By Joe Frey
Long before ground had even been broken for Trump International Hotel and Tower Chicago, I — in a rare moment of unbridled civic boosterism — predicted, in my column for the May/June, 2003 issue of now-out-of-print dialogue Magazine, that Skidmore, Owings & Merrill architect Adrian Smith would “pull off the architectural equivalent of hitting .400” with his design for the building. (Trust me; in context it makes perfect sense.) Now, with construction of its reinforced concrete frame nearing half the structure’s total 92 stories, it’s time I reassess my enthusiastic prediction. But first, a related observation that really has nothing at all to do with Trump Tower itself.
I miss the unobstructed view of the east elevation of the IBM Building (1971, Ludwig Mies von der Rohe), afforded by the demolition of the squat Sun-Times Building (1957, Naess and Murphy), which sat where Trump Tower now rises. Miesian Modernism was briefly laid bare as it had never been before—and never will be again. The purity of Mies’ design philosophy was exposed, transparent as this, his last American building, its sublime yet perversely intricate simplicity made plain. It was an ephemeral reveal too soon again obscured.
But this is just the minor reminiscing of a sometime sentimentalist. After all, the essence of any city is its dynamic nature; it’s never finished, always changing. This is every city’s blessing, and its curse. It’s what makes a great city constantly intriguing, while instilling in it an undercurrent of melancholy for all that has been lost, all that could be but isn’t. No great leap of anthropomorphism needs to be taken to understand that this is what makes a city so human; its life mirrors our own.
Okay, fine. But what about the Donald’s not-yet fully tumescent erection? (Sorry. Couldn’t resist.) Despite lagging sales, which sparked a personal appearance by the man himself at a recent news conference, Trump should, in a way and as difficult as it must be for him to share the limelight, be grateful that his mega-project has been greatly overshadowed lately by Chicago Spire, Dublin-based developer Garrett Kelleher’s exercise in one-upmanship. (Intended or not, Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava’s 2,000-foot tall drill bit, planned for the spit of land between the Chicago River and the Ogden Slip, just west of Lakeshore Drive, adds a naughty visual pun to the phallic imagery implicit in every skyscraper.) So, while all attention has been diverted elsewhere, Trump Tower has been slowly nearing its estimated early-2008 top-out and spring ’09 completion. (The hotel portion is scheduled to open in December.) So how’s it faring in such relative obscurity?
First, the good news. Viewing Trump Tower from certain perspectives will put it in a flattering—indeed, even somewhat elegant—light. From the west along the south bank of the river, the bullnose formed by the curving intersection of the Wabash Avenue and riverfront facades references the prow-like southwest corner of the iconic Wrigley Building (1922, Graham, Anderson, Probst & White), next door to the east. And if you’re far enough downriver, Trump Tower doesn’t even look too over-scaled. That’s the bad news.
From the very beginning of the planning stages, fears about its scale have been one of the greatest objections to the project. Indeed, a prime objective of the design has to be to mitigate the building’s scale. That could be just too much to hope for. Even at this stage of its construction—still short of overtaking IBM’s 695 feet—you cannot escape the simple fact that Trump Tower is one big building in a very tight spot. This is most obvious looking down Wabash Avenue anywhere from north of the jog that puts Trump Tower at the visual terminus of the street. Lost has been another precious temporary vista—of the wedding-cake dainty Jeweler’s Building (1927, Giaver & Dinkelberg) across the river—now blocked by the impermeable glass wall of Trump Tower, elongated by the oblique angle of the facade as it follows the contour of the Wabash Avenue Bridge’s crooked approach.
However, because it just doesn’t help these matters any, the biggest complaint has to be the chintzy treatment of the facade. Maybe the intention of such insubstantiality was to lighten the heaviness inherent in such a behemoth, but the cheap appearance of the cladding materials instead only accentuates the building’s undeniable bulk, like a costume tutu on Ben Wallace. We can only hope that the effect will lessen as the tower’s height increases.
But let’s face it; even if the site of Trump International Hotel and Tower Chicago hadn’t previously been owned by a business that had no choice but to divest itself of its most valuable asset, the days were numbered for any building, like the low-rise Sun-Times, occupying—and underutilizing—such prime real estate. So maybe we should just look on the bright side and say the glass is half-full. Because, like so much in life, it could be a lot worse. We could be stuck with Grand Plaza (540 N. State St., 2003, OWP&P Architects, Loewenberg + Associates) North Bank or Millennium Centre (33 W. Ontario St.,2003, Solomon, Cordwell, Buenz and Associates) On the River or any variation of the seemingly countless undistinguished residential towers of relatively recent vintage or now going up in River North, Streeterville, South Loop and the extended Illinois Center development called the New East Side. You want to talk about instilling melancholy.