History

731 S. Plymouth Court was built in 1897 by Howard Van Doren Shaw, best known for his work on many of the palatial residences that grace Chicago’s Gold Coast and the North Shore suburbs. Originally called the Lakeside Press Building, this eight-story red brick building with limestone ornamentation was erected as a printing house for the R.R. Donnelley Publishing Company. The first and second floors were used for showrooms and editorial offices, respectively. Printing took place on the fourth through sixth floors, which are strongly articulated by massive brick piers. Family offices were on the seventh and eighth floors. Subsequent owners are unknown. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as part of the South Loop Printing House District in 1978 and in 1985 it was converted to residential use as the Lakeside Loft Apartments. In 1993 Columbia College acquired the building as its first residence hall. It currently houses over 300 students.

Design Philosophy

Late nineteenth century architects actively debated the relative merits of traditional, historic revival designs, using natural materials and handcrafted detailing, versus ahistorical designs based on structural engineering in metal, using industrially-made materials. The traditionalist approach was to describe the fine art of architecture as a statement of continuity with the past, while progressives sought innovative solutions to new problems through technology, taking a fresh look at the functional needs any design was intended to meet.

Chicago was a particularly active location for this debate, which is clearly indicated by the range of designs and styles produced by local architects from roughly 1890 to 1915. From the historic revival designs of Daniel Burnham, Henry Ives Cobb, and Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, to the avant-garde work of Adler & Sullivan, Walter and Marion Mahoney Griffin, and Frank Lloyd Wright, Chicago was unique in the range and number of its gifted architects. The prominence of the city as a center of architectural excellence is due to these designers, who pursued their individual philosophies with vigor, each attempting to define the architecture of their time with the intent to improve the lives of their clients through design.

In this environment of competing ideas and heated debate, Howard Van Doren Shaw stood out as an examplar of balance between these often opposing schools.
Shaw’s approach to design can best be described as synthetic and eclectic. He sought to integrate what he saw as the best design ideas, regardless of their source. For this reason he was equally comfortable in the traditional role of architect as interpreter of architectural history, reviving elements of past styles, while also being an innovator who used new technologies to find solutions to modern building problems. He placed a great deal of emphasis on the owner’s practical and conceptual intentions for a building. For Shaw, the most modern, cost-effective, spatially and structurally sound solution to practical matters could without contradiction be clothed in historic revival fabric to evoke the symbolism a building’s occupant wanted to project to the world. Thomas Tallmadge, author of the first book on the Chicago School, recalled Shaw in his obituary: “Perhaps one might say of him, he was the most rebellious of the conservatives and the most conservative of the rebels. After all, his creation of things out of plain air was mostly restricted to detail” (Tallmadge, Thomas. “Howard Van Doren Shaw,” Architectural Record, vol. 60, July 1926, p. 71).

Shaw was impressed with historic European design, and particularly with English architecture. He traveled overseas regularly, examining, drawing, and photographing many buildings, details and urban spaces as a means to better approach the design issues he confronted in his own work. While he was significantly influenced by such eminent English architects as Lutyens and Voysey and by the designs of William Morris, he was also interested in the American Arts & Crafts of Gustav Stickley and the work of the Prairie School. Shaw fraternized with the traditionalists, designing revival style mansions for the wealthy and serving as a trustee of the Art Institute, yet he exhibited his drawings with the progressives as a member of the Chicago Architectural Sketch Club. It was his integration of what were considered disparate design elements that limited Shaw’s reputation: he was not an outspoken advocate of any particular theoretical approach, preferring to make effective use of any of the tools he needed to best serve the needs of his clients.

The Lakeside Press Building is exemplary of Shaw’s approach, modern to the point of being radically innovative in its structure, yet sympathetic to many historic design influences in the face it presents to the street. The building was used as a printing plant for 87 years when, in 1984, it was adaptively renovated for use as a residential apartment building. Columbia College purchased it in 1993 for its current use, as a student center and dormitory.

The Donnelley family made a point of providing education for their employees, and actively recruited young men as apprentice printers during the first half of the twentieth century. Their interest in printing also led them to establish a gallery dedicated to the printmaking art, which was a feature of the second building Shaw would design for the firm at Lake Shore and 22nd Street. The educational and artistic interests of the original owners are perpetuated by the building’s current users, who are involved in advanced education in the arts. The structure, quality of materials, decorative program, and scale of the Lakeside Press Building make it an exceptional design of its period. These qualities make it a significant historic work, a landmark of the highest order, and an architectural treasure to be treated with the utmost care.

Description

The Lakeside Press Building, now the Columbia College Dormitory, is a seven story reinforced concrete frame building clad in red brick and trimmed in Indiana limestone on its two principal facades. The other two elevations are faced with common brick. It is crowned with a very low, broadly proportioned gable roof that runs parallel to Plymouth Court. Its principal facades, facing Plymouth Court and Polk Street, display a unique combination of stylistic influences, from the tall Romanesque-inspired arches of each bay to the classically derived quoins and voussoirs on the first two floors and the Craftsman style detailing in brick and stone that appears on the upper floors and over the portals. The dominant feature is the arcade of windows on the seventh floor, which stand atop vertical piers that extend from the third to the sixth floors. The horizontals are broken by the verticals, and the spandrels above the third, fourth, and fifth floors are cast iron panels set behind the plane of the piers.

Campus Preservation Plan

• Volume IX: 731 South Plymouth Court [92 pages]
• View entire plan