In February, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks voted unanimously (8-0) to deny landmark status to Prentice Women’s Hospital, the iconic Bertrand Goldberg building. Demolition on the building, owned by Northwestern University, began in October. Recently Alexandra Lange lamented the loss:
It was a sad day for Modernism, and a sad day for common sense: Northwestern University’s insistence that they needed that site and no other for a new biomedical lab never held up to scrutiny. It would be nice to think that Prentice would be the last structurally daring, imaginatively conceived concrete building clawed to rubble, but it probably won’t be. …
Prentice hospital was not beautiful. Its cloverleaf top is weird, even to an admirer like me. Its glassed-in bottom, as architecture critic Blair Kamin wrote in the Chicago Tribune, was “boxy” and “unremarkable.” You can tell people a building is important as often as you like, but unless they feel it, they won’t cry over its destruction, and they won’t organize so that it never happens again. Preservationists (and architecture critics, myself included) can learn to tell better stories about buildings: their secret spaces, their best angles, their relationship to history and use.
For a captivating look at the debate leading up to the demolition, watch Nathan Eddy’s short documentary “The Absent Column,” seen above.
The Dish 