Chapin Gore Building

The Chapin and Gore Building was built in 1904 for a distiller and distributor of liquor. The building is now the Education and Administration Center for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra when between 1995 and 1997 the CSO renovated and expanded their performance space in Orchestra Hall which is right around the corner. 1904 must have been a busy year on that block: Orchestra Hall was also built in 1904 as was the Railway Exchange Building. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra plays a substantial role in this building's current state. (Here's the façade elevation from HABS.)

Stories behind the Chapin and Gore firm are colorful; many can be found on the web. Apparently Messrs. Chapin and Gore started out before the 1871 fire as grocers, but evolved as first distillers of whiskeys and then integrating retailing with the manufacturing, sales and distribution of whiskies and other alcoholic beverages. The building's façade suggests the diversity of the activities of the Chapin and Gore firm. On the second and third floors the narrow windows and thicker piers suggest that this is where whiskey was processed, bottled and stored. Such industrial activities require heavier floors and more solid construction. The larger windows on the higher floors suggest that these floors held offices which needed better illumination and ventilation. The first floor retail space was used as a bar and sampling space: wholesale customers could sample Chapin and Gore's products and retail customers could enjoy those products as well.  They even had a "Chapin and Gore" system for bar operations.  (I used to imagine that a scene from Theodore Dreiser's novel Sister Carrie was set here with only a thin disguise, but this novel appeared several years before this was erected.) I don't imagine the firm and its activities survived the 18th amendment.

The Chapin and Gore Building was designed by the architectural partnership of Schmidt and Garden who were members of the so-called "Prairie School" in which style there are terra-cotta surrounds of the second and third floor windows, as are the spandrels between and second and third floors and the now missing cornice and pier caps. 

It now seems a typical early twentieth century building, notable for having a design by a distinguished but not leading architect of the era. It's not particularly tall and it's structural engineering was hardly cutting edge.  Its mixed window types shows that Chicago's Loop back in the first decade of the twentieth century still had factories and warehouses as well as offices and retail. 

But if you look at the Chapin and Gore Building long enough you'll see how strange it is.

If there ever was a first Chicago School of Architecture, one of its cardinal principles was that a building should express its structure. But this doesn't. The key feature of the façade of the Chapin and Gore Building are the two piers which run down from the roof line, dividing the façade into thirds. On a conventional building these would be built around a load bearing structure that would carry that load to the foundation. But these two piers lead down to the entrances to be building. I can imagine several ways that this could be engineered, but none of these are clearly expressed.

The Chapin and Gore Building was more or less square in plan, and behind it would have been the back part of the now demolished buildings that once faced Wabash Avenue. Behind (south) of the Chapin and Gore Building is a now a part of the Symphony Center called The Rotunda and behind the Rotunda the Artistic Support Building. This support building has space for the Chicago Symphony Archives, a large rehearsal hall and the complex's mechanical systems: the heating, cooling and ventilation for Orchestra Hall's performance space and the rest of Symphony Center.

But the building is full of unfinished parts. The façade of the building is unrestored with an obviously missing cornice. The Rotunda on reflection seems incomplete: it sure looks like the grand circular staircase that would connect all the floors and maybe there should be otger performance spaces to the south and west. When I was poking around on the lower level I found what sure looks like an event space that would quite naturally connect to the staircase in the Rotunda if the Rotunda extended down to it.

It's all very curious. It's obvious that there were initially grand plans that had to scaled way, WAY back after they had begun and no one is going to publicly acknowledge their crushed dreams.

But ....

I vaguely recall that sometime in the early 1990 or earlier the CSO and the Lyric Opera of Chicago had announced some plan to jointly build and occupy a performing Arts complex. After some initial achievements, the whole project disappeared. The CSO announced that they would continue with their intention to expand their facilities and to finally "fix" Orchestra Hall. (There had been grumbling about the acoustic inadequacy of Orchestra Hall since its opening night in 1904.)

Perhaps these were the grand visionary plans that never were completed.