227 East Walton Place Apartment Building
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| 227 East Walton Place Apartment Building | |
|---|---|
 Interactive map of the 227 East Walton Place Apartment Building area | |
| General information | |
| Status | Completed |
| Type | Apartment Building |
| Architectural style | Chicago School |
| Location | 227 E. Walton Place, Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Coordinates | 41°54′0.2″N 87°37′14.7″W / 41.900056°N 87.620750°W |
| Year built | 1956 |
| Technical details | |
| Floor count | 13 |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect | Harry Weese |
| Main contractor | A. L. Jackson Company[1] |
| Designated | June 6, 2012 |
The 227 East Walton Place Apartment Building is a historic apartment building located in the Near North Side community area of Chicago, Illinois, United States.
Designed by Chicago architect Harry Weese and constructed in 1956, the building is situated two blocks east of Chicago's fashionable Magnificent Mile and one block west of DuSable Lake Shore Drive in the Streeterville neighborhood.[2]
It was designated as a Chicago Landmark on December 8, 2004.[3]
In the context of high-rise architecture in 1950s Chicago, the design of 227 East Walton Place stood out as highly innovative and unconventional. At the time, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and his followers were championing the International Style and modernism. Weese deviated from the trend and opted to honor the past, as evidenced by many design elements, including the use of the humble red brick of the city's vernacular buildings and the building's stacked projecting window bays, a design element derived from late-nineteenth century Chicago School buildings and paying homage to Chicago's architectural history.[4]
As such, the building embodies Weese's strong interest in creating more humane modern architecture that would reflect historic architectural traditions and local urban context – an approach that set him apart from the American architectural mainstream of the 1950s.[2]: 3
Description
Roughly square in plan, the thirteen-story, 24-unit apartment building measures 50' (15 m) across its front elevation on Walton Place. On the first floor's east side, there is a compact lobby that features floor-to-ceiling windows and modernist exterior door hardware that is visually distinctive.[2]: 3
Above the first floor, the walls are clad in vertical bands of visually-warm red brick alternating with vertical bands of stacked window openings, giving the building a striped appearance. The unornamented flat planes of brick are relieved by the three-sided, projecting bay windows arranged in two vertical stacks, giving the front façade an undulating quality while providing improved lighting and venitlation.[2]: 5
Each floor contains only two apartments which are accessed by a small, semi-private elevator lobby, reflecting Weese's distaste for long corridors in apartment buildings.[2]: 7