860–880 Lake Shore Drive (officially 860–880 North Lake Shore Drive) are a pair of glass-and-steel apartment towers along Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Located in the Streeterville neighborhood, within the Near North Side community area, the buildings were designed in the International Style by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and were his first high-rise design. Holsman, Holsman, Klekamp & Taylor and Pace Associates were also involved with the design as the associated architects. Each of the towers is identical in shape and materials, measuring tall with 26 stories. The buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places and are designated as a Chicago Landmark.
The two buildings occupy rectangular footprints, being arranged on a 3-by-5 grid of square bays, each measuring on each side. The south tower at 860 North Lake Shore Drive is oriented west–east, while the north tower at 880 North Lake Shore Drive is oriented north–south. There is an arcade at the ground (first) story of both buildings, as well as glass walls around each building's lobbies. On and above the second story of both buildings, the windows are separated vertically by mullion bars with I-beams, and they are divided horizontally by spandrel panels. Each bay has four window panes per story, while different bays are separated vertically by steel plates. Both buildings have a steel superstructure encased in concrete, as well as a structural core for elevators, stairs, hallways, bathrooms, and kitchens. The basement has a garage, and each building's ground story has a lobby. On the upper floors, there were originally a combined 116 six-bedroom apartments and 152 three-and-a-half-room apartments. Many original design elements remain intact, though the apartments have been rearranged over the years.
The real estate developer Herbert Greenwald became acquainted with Mies in 1946, hiring the architect to design the Promontory Apartments on Lake Shore Drive. The design of 860–880 Lake Shore Drive is derived from an alternative design for the Promontory Apartments with a glass-and-steel facade. Greenwald and Robert Hall McCormick announced in April 1949 that they would build two 25-story cooperative apartment towers at 860–880 Lake Shore Drive. A formal groundbreaking ceremony took place on December 17, 1949, and almost all the apartments had been sold by mid-1951. Residents moved in even before the buildings were formally completed in August 1952. The lobbies and their plaza were restored starting in 2008. Despite initial controversy over their unconventional style, which was shared by few buildings in the United States, the 860–880 Lake Shore Drive towers were highly regarded after they were completed. After the towers were finished, many glass-box skyscrapers were built worldwide.
Site The buildings are located at 860 and 880 North Lake Shore Drive,Multiple sources: For 860 North Lake Shore Drive, see: For 880 North Lake Shore Drive, see: in the Streeterville neighborhood of the Near North Side of Chicago, Illinois, United States. The complex spans , and has a frontage of on Delaware Place to the north, on Lake Shore Drive to the east, and on Chestnut Street to the south. It faces Lake Michigan immediately to the east. While Delaware Place and Chestnut Street are aligned with Chicago's street grid, Lake Shore Drive runs at a slight angle from northwest to southeast, following the shoreline of Lake Michigan.
The buildings are slightly north of the Chicago Loop and east of Michigan Avenue. The apartment towers at 900–910 North Lake Shore are immediately to the north. Prior to the buildings' completion, the site had been occupied by a mansion belonging to Edith Rockefeller McCormick. By 1949 (just before the site was developed), the McCormick family's McCormick Management Corporation owned the northern half of the site, while Northwestern University had obtained the southern half in 1944 from Robert R. McCormick.
Architecture The towers at 860–880 Lake Shore Drive were designed by the modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for the developer Herbert Greenwald. Holsman, Holsman, Klekamp & Taylor were the consulting architects, and Pace Associates were the associated architects. In addition, Frank J. Kornacher was the engineer, and Richard Kelly the lighting designer. Both towers are 26 stories high, with a height of , and are designed in the International Style. They are the first high-rise buildings Mies designed.
860–880 Lake Shore Drive were part of a trend of glassy skyscrapers in major American cities, other examples of which included the United Nations Secretariat Building in New York City. The writer Franz Schulze described earlier International-style designs, such as the PSFS Building in Philadelphia and 330 West 42nd Street in New York, as "precedents" to the Lake Shore Drive towers' design. 860–880 Lake Shore Drive's relatively simple designs contrast significantly with Mies's earlier designs such as the German Pavilion in Barcelona or the Villa Tugendhat in Brno, which used materials like travertine and marble. Mies, who had a reputation as a minimalist architect, adhered to the principle "less is more", as demonstrated in his self-proclaimed "skin and bones" designs."Mies and the Mastodon." New Republic August 6, 2001: 25–30. In designing the buildings, he purposely disregarded the effects of sunlight exposure and wind gusts. The towers' identical appearance, vertical mullions, and the use of a steel frame for articulation set them apart from other buildings of the time, even though none of the actual superstructures are visible on the buildings' facades.
Form and facade
The two buildings have rectangular footprints and are arranged on perpendicular axes to each other. Their superstructures are constructed on a grid of square bays measuring on each side. The longer sides of each building are five bays wide, while the shorter sides are three bays wide. Unlike older apartment buildings on Lake Shore Drive, which tended to be perpendicular to that street, 860–880 Lake Shore Drive was built perpendicularly to the side streets and the Chicago street grid. 860 North Lake Shore Drive (the south tower) occupies the southeastern corner of the site, with its shorter sides oriented eastward and westward, while 880 North Lake Shore Drive (the north tower) is at the northeastern corner, with its shorter sides oriented northward and southward. The offset positioning maximizes the number of apartments that oversee the lake. Blair Kamin of the Chicago Tribune wrote that, from above, the positioning of the towers made it seem like they were "sliding past each other".
Lower stories
An arcade surrounds the ground (or first) story of both buildings, exposing some of the superstructure's columns to plain view. The ground stories of both buildings have glass walls; the lobbies have transparent glass and the service areas next to each lobby opaque glass, similar to Mies's earlier German Pavilion. The glass walls are backlit from inside during the nighttime, giving the impression that each tower was floating. Although Mies's decision to use opaque windows has been cited as a practical way to conceal the mechanical equipment, they also highlighted the superstructure's columns at night.
The soffits at the buildings' perimeters, along the ceilings of each arcade, have powerful spotlights that illuminate the arcades' floors and provide additional lighting for the lobbies' glass facades. Specially made lenses are placed over the lamps to distribute the light evenly over the facades. The lobbies have travertine floors and are connected by a travertine walkway. The pathway connects two travertine plazas surrounding the towers, creating a plinth. Around 1,100 stone slabs weighing up to each were used to construct the lobbies, walkway, and the plazas outside the buildings. Just above ground level, a steel canopy runs above a walkway connecting the south tower's northern facade and the north tower's southern facade.
Upper stories On and above the second story of both buildings, the facade's glass windows run from the floor to the ceiling. The windows are separated vertically by mullion bars and horizontally by spandrel panels between different floors; the aluminum mullions run nearly the buildings' entire height. On each floor, each bay has a opening. There are four window panes per opening, which are set into aluminum frames. The panes are divided into a larger upper section and a smaller lower section, which swing inward from hinges on the ceiling and floor, respectively. The buildings have a combined 3,232 panes with of glass. To prevent rain from entering the buildings during high winds, steel and rubber strips are affixed to the windows' edges. The windows' dimensions and the protruding mullions allowed Mies to emphasize both buildings' vertical design details over their horizontal details.The centers of each mullion are spaced apart, corresponding to one-fourth the width of the bays inside. Protruding I-beams are welded to the mullions. Each of the I-beams is about thick, and the tops and bottoms of the I-beams are cut off, allowing the beams' cross sections to be seen. Architectural writers criticized the I-beams when the buildings were constructed, since the material was being used for purely decorative purposes, and since the use of decorative design details ostensibly contravened Mies's longstanding tendency not to use materials unless absolutely necessary. Mies told one reporter that there was both a "real reason" and a "good reason" for the I-beams' existence. While the "good reason" was to stiffen steel plates in the superstructure, the "real reason" was that the I-beams were intended to represent the steel superstructure, which was exposed only at the ground level. The I-beams also broke up the otherwise-flat facades, and, as sunlight hit the I-beams throughout the day, they cast shadows in specific patterns. All exterior steel was coated in black enamel paint, without any other surface finish.
The designs of 860–880 Lake Shore Drive's superstructures and facades are closely correlated, in contrast to Mies's later designs where the facade had little, if anything, to do with the superstructure. Each bay is divided by concrete-encased columns at the buildings' perimeters. The concrete columns cannot be seen from the outside, as they are hidden behind steel plates, which have I-beams welded to them, matching the designs of the mullions between the windows. In both buildings, the columns at each corner are covered with steel plates on two sides. Although the mullions are equidistant, the columns protrude about into each bay, so the two outer windows in each bay (immediately next to the columns) are narrower than the two inner windows. Adjacent mullions and spandrels for rectangles that were similar in proportion to the footprints of each building. 860–880 Lake Shore Drive is Mies's only design where the curtain wall is flush with the exterior columns; in all of his other designs, the curtain wall is either hung outside or was recessed into the superstructure. The facades lack other traditional design details such as cornices, and there are also no balconies.
Interior