860-880 Lake Shore Drive

“The Architect Mies was born in the town of Aachen, Germany in 1886 and lived there for the first nineteen years of his life. Aachen had been established in the ninth century by the emperor Charlemagne as the first capital of the Holy Roman Empire.”

“From Berlage, Mies learned to accept structure as the essential element in architecture. Mies opened his own office in Berlin in 1913 and returned to it after serving as an army engineer during the First World War.”

“From the start the two men got along well because, according to Mies, Greenwald was not a builder interested mainly in profit, but was rather an idealist who wanted to "leave his stamp on the scene" by creating the finest architecture possible within the framework of modern technology and economics.”

“Two years after Mies and Greenwald met, the first building Mies designed for Greenwald, the Promontory Apartments, was constructed in Chicago on South Shore Drive near 56th Street.”

“To the architect Richard Neutra, the 860-880 towers "appeared like the wonderful conclusion of a lifelong aspiring formation of ideas. It is a moral force which sets the Miesian production apart; it is not mere formal abstraction." According to Mies, an orderly building can be a powerful force for greater order in the world around it.”

“Walter Peterhans, who taught with Mies at IIT, wrote of 860 soon after they were constructed: These towers testify to a new and until now unknown spirit. They are built out of the familiar materials, steel and glass, and yet it is as though they introduce the era of steel and glass, as if steel and glass are seen for the first time.”

“To those who were shocked at the way Mies had used a structural material, steel, as applied ornament, the architect gave both a good reason for the I-beams and the real reason.”

“By transforming these familiar materials into a new and classic form at 860-880 Lake Shore Drive, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe shaped a major part of the architecture of the second half of the twentieth century.”

“(Michael J. Pado, photographer) buildings are divided into five bays and the short sides into three bays, each bay twenty-one feet wide. This clear expression of the structural skeleton establishes the first division of the buildings total volume, and is emphasized at the ground level by the columns that stand free of the recessed walls of the lobby, forming an arcade around the base of the building.”

“When 860 proved to be a financial as well as an aesthetic success, Greenwald commissioned Mies to design more buildings in Chicago. In 1952, the six buildings of the Algonquin Apartments on Hyde Park Boulevard were completed; the two buildings of Commonwealth Plaza at Sheridan Road and Diversy Parkway were built between 1955 and 1958; at the same time, the two buildings known as the Esplanade Apartments, at 900-910 Lake Shore Drive, across the street from 860-880 Lake Shore Drive, were constructed.”