On the Tuesday of this past spring break, I took a morning train to Chicago. I walked along the riverwalk to Lou Malnati’s and had a Chicago-style pizza, shopped in Water Tower Place and sat on Ohio Street Beach as the sun set, watching the city light up in the darkness. I saw the sparkling Magnificent Mile from the 94th floor of 875 North Michigan Avenue before walking to the river in the increasingly miserable wind and rain, then gave up and took a bus the rest of the way back to my hostel. The next morning, I shoved all of my new souvenirs into my backpack, trekked across the BP Pedestrian Bridge to see The Bean and crossed the street to walk into the Chicago Cultural Center.
I had no expectations — I only decided to visit the Cultural Center after googling “cool architecture to see in Chicago” and finding it on a random tourism website. I hardly even looked at any pictures beforehand, only deciding to go because it was conveniently located next to Millenium Park. Even once I entered the building, it seemed a bit boring. The place was mostly empty. I picked up a map, but nothing was highlighted as special or interesting, so I put it down and just started to explore. As I climbed the unassuming stairs upward, the space became more and more ornate, until I happened upon the Tiffany Dome.
The dome itself, as well as the room it was in, was breathtaking. 30,000 individual panes of glass filtered colored light above my head, the marble walls inscribed with scholarly quotes about books and tiled with delicate mother-of-pearl. I was in awe. I stayed in that place for a long time, just breathing in the grandness of the room, the carefully carved and crafted surfaces. The ceiling was made up of deeply-inset gold squares painted with regal brown patterns. Every inch of the upper portion of the wall was decorated with green and white tile, forming waves, ribbons and flowers. Along with the sunlight from the dome, dozens of chandeliers bathed the room in soft warm light. One person sat in a chair, reading. Two more took up space by the windows, a photographer and his model. It was the emptiest place I had been in the entire city.
On the other side of the building, I found something even more magnificent: the Healy-Millet dome.
Here, bordered by the green and gold segmented ceiling, was another masterpiece of glasswork. This dome was dazzling, covered in bright colors, backlit by the sun, masterfully forming hundreds of organically curving forms in its glass panels. Petals of opalescent white, yellow, red and blue-green swam across each section, thousands of them, coming together to create an otherworldly display of dazzling light — it was an undeniable piece of awe-inspiring artwork. I stood looking up at it until my neck ached. I was touched by the shimmering glass; it felt indescribably important. It was so beautiful to me that it felt like fate’s hand had led me to this room, the universe drawing my soul up into the dome. I almost cried. I was left with an unmatched feeling of admiration that persists even as I look back on the memory now, weeks later.
As I reluctantly left the Healy-Millet ceiling to make it to my riverboat architecture tour, I wondered why no one — none of the people I talked to before my trip nor the many travel websites I visited — had told me to go to the Cultural Center. I started wondering why no one seemed to care about the domes or the elaborate rooms they exist in. An hour later, I sat on a boat, looking at one of the most boring buildings I had ever seen as the tour guide yammered on about black box modernism.
After the Great Depression and World War II, modernist architecture and functionalism became popular. Ornamentation was no longer seen as beautiful, but rather wasteful; buildings were designed purely to serve an intended purpose. The ugliest part of this architectural movement was that people seemed to believe beauty was no longer a worthwhile purpose in-and-of itself.
Even postmodernism often fails to recognize the importance of fine detail. Postmodernist designs do have intent and keep aesthetics in mind, but they are still dominated by cubes, empty walls and expanses of flat brick and glass. There’s a sense of dignity that’s missing from them. They’re depressing; they’re dull. Capitalism demands the cheapest buildings possible, and cheap means cutting corners. Cutting corners means ugly buildings.
I’m of the firm belief that beauty in everyday life increases your contentment tenfold. I hate nothing more than driving through a town full of crumbling strip malls, faded brown siding and buildings that don’t look much different from a big cinder block with windows. It makes me feel awful just being there, looking at a place so expansively ugly, and I’m not alone in this feeling. Studies show there’s a strong psychological response to boring architecture. And some even point to boring environments leading to heightened cortisol levels, something associated with increased risk of stroke, diabetes and heart disease.
One might argue that these spaces are products of towns that are poor, but historical buildings in all of their grandiosity were funded by rich donors and global allies, which is why they were capable of containing such fine detail even in these impoverished places. Chicago’s Cultural Center, though funded mostly through a tax on city citizens, was originally inspired by a donation of 8,000 books from England in the wake of the Great Chicago Fire, which left a third of the city homeless and launched Chicago into an era of widespread poverty and economic struggle.
Where has this community-based construction disappeared to? If the billionaires of today didn’t hoard their money, would we have more beautiful streets? Would better international relations reduce national levels of stress through pretty columns and engraved walls? Handsome architecture does not just symbolize prosperity or extravagance — it symbolizes the power of human collaboration.
It’s far past time for us to return to architecture that views elegance and grace as a priority. If humanity continues to progress further and further away from the beauty essential to joy in favor of modernity and capital, we won’t have much humanity left. Bring back building designs that inspire wonder, and we will revitalize a society that has grown much too accustomed to walking past miserable concrete boxes.
Daily Arts Contributor Audrey Hollenbaugh can be reached at aehollen@umich.edu.
