October 8, 1871; July 24, 1915; November 25, 1987; June 20, 1988.

Though no one, to my knowledge, died as a direct result of what happened twenty years ago in June, the date still belongs on a list with those of three better known Chicago tragedies: the Great Fire, the Eastland Disaster and the death of Harold Washington, respectively. Because it was on that last date that the selection was announced for the winner of the design-build competition for Chicago’s new public library. It was to be named in honor of Washington – who had suddenly died in office just a half year before – Chicago’s first African-American mayor and a driving force behind the city’s effort to build the facility.


In typical Chicago fashion, the process to make the new central library a reality was fraught with political maneuvering (though the recent circumstances surrounding the relocation of the Chicago Children’s Museum make what transpired with the library look like the height of studied and informed deliberation): the obsoletion of the original main building (now the Chicago Cultural Center, 1897, Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge); the institution’s move in the mid-1970s to the Mandel Building, a warehouse along the north bank of the Chicago River, just east of Michigan Avenue; eviction from these temporary quarters (if more than ten years can be called that) when the building was razed to make room for NBC Tower (1989, Skidmore Owings and Merrill); the ill-advised and ill-fated plan (squelched by Washington himself) for the adaptive reuse of the shuttered Goldblatt’s Store (nee Rothchild’s, now DePaul Center, 1906, Holabird and Roche). But for the present purposes, all that needs to be known is that two decades ago the selection committee revealed to the public the winner of the five (mostly mediocre) designs chosen from the larger field of six total entrants.

Yes, six. Just six. For an international design competition. To win a prestigious commission. For a prominent public building. In the titular capital of modern architecture. (As a comparison, 263 entries were submitted for the Tribune Tower design competition in 1922.) It has been speculated that the parameters of the design-build contract, drawn up to prevent the cost overruns that plagued the then-recently-completed State of Illinois Building (now James R. Thompson Center, 1985, Murphy/Jahn), were so odious that the thought of signing and complying with it, as the winning architect/developer team was required to do, was enough to temper many an architectural ego, thereby greatly limiting the size of the talent pool the selection committee could choose from. Apocryphal or not, the result was a Hobson’s choice for the committee, and certain disappointment for the citizens of Chicago. And that included this one.


Shortly before the winner was announced, I attended a public presentation by the architects about their designs. Still in my salad days, my interest in architecture was in a relatively nascent stage so I can’t totally rely on my judgment then nor my memory now. But I do recall preferring the two designs that made use of the entire site and spanned the L tracks on Van Buren Street: those by German-born Chicago architect Helmut Jahn and Canadian Arthur Erikson. Jahn’s was like an asymmetrical, vaulted and stilted International Style glass box on its side, by way of a monochromatic Mondrian. A curvilinear, futuristic affair, Erikson's design owed not just a little to that of Star Wars Battlecruisers. (Had it been built, it would, I fear, be as dated today as the original Star Trek program had become by 1988.) I also recall that two designs by architects with stronger Chicago connections – Ludwig Mies von der Rohe’s grandson Dirk Lohan and SOM – looked to the commercial legacy of State Street, updating the restrained designs of turn-of-the-century retail emporiums, such as Marshall Field’s (1902, D.H. Burnham and Company), the Fair (1891, William Le Baron Jenny) and Robert Morris College (nee Congress Center, nee Sears, nee Second Leiter, also 1891, also Jenny), just across the street from the library site. Finally, there was the oldest-looking building of the bunch, a red brick box with tall window arches and a multi-vaulted green (as in color, not ecological) roof. What I remember most about this model was the fanciful suspension bridge, not included in the building budget, that spanned Congress Parkway. (The models are still on display at the HWLC, the winner in the Harold Washington exhibit on the ninth floor, the also-rans on the eighth. Photographs of them would have accompanied this article, but I was informed by the security guard that photography of the exhibits in the library is prohibited, and I was in no mood to play spy nor be a scofflaw.)


The rational of the selection committee is beside the point, but the old-looking model turned out to be the winning design. It was the work of Thomas Beeby of Hammond Beeby and Babka, the same firm that had designed the well-received Conrad Sulzer Regional Library in Lincoln Square (1985), which probably made this selection the safest decision. Choosing Jahn’s design was probably the most risky, especially after both the fiscal woes that beset the construction of his State of Illinois Building and the mixed reception it generated in the public. As a result, his design probably never had a chance, even if it was plainly the best of the lot. Erikson’s was at least somewhat daring. Vaguely Post-Modern, SOM’s was subtly distinguished but hardly monumental. Lohan’s would not have looked out of place on the ring road around Woodfield Mall.


The thing is, though, if you had pulled people off the street and put all the models in front of them and said “Pick out the library,” they would have inevitably chosen Beeby’s design. The model possessed an undeniable civic air, and was almost dainty – a quality that, regretfully, proved not to scale up. But on such lame, popular prima fascia evidence alone the decision could very well have been made. Regardless of how you slice it, however, the committee’s choice was a tragedy. And to emphasize the point, someone possessing either a devilish sense of humor or suffering from numbing obliviousness decided to open the completed HWLC in 1991 on the eve of the 120th anniversary of the Great Fire.


Similar in spirit to the Sultzer’s design, the idiom of cursorily historic classicism that worked so well on the scale of a regional branch library became bloated when enlarged to a central facility. (As if its comically enlarged acroteria don’t draw enough attention to this carbuncle, the HWLC has, according to the Guinness Book of World’s Records, the dubious distinction of being the largest public library building in the world.) A thin veneer of brick and stone covers three of the four elevations of the façade, disguising reinforced concrete construction – as if out of some fundamentalist Post-Modern shame – with design elements borrowed/lifted/stolen from iconic Chicago buildings, albeit only those still extant. (A well-executed design referencing no-longer-standing landmarks, such as the Chicago Stock Exchange [1893 – 1972, Adler and Sullivan], the Republic Building [1905 – 1961, Holabird and Roche] and dozens of others may have resulted in a structure with more depth, and opened a frank dialogue about historic preservation. But reminding the powers that be of the thoughtless and tragic demolition of these buildings would probably have been an act of career suicide in a politically juried competition like this.)


But I suppose that’s the best that can be said about the HWLC: It’s at least functional as a facile 3-D tour of Chicago architectural history (without walking!). There some Rookery (Burnham and Root 1888); here a little Auditorium (1890, Adler and Sullivan),over there a bit of the Monadnock (1893, Burnham and Root); right here a touch of the Marquette (1895, Holabird and Roche) and, for the façade fronting alley-like South Plymouth Court, a snarky nod to Modernism in a glass curtain wall. Toss in some wise old owls and a few puff-cheeked, pursed-lipped, wind-blowing cherubs and you also have a literary lesson in pun-making of the visual sort. All of which is to say that, architecturally, the HWLC was an undeniable disaster. It still is. Time has not been kind, and has yet to bestow upon it the type of dignity survival often engenders. The only hope now is that, in an aesthetic shift of seismic proportions, trendsetters take the HWLC in an ironic embrace, as if it’s the second coming of Googie. I think that’s unlikely.


On the positive side, at least the city got the site right. (Hint, hint, Chicago Children’s Museum.) Then way – way – down on its luck, the South Loop has since become a lively locus of higher education, the library complementing the presence of other cultural institutions, including Columbia College, De Paul University, John Marshall Law School, Robert Morris College, Roosevelt University, Jones College Preparatory High School and the International Youth Hostel. And for the facility itself – for everything it has to offer the citizens of Chicago and visitors to the city – we can and should be thankful. It is a wondrous civic resource, functional quirks aside. (Explain to me again why the library itself doesn’t really start until the third floor.) Then again, how much greater a tragedy would it be if the HWLC even failed in the use for which it was specifically designed? But just as its functionality is all internal, this is a building best enjoyed from the inside; the treatment of the interiors in general is pleasing, highlighted by the Winter Garden, an especially fine public space. So take with you into the HWLC the temperament of the Parisian who lunches at the base of the Eiffel Tower, because it’s the only place in the city where he doesn’t have to look at the damn thing.


What is truly remarkable about the HWLC, however, is how, through the unpredictable law of unintended outcomes, it so appropriately honors the memory of Harold Washington. Perversely, and despite everything going against it, there could possibly be no more fitting way to commemorate him than this. Washington was, after all, a man of humble means and a lifelong bibliophile, so naming the central public library after him was infinitely apropos. But more to the point, his premature death left an equally limitless legacy of unrealized potential. And when we look at this unfortunate edifice, how else can a longtime Chicagoan possibly react to it than to lament: Oh, what glory might have been!