings, student workshops, and a Robie House award for high school students inspired to envision their future in a summer fellowship program at Robie House and on the campus of the University of Chicago.

Designed in 1908, the Robie House is Frank Lloyd Wright’s most innovative Prairie style home, considered one of the ten most important architectural works of the 20th century.
Taking Wright’s future-thinking philosophy as expressed in the house, the program will explore current ideas and issues in architecture, design and society that stimulate debate about the global world of the 21st century from a neighborhood to a national perspective. The imperative to consider the natural environment, spiritual values, intellectual freedom, social change, design philosophy and architectural ideas will be the focus of this new partnership program.
More information here.

2/16/11

DRIEHAUS MUSEUM ANNOUNCES 2011 FREE LECTURES


The Richard H. Driehaus Museum Announces Schedule for Nickerson Lecture Program
Free and Open to Public, Program Seeks to Foster Appreciation for Historic Architecture and Design

To mark the commencement of the Program, a light reception will follow the first discussion on Tuesday, March 15, 2011. The full year roster of topics and speakers consists of:

Tuesday March 15th, 6 p.m.
Triumvirate: McKim, Mead & White: Art, Architecture, Scandal, and Class in America’s Gilded Age
Mosette Broderick, Architectural Historian

As America matured in the mid-19th century, the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White provided buildings for a changing society. From wooden houses at the seaside to regal social clubs in the city, as America transformed itself, these architects helped to refine the nation's idea of power and beauty. When McKim, Mead & White focused on the World's Columbian Exhibition, they came to see architecture as able to transform a nation. Mosette Broderick is an architectural historian. She is currently director of the Urban Design and Architecture Studies Program as well as the London-based Master of Arts program on Historical and Sustainable Architecture in the Department of Art History at New York University.

Thursday April 28th, 6 p.m.
Arabella’s Aesthetics: The Worsham-Rockefeller Bedroom
Susan Rawles, Assistant Curator of American Decorative Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Arabella Yarrington “Worsham” Huntington, a poor refugee of the post bellum war-torn South, demonstrated an independent aesthetic sensibility when she initiated in 1877 the remodeling and decorating of an Italianate mansion on West 54th Street in New York City. Combining current trends in Aestheticism with a subtle Francophile taste, she supervised the construction of the Worsham-Rockefeller bedroom. Recent research reveals that the project itself underwent mid-course changes, suggesting not only a patron’s evolving preferences, but broader developments in interior design. This talk will consider the Worsham-Rockefeller bedroom within the context of Arabella’s own life and the larger social and cultural milieu of America’s Gilded Age.

Thursday May 26th, 6 p.m.
Aestheticism and the American Businessman
Melody Barnett Deusner, Terra Foundation Fellow in American Art, Northwestern University
In turn-of-the-century America, paintings associated with the Aesthetic Movement were promoted through the collecting practices of a network of businessmen/art patrons who knew each other, exhibited and traveled together, and donated foundational collections to national museums. Although it may seem strange that soft, ethereal canvases painted by James McNeill Whistler, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, and Dwight Tryon appealed to Gilded Age industrialists, merchants, and bankers, contemporary publications frequently used the same language to describe successful Aesthetic artists and effective businessmen: both valued a selective and logical mind, a quick eye, and a decisive character. Installed in harmonious, fully coordinated interiors, Aesthetic paintings became much more than mere status symbols, serving as tangible tokens of friendships and business partnerships, while simultaneously evoking a networked world controlled by and shaped around the patrons themselves.

Thursday September 29th, 6 p.m.
Millionaires and Military Men: Aesthetic Movement Interiors at the Seventh Regiment Armory
Chelsea Bruner, Doctoral Candidate, City University of New York
Completed in 1881, Manhattan’s Seventh Regiment Armory is now recognized as one of the most important surviving collections of late 19th-century, high-style interiors. The structure was a privately-funded, purpose-built headquarters for the country’s most elite volunteer militia and served a variety of functions for the prestigious group. In back, a 55,000-square-foot drill hall accommodated military maneuvers, munitions storage, and occasionally social gatherings. In the front administrative wing, regimental and company rooms were designed by the most sought-after decorating firms of the period, including Herter Brothers and Pottier & Stymus. The Veteran’s Room and Library—widely considered the Armory’s most remarkable spaces—were an early collaborative effort between the recently-formed Louis C. Tiffany & Co., Associated Artists, and the young architect Stanford White. Chelsea Bruner is a Ph.D. candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. She teaches architectural and design history.

Thursday October 27th, 6 p.m.
The Isaac Bell House: Masterpiece of the Shingle Style
John R. Tschirch, Director of Museum Affairs/Architectural Historian, the
Preservation Society of Newport County, Rhode Island
This illustrated lecture will examine the creation of the Isaac Bell House (1883) in Newport, R.I., by the legendary architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White. A landmark of the Shingle Style, the Bell House is part of a small group of innovative summer houses designed in the fashionable resort of Newport in the early 1880s. The open plan and fusion of Colonial, European and Asian design motifs in the Isaac Bell House made it a seminal work when it first appeared, laying the groundwork for later developments in modernism by Frank Lloyd Wright and others.

All discussions in the Samuel M. Nickerson Lecture Program start promptly at 6 p.m. Museum doors open at 5 p.m. for any attendees who would like to explore the Museum and its collections. Since space is limited, reservations are required. To make reservations, guests may call 312.482.8933 x21, or e-mail info@driehausmuseum.org. More information also may be found on the Museum’s website, driehausmuseum.org.