History

72 E. 11th Street was built in 1929 by Holabird & Root, architects of outstanding Chicago skyscrapers such as the Chicago Board of Trade, the Palmolive Building and the 333 N. Michigan Avenue Building. 72 East 11th Street, a six- story, limestone-clad Art Deco building, was originally owned by the Chicago Women’s Club and housed the organization’s meeting rooms, offices and a theater. Rich in history, it was the site for rallies in support of women’s voting rights, efforts on behalf of compulsory education laws and fund raising for scholarships at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a women’s dormitory at the University of Chicago. Subsequent owners and uses are unknown. Acquired by Columbia in 1980 as the school’s Theater Center, it currently houses a renovated 400-seat theater ,classrooms, and space for film and photography studios.

Design Philosophy

The end of World War I in 1918 had a profound impact on European politics, society, and design. This event marked the end of the hereditary monarchies that had ruled Germany, Austria and Russia for hundreds of years. With them went the artistic patronage that had characterized their societies, and the historic revival styles that had expressed and reinforced aristocratic position and authority. It was the beginning of a progressive age characterized by unprecedented experiments in governmental organization and economic structure, and by a social upheaval caused by the collapse of the old order. This caused artists, architects and designers to seek a new aesthetic vocabulary to express their changed status from royal subjects into citizens of a modern, industrialized world.

The sources for this new aesthetic vocabulary were found in the products of the machine. The Industrial Age had introduced new technologies for building and design that enabled architects to build more economically, more quickly, and more efficiently. This streamlined, technological process, along with the desire for a new aesthetic, combined to inspire the ornamental form of modernism now known as Art Deco. Although named after the famous Exposition International des Arts Industriels et Decoratifs, held in Paris in 1925, the style can clearly be seen in objects designed from the end of the war, and its approach can be seen in the new curricula of such schools as the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany. A truly modern style, it was felt, needed to be free of historic associations and needed to embrace modern technology.

The progressive ideals of 1920s European modernism found resonance in the United States, where historic revival design had held sway since the end of the nineteenth century. While the social and political conditions here were not comparable to those in Europe, the predominance of industry, the increasing sophistication of technology, and the desire for a new mode of expression that embraced the present and future were common interests. Americans who studied in Europe, as John Holabird and John Root, Jr., had done at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, brought European ideas back with them and incorporated them into their designs.

It was the desire to project an image of modernity, progressive ideals, and a belief in a better future through technology that brought the Chicago Women’s Club and Holabird & Root together to create the building at 62-72 East 11th Street. The style, quality of materials, decorative program, and scale of the former Chicago Women’s Club Building make it an exemplar of its period. These qualities make it a significant historic architectural work worthy of listing on the National Register and of designation as a local landmark.

Description

The Getz Theater Building is a six story with basement reinforced concrete frame structure with stone cladding on its 11th Street façade and brick on its other elevations. Its design is Art Deco, however the articulation of this style is found more in the details of the exterior than in its overall massing, which is decidedly horizontal rather than vertical. Based on the drawings, Robert Bruegmann (Holabird & Roche/Holabird & Root: An Illustrated Catalog of Works, 1880-1940, vol. II., p. 394, catalog #1148) claims the principal façade is granite and its decorative panels terra cotta; on visual inspection, they all appear to be limestone.

Campus Preservation Plan

• Volume III: 72 East 11th Street [161 pages]
• View entire plan