History

1014-16 S. Michigan Avenue was built in 1912 by Christian A. Eckstorm. A red brick 4-story building with terra cotta detailing, this structure was erected by a developer as a speculative commercial building. During its first 30 years, it housed offices for a shingle distributor, a lumber company and an electrical parts manufacturer. In 1941, the building was rehabilitated for the Sherwood Conservatory of Music, founded in 1895 by William H. Sherwood, a piano virtuoso, teacher and composer.The school’s most famous alumna may be the comedienne Phyllis Diller, who was a piano student at the Sherwood School in the 1930s but did not graduate. The building was acquired by Columbia College Chicago in 1997 and now houses the school’s music department. The artistic, cultural and performance education tradition of this building, as it was adaptively reused since the 1940s, is continued today in the programs of the Music Department of Columbia College.

Design Philosophy

The neoclassical design philosophies of the Parisian Ecole des Beaux-Arts became the preferred stylistic expression in public architecture at the turn of the 20th century in the United States. This was particularly true in Chicago, site of the World’s Columbia Exposition of 1893, which was known as the White City for its predominantly classical revival landscape and building designs. This event initiated the City Beautiful movement, an attempt to reorganize American urban spaces on a classically-inspired hierarchical model. In order to advance social development and emphasize order in civic life, planners and architects envisioned an urban environment wherein the design of buildings and their placement indicated their relative civic importance. In this hierarchy, public buildings and cultural institutions were held in the highest esteem, and were therefore given the most prominent locations and elaborate decorative schemes. Commercial enterprises participated in this effort to improve the urban environment on a less ostentatious level than public institutions, however they did commission buildings of architectural significance in prominent locations.

The 1014-16 South Michigan Building is a neoclassical style building. Its classical revival design is articulated by white terra cotta detailing on its second and third floors, with a terra cotta cornice atop its third floor, which supports a mansard-roofed fourth floor with pedimented dormers. In its massing and detailing, if not in its scale, it contributes to the civic ideal of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

The style, quality of materials, scale, and location of the 1014-16 South Michigan Building make it an exemplar of the City Beautiful movement. Its date of construction, 1912-13, made it a contributor to the ideal of civic conscientiousness exemplified by the famous Plan of Chicago of 1909, by architect Daniel Burnham. These qualities make the building a contributing feature to the locally designated Historic Michigan Avenue Boulevard District, the collection of buildings facing Grant Park and Lake Michigan that forms what is informally known as “Chicago’s front yard.” The majority of these buildings share, to a lesser or greater degree, the Beaux-Arts style of the 1014-16 South Michigan Building, reinforcing their collective impact and identity as a locally designated landmark district.

Description

The 1014-16 South Michigan Building is a four story steel frame structure. On its principal facades, facing South Michigan Avenue and East 11th Street, it is faced with red brick and trimmed in white terra cotta that carries restrained classical detailing, mostly on the second and third floors. A cornice above the third floor supports the mansard roof of the fourth floor, which features pedimented dormers on its Michigan and 11th Street frontages. The west elevation is common brick.

Overall, it would be difficult to see the building as having a distinct style. The combination of its massing, in particular its mansard roof, with its classical revival detailing refer it generally to buildings built along Parisian boulevards during the nineteenth century, designed in the style of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. The choice of brick, the modest scale, and restraint in ornament, however, make this a matter of influence more than one of high style imitation.

Campus Preservation Plan

• Volume VII: 1014 South Michigan Avenue [124 pages]
• View entire plan