Grope Me Grope Me

Mayor Daley has started the first bulldozing of the Michael Reese hospital campus designed by Walter Gropius. People are angry.

But who is this Walter Gropius and why should we care?

Gropius was the founder of a school in Germany called The Bauhaus in 1919. The Bauhaus was a school for design – all kinds of things – furniture, buildings…vacuum cleaners. It was a design school, one that didn’t even have an architecture class for a few years after its inception.

Gropius was the son of an architect and an architect himself. The Bauhaus concentrated on designing in a more democratic style than the classical buildings that had come before. This style, which concentrated more on new technology and simplicity, became known as the Modernist movement. If you think of some of the “classical” buildings in Chicago, like the Art Institute or The Field Museum, then you think of big domes and Greek columns. The Bauhaus rebelled against that kind of building, stripping off the classical elements they deemed elitist and classist. The Modern movement was about creating a more democratic style, a style that celebrated something new and different, pragmatic, logical – not the same old domed buildings. Buildings were to reflect their fuctionality and use – show what they were used for. Form follows function.

One of Gropius’ students was a fellow by the name of Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe, one of Chicago’s celebrated architects. Mies ran the Bauhaus after Gropius left and the school was shut down in 1933. Let’s just tell the truth here, Germany in 1933 was not really interested in a new democratic style of building now were they? Nein.

Mies has quite a few buildings in Chicago, the Federal Buildings being the most famous and celebrated, but Gropius only had a few – the Michael Reese Hospital Campus.

There was talk of tearing down these buildings when it was pompously assumed that we might get the Olympics (oh silly Chicago, what were we thinking?) and that the campus would be the site to the Olympic Village. There was some outrage and such then, but it was for a higher purpose, so it was tolerated.

But now we didn’t get the Olympics and guess what happens? The first building of the campus is under demolition.

The land now is to be sold to private developers for what? More condos, just what Chicago needs.

These are the only buildings in Illinois done by Gropius, truly one of the most influential architects ever. Is it worth the fight? Are the buildings outdated whether they’re done by Gropius or not? When is it okay to shuck the old to make room for the new?