Chicago: 333 North Michigan Avenue, 1927-28, 435 feet by Holabird and Root
The architects were greatly influenced by the design of the runner-up in the Chicago Tribune competition of 1922, a work by the acclaimed Finnish architect Eero Saarinen. This was particularly in their handling of the individual setback blocks, as Robert Bruegmann observed in Chicago History (1980):
'Saarinen had solved the problem of composing the skyscraper façade by making a number of small setbacks and unifying them by the continuous deep channels of windows between the wall surfaces and by eliminating all horizontal stops. The eye tended to follow the vertical lines straight up to the top of the building, minimizing the breaks in massing and emphasising the verticality. Holabird and Root used essentially this solution at 333 N. Michigan.'
The architects further refined their treatment of the setback in subsequent buildings, including the Palmolive and the Chicago Board of Trade.
333 N. Michigan is composed of two sections: the main block, which is twenty-four storeys high, and a sleek tower to the north, that rises to a height of thiry-five storeys. The tower is composed of graceful setbacks reminiscent of the Saarinen design. The architects sited the building so that its narrow tower faced north, overlooking the open expanse of the Chicago River, which gave a sentinel quality to the structure. At the fifth floor of the building, a series of seven-foot high carved limestone panels line the façade.
In the year following the building's completion, an article in the Chicago Tribune called it one of the finest examples of modernistic architecture in the city, if not in the country.......”The lines of the building, when observed in perspective, do not present a series of right angles as is often the case in New York structures employing setbacks. The result is softer lines which many admirers of skyscraper architecture find more to their taste”
Extract from "The Sky's the Limit" (1990) edited by Pauline A Saliga.
Chicago: 333 North Michigan Avenue, 1927-28, 435 feet by Holabird and Root
The architects were greatly influenced by the design of the runner-up in the Chicago Tribune competition of 1922, a work by the acclaimed Finnish architect Eero Saarinen. This was particularly in their handling of the individual setback blocks, as Robert Bruegmann observed in Chicago History (1980):
'Saarinen had solved the problem of composing the skyscraper façade by making a number of small setbacks and unifying them by the continuous deep channels of windows between the wall surfaces and by eliminating all horizontal stops. The eye tended to follow the vertical lines straight up to the top of the building, minimizing the breaks in massing and emphasising the verticality. Holabird and Root used essentially this solution at 333 N. Michigan.'
The architects further refined their treatment of the setback in subsequent buildings, including the Palmolive and the Chicago Board of Trade.
333 N. Michigan is composed of two sections: the main block, which is twenty-four storeys high, and a sleek tower to the north, that rises to a height of thiry-five storeys. The tower is composed of graceful setbacks reminiscent of the Saarinen design. The architects sited the building so that its narrow tower faced north, overlooking the open expanse of the Chicago River, which gave a sentinel quality to the structure. At the fifth floor of the building, a series of seven-foot high carved limestone panels line the façade.
In the year following the building's completion, an article in the Chicago Tribune called it one of the finest examples of modernistic architecture in the city, if not in the country.......”The lines of the building, when observed in perspective, do not present a series of right angles as is often the case in New York structures employing setbacks. The result is softer lines which many admirers of skyscraper architecture find more to their taste”
Extract from "The Sky's the Limit" (1990) edited by Pauline A Saliga.