Friday, February 5, 2016

Chicago, IL: Courthouses

Ed Raff posted
Chicago 1900
I haven't done much on architecture yet. To help balance the size of the blogs, I'm going to consider architecture a "per town" industry.

I keep coming across pictures of the various courthouse buildings that Chicago has had. It is time to start capturing them. And this posting had interesting information on foundation failure.

Eric Mathiasen This was torn down because we outgrew it, and because it had structural issues - it was literally sinking into the mud, with the heavy exterior walls sinking faster than the center.


Shahrdad Khodamoradi The cold building was only 2/3 as tall as the current building, and the interior spaces left much to be desired. The winner of the competition was a beautiful building with a dome, but James Egan was given the commission to design the 1875 City Hall. Even worse, the building had a floating raft foundation which quickly sank more than ten inches into the soft soil of Chicago, rupturing water and sewer and gas lines, which led to an explosion. Interestingly, the winner of the competition for the current building were Barnett, Haynes, and Barnett of St. Louis, but the commission went to third place Holabird and Roche. All the submitted designs were actually quite similar.

John Kierig comment
John's comment:
And this one burned down in 1871. afaik, they've all been in the same place, bounded by clark, randolph, lasalle, and washington.
Ross Robinson provided a link that writes this posting for me: https://chicagology.com/courthouse/
D Clark Oest posted
Update:
Shahrdad Khodamoradi This is the City Hall and County Building that was opened in 1885. James Egan was the architect. The interiors proved to be dark and drafty, and the building settled 6 or more inches into the ground, rupturing gas and water and sewer lines, causing an explosion. It was replaced by the current City Hall/County Buidling


Tabitha White Sox posted
Downtown Chicago from above (1930) 
Photo from Calumet412
Thomas Leaton: Also visible is the dome of the old federal courthouse. Across the street was the Atlantic Hotel, then named the KaiserHof.


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