How do you combine an accreditation-required Integrated Design Studio with curricular requirements for a high-rise project and a general interest among students in adaptive reuse? You Frankenstein a program together with some help from ace professionals with connections and their own ideas for recycling historic buildings into economically viable, culturally and socially relevant additions to downtown.

William LeBaron Jenney’s Second Leiter (also Siegel-Cooper) Store is a massive, half-block structure that served as a department store for the first chapters of its life, and was then carved up into academic facilities for Robert Morris University in 1998. When RMU merged with Roosevelt University several years ago, the building was mothballed, leaving something like 440,000 square feet of space in a prime Loop location vacant.

What to do with that much space? Unlikely in this development climate that it could work as commercial office space, so working with Ken DeMuth of Pappageorge Haymes and Kim Clawson of WJE, we developed a program for academic and dormitory space for the Loop’s “Seven Colleges,” small liberal-arts or professional schools that looked at developing a shared “University Center” about ten years ago (some survivors may remember that this accidentally turned into a “Chicago’s Tallest Building” studio for a graduate class at Iowa State…). We added the adjacent corner site, at Wabash and Van Buren, and proposed about 1.3 million square feet of residential and academic facilities, which could be distributed between the existing structure and a new, corner tower.

The catch, of course, is that the Leiter Building’s floor plates are massive–and too deep to easily adapt to apartment or dormitory functions. But its column grid–varying, but around 22′ square–doesn’t leave much room for the large classrooms that the program required. So students had to think not only about replanning the building’s floor plates; they also had to make value judgments about how much to alter the existing structure to make the program work, and/or whether to do the hard structural work of building a high-rise tower atop a bunch of long-span classrooms.

After a stellar field trip in January, where we got to tour the existing building and see newly-archived original drawings from Jenney’s office, students got to work on the Jenga-like massing studies required to fit rectangular pegs into (differently-sized) rectangular holes, all the while thinking about what it meant to build within and adjacent to a classic Chicago School building. We did exercises tracing the building’s elevations (Ken, Kim, and I have a working theory about its odd proportions and how tall it was really supposed to be…) and looking at materials and composition strategies from other 1890s buildings in the Loop. And, since it was an Integrated Design Studio, teams spent the time to figure out exiting strategies, mechanical system layouts, and cladding details.

This cohort of graduates will likely spend half their professoinal careers working on existing buildings–if not more. Giving them the experience of the constraints and inspirations that the process brings with it has become an important part of our studio teaching at Illinois, and this program and site nicely balanced their understandable desire to design something “new” with the guiderails of a rigorous column grid and a building fabric that they had to treat as a ‘ready-made.’

Teams came up with genuinely innovative ideas, either carving light courts and multi-bay voids into the existing building’s grid or, in one case, slicing the outer bays out of the building to leave the facade standing as a screen shading a covered collonnade/balcony space for retail and residential units behind. As the tower schemes developed, we also talked about the importance of a presence on Chicago’s skyline, and how sculpting architectural solutions into civically relevant forms was another dimension of the city’s skyscraper heritage.

Most of these folks are freshly graduated and in the first weeks of their careers…a great bunch to work with, and I’m looking forward to seeing how they take this experience into practice. Thanks to everyone who supported the studio, including Nathaniel Parks, the Tigerman McCurry Director of the Art Institute of Chicago Archives Research Center, who alerted us to the drawing tranche there and generously provided access, and to Rachel Will of WJE who rode shotgun as we mulled over how to develop the program. Finally, huge thanks to Tom Liravongsa, Instagram and YouTube’s “Skyscraper Guy,” for providing access to the Leiter Building.

[Continued from here]

“Ask anyone conversant with urban problems to tick off the names of private builders who are devoting their efforts to building ‘a better civic civilization’ through urban redevelopment, for example, and chances are he could do it on the fingers of one hand.  And it is a safe bet that one of the names mentioned would be that of ‘Herb’ Greenwald.”

David Carlson, “City Builder Greenwald.”  Architectural Forum, May, 1958.  118.

Herbert Greenwald’s internship in Holsman’s office quickly turned into a partnership.  After briefly quitting real estate to teach at Hebrew schools in Chicago during WWII, Greenwald returned to the firm with a collaborative effort; Sherman Garden Apartments in Evanston.  Constructed in 1946 at the intersection of Sherman Avenue and Emerson Street near the Northwestern campus, this development included 132 apartments in three seven-story blocks surrounding a courtyard. 

Holsman, Holsman, Klekamp, and Taylor were the architects, and the buildings were clear relatives of the Holsman organization’s contemporaneous developments—Lunt-Lake in particular—with curving windows, efficient planning, and many of the construction innovations that had made previous projects efficient but comfortable.  Greenwald, listed as “Agent for the Trust,” led the project, but D. Coder Taylor, of the Holsman firm, was listed as an actual Managing Trustee.[1]  Given that, Sherman Garden Apartments was a tentative first step by Greenwald toward his own career as a developer and builder.

His next step, however, was ambitious—and history-making.  Greenwald formed his own development corporation—Metropolitan Structures—and a related construction company—Herbert Construction.  The pairing was very much in line with Holsman’s model, and Greenwald stated his goals in much the same terms as Holsman had articulated his.  Covering his meteoric rise a decade later, Architectural Forum described his approach as “making civic humanism pay,” that is, applying the values he had learned under Mortimer Adler and at the Holsman firm to development projects that would at once address Chicago’s housing shortages—and earn a reasonable profit.  To do this, he would rely on the Holmsans—particularly Henry’s son John, who had taken over much of the development arm of the organization.  But he would expand his sights to larger projects and even more innovative architects.

In 1946, Greenwald convinced local Chevrolet dealer Samuel Katzin to invest in a plot of land on the lakefront in Hyde Park.  The two had met through Jewish philanthropies, and Katzin had been impressed with Greenwald’s plan.  The site was close enough to the University of Chicago that, like Sherman Garden Apartments, it would have a natural constituency among faculty.  But it was also highly visible and, with views over the lake, an ideal location for a high-rise apartment building. 

Greenwald’s initial queries to architects were charmingly innocent; after Eero Saarinen turned him down and Frank Lloyd Wright agreed—for a fee of $1,000,000—Walter Gropius responded to Greenwald by pointing out that “the father of us all,” Mies van der Rohe, was literally just up the street.  Mies, who had yet to design a high-rise that was built, was keen to come on board, but Greenwald also hired Charles Genther, a former Holabird and Root employee who had assembled PACE Architects out of fellow H&R alumni, as architect of record—and Holsman, Holsman, Klekamp, and Taylor as mechanical engineering and financial consultants. 

Promontory was developed along exactly the same lines as Sherman Gardens and the Holsman’s concurrent developments—as a Mutual Ownership Trust.  As groundbreaking as Mies’ design was, Architectural Forum dedicated as much space to its financial arrangements as its architecture, describing these succinctly and, as it would turn out, presciently:

“Most co-ops are tax-conscious devices where the promoter leaves the tenants on their own after the building is built. Mutual Trust, on the other hand, provides for promoter responsibility during the whole life of the building. Tenants buy a trust certificate representing their share in the building, but they do not run it. The promoter sets up a board of trustees, usually including himself, to do the job. Perhaps the most compelling proof of the promoter’s responsibility under mutual trust is that he and the other trustees are fully liable in the event of financial difficulty. (Tenant liability, on the other hand, is limited to their original equity investment).”[2]

Holsman, Holsman, Klekamp, and Taylor played the same role in 860-880 Lake Shore Drive, which was also financed on the Mutual Ownership Trust plan and completed in 1952.  Notably, Mies’ planning for the units in 860-880 was rejected by Greenwald under pressure from lenders for its lack of partitions between bedroom and living room spaces and for exposing those bedroom areas in the building’s corners.  As built, the apartments’ plans are more traditional—and they bear more than a passing resemblance to many of the planning tactics used by the Holsmans in their contemporary projects.  PACE certainly also had input on these, as the architects of record here, as they had been on Promontory, but a comparison between Holsman’s plans for Lunt-Lake and 860-880—both published in the same issue of Architectural Forum in 1950.[3]

Mies, Greenwald, PACE, and Holsman’s firm collaborated on at least two other projects in 1950-52.  The Algonquin Apartments in Hyde Park (1950-51) are the better-known of these, though Mies so strongly objected to the inclusion of ground-floor units in these six towers that he had his name removed from the project.  More intriguing was the same group’s proposal for a 10-story office building at Rush and Huron in 1948, “the most functional and severely plain office building in the Midwest,” according to John Holsman.  Designed by Mies, the project was to have radiant concrete structural elements, just like those in Holsman’s residential developments, and to be funded by commercial tenants.[4] 

In 1951, the Holsmans—on their own—proposed a 12-story tower that placed ten floors of apartments atop a podium of shops and offices.  In addition to mixing commercial and residential uses—a radical idea at the time—the design, for the site of the McCormick Mansion at Rush and Erie streets, was to have “skip-stop” elevators, reducing the need for corridors by having tenants walk up or down one floor from elevator landings to their apartments.[5]

Neither of these last two projects was built.  The brief 1948-50 recession, coupled with the restrictions that accompanied the onset of the Korean War in 1950, seriously affected the Holsman model.  Contractors could not readily obtain construction materials, in particular steel, without going through a lengthy, unpredictable application process after the outbreak of hostilities and the passage of the Defense Production Act in September of that year. 

William T. Holsman later testified that a single contractor’s default on an unnamed project (likely Parkway Gardens) triggered a cascading financial crisis within the Holsman organization; after an FHA commissioner refused to reassign the work, the Holsman trust faced delays that threatened the project.  Future residents had already invested in that project’s trust, and the Holsmans had to move money from other trusts to cover their losses.[6]  This skirted legality, but when the firm was unable to proceed with a planned third phase of the Winchester-Hood project, investors and prosecutors pounced. 

While Henry and William Holsman both made convincing defenses that this was simply a business failure, the fact that nearly $250,000 of the Winchester-Hood Trust’s funds had already been spent on architects’ fees—to Holsman, Holsman, Klekamp, and Taylor—and that just $190 remained in the Trust’s accounts made for terrible optics.  In February, 1955, father and son were indicted on federal securities and mail fraud charges; they were convicted in January, 1956 of defrauding 124 prospective residents out of $677,387 and sentenced to four years in prison each.[7] 

Ultimately, the younger Holsman’s sentence was reduced to three years by a District Court judge who noted that the Holsmans hadn’t actually profited from the debacle. The same judge, apparently disgusted with the lower court’s verdict, reduced the elder Holsman’s sentence to a single hour, citing his advanced age.[8]  Henry K. Holsman died in 1961, at the age of 94, in Lake Genoa Wisconsin.[9]  After serving his time, William T. Holsman and his brother practiced around Lake Geneva and Delevan, Wisconsin.

The later developments by Greenwald and Mies—Commonwealth Promenade, Esplanade, and 2400 Lakeview—were all designed after the Holsman bankruptcies and, thus, with other firms.  Genther and Mies parted ways as well, particularly after a falling out over the competition for Chicago’s Federal Center competition in 1959.  Greenwald would perish in a plane crash in February of that year, in the midst of projects for apartment developments that combined Mies’s designs with Holsman’s mutual ownership plans in Detroit, Newark, San Francisco, and Baltimore, only some of which survived his passing.[10]

The Holsman’s downfall revealed a major flaw in Mutual Ownership: the significant and ongoing risk that each trust’s management took in accepting residents’ funds before construction and acting as a fiduciary while managing the project.  Fewer developers were willing to take this on.  In 1963, Illinois passed legislation enabling condominium ownership—essentially removing the requirement for property to be tied to an actual piece of land.  While co-ops continued to be organized, condominiums offered developers a shorter period of liability and vulnerability, requiring only repayment of construction loans and mortgages.  This allowed them to get in and out of projects quickly, and the type spread throughout the city, in high-rises on the lakeshore to low-rise developments throughout Chicago.

Interviewed by Architectural Forum just months before his death, Greenwald avoided mentioning Holsman—understandable given the stigma attached to his recent conviction.  But just two years prior, he had paid, perhaps, a silent tribute to the inventor, architect, and developer who had been his mentor and partner.  Invited to a panel on multifamily housing construction at the Drake Hotel in April, 1957, Greenwald lamented the state of building technology as a major reason for Chicago’s ongoing housing shortage.  “Because of a 20-year lag in construction,” he told the audience, “we don’t have a window in an apartment as good as in a car or airplane.”[11]  Holsman, of course, had worked on exactly this, taking the expertise gleaned from a short but productive automotive career and translating it to the architectural world.

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[1] Sherman Garden Apartments: Better Living Through Mutual Ownership. (Evanston: Wallace and Orth Sales and Management Agents, 1946).

[2] “The Financing of Promontory.” Architectural Forum, Vol. 92, no. 1.  Jan., 1950.  77-78, 124.

[3] “Glass in a Steel Frame,” and “Pioneering Construction Ideas,” Architectural Forum, Vol. 92, no. 1.  Jan., 1950.  76-77, 81.

[4] Al Chase, “Plan Chicago’s First Big Co-Op Office Building: Rush-Huron Project to Cost $1,300,000.” Chicago Daily Tribune, Sept. 12, 1948. 1-nA. 

[5] Al Chase,  “Big Apartment House to Have Skip-Stop Lift: Site That of Cyrus McCormick Home.” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 19, 1951. 1-b5.

[6] “Chicago Firm Links FHA Aid to Bankruptcy: Architect Criticizes Powell’s Rulings.” Chicago Daily Tribune, Apr. 22, 1954. 2.

[7] “Son, Father, 89, Convicted Of Defrauding 124: W. T. Holsman, 50, Gets 4 Year Term.” Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan. 20, 1956. 10.

[8] “Sentenced To 60 Minutes in $667,387 Fraud.” Chicago Daily Tribune, Feb. 21, 1956. 12.

[9] “Holsman, Noted Designer, Dies in Genoa City.”  Lake Geneva (Wis.) Regional News, May 25, 1961.  19.

[10] “Herbert S. Greenwald.”  The New York Times, Feb. 5, 1959.  22.

[11] Ernest Fuller, “Urge More Research in Construction.”  Chicago Daily Tribune, Apr. 21, 1957.  A7.