By Joe Frey

Just as the Baby Boomers of the 1960s counter-culture were fated to become senior citizens, modernism - a movement once equally earnest in its quest - was similarly not fated to be, in the words of Bob Dylan, “forever young.” During the backlash against it, launched by Robert Venturi’s “Less is a bore” counter to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s “Less is more” mantra and embodied in the Chippendale folly atop Philip Johnson’s 1984 Sony Tower (previously the AT&T Building) in New York, modernism was seen to be as stodgy as it had once seemed cutting edge.

While postmodernism did provide some relief from what had become a rigid dogma, it also ushered in a period of abject silliness. Architects obsessed with archetypes manipulated historical icons and grossly interpreted them for high-speed highway readability and television-trained attention spans. The austerity of modernism was replaced, at its worst, by inane visual puns. (e.g., the Swans on Disney World’s Swan Hotel [Michael Graves, 1990]. Get it? Get it?)

Time, however, has proven to be a fair arbiter of style and the tide has turned to allow a fairer reassessment of modernism and its once ridiculed and rejected tenets. One emerging issue lies in the unique aspects of modernist architecture that pose both troubling questions and unique opportunities for preservationists as modernist buildings age. A prime example of these opportunities stands just west of Chicago’s Magnificent Mile in what was until comparatively recently a ‘no-man’s land’ south of the shrinking Cabrini-Green public housing project.

The Montgomery Ward & Co. Headquarters Building, designed by Minuro Yamasaki, architect of the World Trade Center Towers and, ironically, a man afraid of heights, is a bold exercise in the kind of structural innovation that is a hallmark of modernism’s best designs. A narrow rectangle in plan, the 28-story building is supported by four travertine-clad, hollow concrete towers at the corners, with curtain walls suspended between them. No supporting members are at the perimeter of the building, but two rows of interior columns—inset over twenty feet from the walls—support the concrete floor slabs between the corner towers. Despite such ingenuity, the result was hardly a critical hit upon completion. Modernism’s stranglehold on corporate America was loosening by the time the building was finished in 1974. That also happened to be the same year retailing rival Sears Roebuck & Co. claimed the title to the World’s Tallest with its own tower; meanwhile, the Montgomery Ward Building’s more modestly-scaled severity was lost in the hype and not enthusiastically received.

Yet the building’s relatively remote site did make it, almost by default, an undeniable landmark, towering over a neighborhood dominated by late nineteenth to early twentieth century industrial lofts. Unfortunately, Ward’s fortunes as a retailer did not rise as high as its landmark building. By 2000 the company declared bankruptcy.

Two years later, vacant and characterized by an austere facade, the Montgomery Ward Building was targeted for redevelopment by Chicago-based Centrum Properties for residential condominiums. Preservation, however, was hardly the prime motivator. After considering both restoration architects Skidmore, Owings and Merrill’s assessment of the building’s structural integrity and flexibility and the growing popularity of the gentrifying neighborhood, the developers determined that transforming the former corporate tower into a residential tower was economically viable, which is to say, profitable. Nonetheless, the adaptability of the building testifies to the veracity of one of modernism’s enduring maxims, Mies’s concept of “universal space,” the simple proposition that the use of a building should not be limited by its design but rather that the design should allow for as many uses as possible.

While the conversion from office space to residential space hardly stretches this idea to its limits, Yamasaki’s original design provides unintended benefits to second-use occupants. For example, if built from the ground up today as a residential project, economics would dictate lower ceiling heights than the ten feet-plus in these converted offices. Perhaps the flexibility inherent in the design is most clearly illustrated on floors two through five; where fifteen years ago Ward’s employees parked themselves behind their desks, building residents today park their SUVs.

Still, in deference to the people who reside in what has been renamed The Montgomery, concessions were made. Probably the most obvious is the replacement of the old curtain walls of dark glass and frames with new ones of less severe brushed aluminum and lighter glass, a process that, for a short time, dramatically laid bare the building’s structural system. Terraces span the gaps between the corner towers on the narrow east and west elevations. The addition of a circular ramp to the parking levels might scandalize purists, but it creates a counterpoint to an unrelentingly rectilinear structure, despite not fulfilling the criteria needed to be considered universal space. Of course, other luxury amenities have been liberally added to this upscale conversion, but the ability to easily and economically make such upgrades is exactly the point: If they had cost too much to adapt them to the building, the developers wouldn’t have executed them.

Our architectural heritage is far too valuable to let it twist in the fickle winds of the marketplace. Yet can it be bad if a building being considered for preservation can offer accommodations to both preservationists and developers alike through its very design? Many factors are weighed in the decision to preserve a building, yet, all things being equal, a structure that lends itself to a greater variety of financially viable uses would seem to stand the better chance of lasting through the ages than a building with less potential for transformation.

If that is indeed the case, then perhaps what preservations call adaptive reuse is just another name for universal space? And if that is true, then maybe Mies had it right all along: Over time, less really is more.