Tribune Tower - Chicago, IL
Posted by: 
Hikenutty
N 41° 53.425 W 087° 37.421
16T E 448259 N 4637797
Quick Description: The Tribune Tower was home to the Chicago News Tribune and is built in the neo-gothic style.
Location: Illinois, United States
Date Posted: 7/27/2007 6:26:31 PM
Waymark Code: WM1XHE
Views: 58
Long Description:The following excerpt is from the "WPA Guide to Illiniois":
The TRIBUNE TOWER, 435 N. Michigan Ave., contains
the plant and offices of the Chicago Tribune. Cathedral-like, its
vertical shaft of soft-toned Indiana limestone terminates in a
crown reminiscent of the Butter Tower in Rouen. At the 25th floor a
setback provides a promenade enclosed within a Gothic cloister of
delicate tracery, above which soaring arches simulate flying
buttresses.
Flanked by built-in stone fragments from celebrated
buildings, the richly carved entrance arch is three stories high;
light enters the lobby through a pierced stone screen of fanciful
design. Entwined in foliage ar figures from Aesop's fables and
facetious representations of the architects - a howling dog for
John Mead Howells, a figure of Robin Hood for Raymond M. Hood -
whose design won the $50,000 award for "the most beautiful and
distinctive office building in the world." The second prize was won
by Eliel Saarinen, whose severely vertical design has had a more
profound and extensive influence on skyscraper
architecture.
The Tribune Tower design competition was one of the largest, most
important and most controversial design contests of the 1920s and
263 designs were submitted. The choice of the Howells and Hood
design was not a popular one in the architecture world. Gothic
design went against the trend of the Chicago School of architecture
to modernize design, and also the European trend to functionalize
buildings, paring them to only the necessary (later called the
International Style.) It was a time of transition in architecture
and the choice was seen as a step backward.
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