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Observations and Images on Architecture, Culture and More, in Chicago and the World. See it all here. |
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Chicago's Orchard Street - Urban Menace? |
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-by Lynn Becker
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Today's Chicago Tribune Sunday magazine is largely devoted to a wave of new mega-mansions rising on Orchard Street in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. An introduction by the magazine's editor Elizabeth Taylor ponders whether so much press should be given to the topic instead of weightier tragedies and triumphs of the day. In the end, however, Taylor winds up rationalizing the Taylor may have answered her own question of "Are we simply indulging in real estate pornography?" in the negative, but the work of the graphics staff answers, "yes, Yes, YES!" It's the Dynasty effect. The foibles of the rich can be counted on to sell papers. This week's cover is made up in mock-tablod style, complete with sensational callouts ("A $40 MILLION MANSION TAKES UP SEVEN CITY LOTS!"), and the screaming headline "ATTACK OF THE GIANT HOUSES!". Inside, however, is a pretty thorough exploration of the phenomenon by writer Susan The Trib's architecture critic Blair Kamin is also on hand to lend his perspective, Kamin's headline is "Exercises in isolationism", because the new houses don't have front porches with Jane Jacob's styled residents socializing from their stoops. Some even have high fences, but it's a real stretch to compare the district to those gated communities that have become so popular with rich and middle-class alike. Orchard is a public street. Any schlub - even myself - can walk down Orchard and play the flaneur, which reminds me of perhaps my favorite bit in Chandler's article, which is Ben Weese's story of how he took his architect wife Cynthia to the street to "stand and point at these houses and laugh derisively." There is a kind of reverse snobbery going on here, with both Kamin and architect Larry Booth archly suggesting that these kinds of houses - well they may be ok in Lake Forest, don't you know -but we don't need their kind here. To which I say: come on in! The rich are no more prone to bad taste than the rest of us. They just have a lot more money with which to indulge it. This is nothing new. When we think of Prairie Avenue, Chicago's 1890s millionaires row, we think of H.H. Richardson's architecturally splendid Glessner House, but the truth of the matter is the fact that few of the other megamansions on the street survive allows us to conveniently forget So I think it's great that all these mega-millionaires are here. They may live a chauffered existence, but it's in the city, not just passing through on the expressway on the way to outer suburbia. More of their attention - and money - may actually wind up staying here. Sure they get to put up the often silly houses, but it's people like myself, as cash-starved and underachieving as they are monied and hypersuccessful, who get to point to their residences at close range and, like the Weeses, indulge a condescending but hugely satisfying sense of aesthetic superiority. Take that, Lake Forest.
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© Copyright 2006 Lynn Becker All rights reserved.
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