The Magnificent Morton Gneiss, Part 24: Introducing the Grand Art Deco Formula, and Our Favorite Rock's Use Therein | Daily News Building (1929), Chicago, Illinois, USA
(Updated on September 6, 2025)
Looking northwestward at the eastern and southern elevations.
Behold one of the Windy City's most impressive examples of the Grand Art Deco Formula. Nowadays it's officially designated 2 N. Riverside Plaza.
The Grand Art Deco Formula, a term of my own coinage, was a design practice followed by various architects of the 1920s and 1930s in Chicago and other American cities. It involves the use of soaring, uniform external surfaces of buff Salem Limestone offset at the bottom by a plinth of darker and much more decorative igneous or metamorphic rock.
Because it was the Morton Gneiss that was often chosen for the plinth's stone type, it's fitting that I discuss the Formula in this series. And this great skyscraper is the perfect place to start that discussion. Note its basal exterior cladding. This is what the Morton looks like from some distance. It's darkly pink with just a hint of the complex patterning that's so mesmerizing closer at hand.
Architectural treatises call this edifice "thronelike," and for good reason. Situated on the western bank of the Chicago River's South Branch, its great rectangular mass is fronted by a lower section and a wide plaza. The latter offers the public both a well-sited open space and a wonderful view of the vertical cityscape stretching out in all directions. In my recently posted essay on 2 Prudential Plaza, I lamented the lack of ample surrounding open space that hinders true appreciation of its design. That's not a problem here. The majesty of the building is fully revealed.
The pairing of the two stone types on view here is an exposition of jarring contrasts.
The Morton, that chaotic and highly contorted and mineralogically complex migmatite of Paleoarchean to Neoarchean age, offers more insights into the essence of chaos than the human mind can take in.
Its much more extensively used partner, the Salem Limestone, is a grainy-textured and highly workable calcarenite. Better know in the building trades as "Bedford Stone" and "Indiana Limestone," it's a Mississippian-subperiod (Lower Carboniferous) sedimentary rock quarried in southern reaches of the Hoosier State. A mere 340 Ma old, it is only about one-tenth as ancient as the Morton. What it offers the architect and stone mason is bland and unassuming reliability; nothing more and nothing less.
In terms of sheer square footage the Salem is by far the most extensively used. In this shot, the Morton occupies only a tiny portion of the whole surface.
But where it is the key to its importance. As the next post in this album will show, the Morton occupies the most crucial zone of all, from grade up to twice the height of the tallest human pedestrian. To the thousands of commuters who rush by it each work day, the Morton Gneiss is this building.
To see the other photos and descriptions in this set, visit my Magnificent Morton Gneiss album.
The Magnificent Morton Gneiss, Part 24: Introducing the Grand Art Deco Formula, and Our Favorite Rock's Use Therein | Daily News Building (1929), Chicago, Illinois, USA
(Updated on September 6, 2025)
Looking northwestward at the eastern and southern elevations.
Behold one of the Windy City's most impressive examples of the Grand Art Deco Formula. Nowadays it's officially designated 2 N. Riverside Plaza.
The Grand Art Deco Formula, a term of my own coinage, was a design practice followed by various architects of the 1920s and 1930s in Chicago and other American cities. It involves the use of soaring, uniform external surfaces of buff Salem Limestone offset at the bottom by a plinth of darker and much more decorative igneous or metamorphic rock.
Because it was the Morton Gneiss that was often chosen for the plinth's stone type, it's fitting that I discuss the Formula in this series. And this great skyscraper is the perfect place to start that discussion. Note its basal exterior cladding. This is what the Morton looks like from some distance. It's darkly pink with just a hint of the complex patterning that's so mesmerizing closer at hand.
Architectural treatises call this edifice "thronelike," and for good reason. Situated on the western bank of the Chicago River's South Branch, its great rectangular mass is fronted by a lower section and a wide plaza. The latter offers the public both a well-sited open space and a wonderful view of the vertical cityscape stretching out in all directions. In my recently posted essay on 2 Prudential Plaza, I lamented the lack of ample surrounding open space that hinders true appreciation of its design. That's not a problem here. The majesty of the building is fully revealed.
The pairing of the two stone types on view here is an exposition of jarring contrasts.
The Morton, that chaotic and highly contorted and mineralogically complex migmatite of Paleoarchean to Neoarchean age, offers more insights into the essence of chaos than the human mind can take in.
Its much more extensively used partner, the Salem Limestone, is a grainy-textured and highly workable calcarenite. Better know in the building trades as "Bedford Stone" and "Indiana Limestone," it's a Mississippian-subperiod (Lower Carboniferous) sedimentary rock quarried in southern reaches of the Hoosier State. A mere 340 Ma old, it is only about one-tenth as ancient as the Morton. What it offers the architect and stone mason is bland and unassuming reliability; nothing more and nothing less.
In terms of sheer square footage the Salem is by far the most extensively used. In this shot, the Morton occupies only a tiny portion of the whole surface.
But where it is the key to its importance. As the next post in this album will show, the Morton occupies the most crucial zone of all, from grade up to twice the height of the tallest human pedestrian. To the thousands of commuters who rush by it each work day, the Morton Gneiss is this building.
To see the other photos and descriptions in this set, visit my Magnificent Morton Gneiss album.