The noble and Nobel economist John Maynard Keynes observed that “markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.”
The ‘dismal science’ of economics is often discussed as if it were math, but down on the streets, both Main and Wall, it behaves more like behavior itself, that is, a matrix of psychology, emotions, and plain old-fashioned “let’s guess what tomorrow may bring.”
And speaking of streets, ain’t Elgin a fun house – potholes here, massive construction there – and that 40 million dollar project downtown still has two more years to go. Some of it is the remediation of an infrastructure over a century worn and some of it is an elaborate ‘beautification’ of our sub-urban landscape. Remember now, we are “The City in the Suburbs.”
Someday, all this effort will be to our greater good, and we are assured it will ‘stimulate’ a brighter economy with bustling businesses.
Or that could be just more of what literary critics call “magical thinking.”
Another aspect of this mystical evolution is the “facadedectomy.” In a brick city built sturdy as Elgin was, the trend throughout the 50’s and 60’s was to ‘modernize’ exteriors in the name of the jet age. But venerable edifices still lurked beneath aluminum and kitsch. As time passed, tastes changed, and sometimes the classic old structures were reborn.
Architecture is unique in that it can be notable art, but art that occupies a space and a commodity, i.e. real estate. As Michael Lewis wrote in The New York Times, “One had no right to alter a building of historical merit, just as one has no right to add to a Mozart sonata. Yet no Mozart sonata has a leaky roof or poor insulation.”
So the “facadedectomy” restores the skin of a building to its original splendor, but refurbishes the insides to the client’s needs. These days, that can fortunately mean exposed brick or the grand paneled, chandeliered lobby in our own Professional Building.
Probably the most notable “facadedectomy” in Elgin has been to the building that occupies 53 through 63 Douglas Avenue. The Corn family (with some financial help from the city) removed the yellow metal façade, reopened the windows, tuck pointed the brickwork, and restored architectural molding. There was some haggling at the time about who was going to pay for what, but the result proved conclusively that Elgin looked a lot better when it was built than when it was “improved.”
Of course the one building immune to being sheathed in 50’s cosmetics was The Tower Building, a skyscraper, which according to Mike Alft, The Courier News rhapsodized about upon it’s grand opening: “
It stands proudly erect, massive yet graceful, a happy combination of beauty and utility, radiating quiet dignity and opulence, yet with a predominating note of great strength.”
I guess The Tower Building was just too big an emperor to be reclothed – and there certainly has never been anything else ever built in our city like it. But even there one can find irony, for while the building itself was fashioned in the predominant Art Deco style of its era; the offices inside were profoundly “classical.” Having seen photographs of the Home Banks interior, it’s too bad that aspect of the building is so long gone.
However, the William R. Stickling Foundation is currently restoring the Tower Building on a floor-by-floor basis, which is a good thing since no one would have either the nerve or ability to de-assemble such a monument to optimism. That same Stickling Foundation was also behind the restoration and eventual sale of The Professional Building, and had a hand (as a private venture outside of the foundation) on the rebirth of the Leath Building on Chicago Street, which is now home to a high tech company.
Out with the new, in with the old (with the new inside.)
Other notable restorations have occurred at Al’s Café, and 11 Douglas (where BocaJump happens to have groovy contemporary offices within a very old building.) The city even called it the “Façade Improvement Program.” There are dozens of similar projects and magnificent residential restoration all over town—verifying again the veracity of my oft-repeated quote from the writer Jane Jacobs: “New ideas come out of old buildings.”
Which brings us back to Mr. Keynes, since like particle physics, money has both substance and ‘velocity.’ And since both the markets and we individuals are to a greater degree ‘irrational,’ will our downtown village ever be as solvent as its flux and its aspirations?
All I can say, nobody can accuse us of not trying. I’m not cosmic enough to say that any building (or city) has a soul, but it is without contention that the folks who inhabit them do.
As the Chinese curse said, “may you live in interesting times.”
The ‘dismal science’ of economics is often discussed as if it were math, but down on the streets, both Main and Wall, it behaves more like behavior itself, that is, a matrix of psychology, emotions, and plain old-fashioned “let’s guess what tomorrow may bring.”
And speaking of streets, ain’t Elgin a fun house – potholes here, massive construction there – and that 40 million dollar project downtown still has two more years to go. Some of it is the remediation of an infrastructure over a century worn and some of it is an elaborate ‘beautification’ of our sub-urban landscape. Remember now, we are “The City in the Suburbs.”
Someday, all this effort will be to our greater good, and we are assured it will ‘stimulate’ a brighter economy with bustling businesses.
Or that could be just more of what literary critics call “magical thinking.”
Another aspect of this mystical evolution is the “facadedectomy.” In a brick city built sturdy as Elgin was, the trend throughout the 50’s and 60’s was to ‘modernize’ exteriors in the name of the jet age. But venerable edifices still lurked beneath aluminum and kitsch. As time passed, tastes changed, and sometimes the classic old structures were reborn.
Architecture is unique in that it can be notable art, but art that occupies a space and a commodity, i.e. real estate. As Michael Lewis wrote in The New York Times, “One had no right to alter a building of historical merit, just as one has no right to add to a Mozart sonata. Yet no Mozart sonata has a leaky roof or poor insulation.”
So the “facadedectomy” restores the skin of a building to its original splendor, but refurbishes the insides to the client’s needs. These days, that can fortunately mean exposed brick or the grand paneled, chandeliered lobby in our own Professional Building.
Probably the most notable “facadedectomy” in Elgin has been to the building that occupies 53 through 63 Douglas Avenue. The Corn family (with some financial help from the city) removed the yellow metal façade, reopened the windows, tuck pointed the brickwork, and restored architectural molding. There was some haggling at the time about who was going to pay for what, but the result proved conclusively that Elgin looked a lot better when it was built than when it was “improved.”
Of course the one building immune to being sheathed in 50’s cosmetics was The Tower Building, a skyscraper, which according to Mike Alft, The Courier News rhapsodized about upon it’s grand opening: “
It stands proudly erect, massive yet graceful, a happy combination of beauty and utility, radiating quiet dignity and opulence, yet with a predominating note of great strength.”
I guess The Tower Building was just too big an emperor to be reclothed – and there certainly has never been anything else ever built in our city like it. But even there one can find irony, for while the building itself was fashioned in the predominant Art Deco style of its era; the offices inside were profoundly “classical.” Having seen photographs of the Home Banks interior, it’s too bad that aspect of the building is so long gone.
However, the William R. Stickling Foundation is currently restoring the Tower Building on a floor-by-floor basis, which is a good thing since no one would have either the nerve or ability to de-assemble such a monument to optimism. That same Stickling Foundation was also behind the restoration and eventual sale of The Professional Building, and had a hand (as a private venture outside of the foundation) on the rebirth of the Leath Building on Chicago Street, which is now home to a high tech company.
Out with the new, in with the old (with the new inside.)
Other notable restorations have occurred at Al’s Café, and 11 Douglas (where BocaJump happens to have groovy contemporary offices within a very old building.) The city even called it the “Façade Improvement Program.” There are dozens of similar projects and magnificent residential restoration all over town—verifying again the veracity of my oft-repeated quote from the writer Jane Jacobs: “New ideas come out of old buildings.”
Which brings us back to Mr. Keynes, since like particle physics, money has both substance and ‘velocity.’ And since both the markets and we individuals are to a greater degree ‘irrational,’ will our downtown village ever be as solvent as its flux and its aspirations?
All I can say, nobody can accuse us of not trying. I’m not cosmic enough to say that any building (or city) has a soul, but it is without contention that the folks who inhabit them do.
As the Chinese curse said, “may you live in interesting times.”
