I dunno, DP1 seems pretty solidly built, brick buildings. They have maintenance needs like any other building but they're definitely faring better than anything wood-framed from the same time period.

I do hope they can ultimately do something with the Dearborn Station parking lot. Seems like a nice spot for 2-3 restaurants that can open onto a park terrace. It would probably require an alteration to the PD though since it still is locking in the parking requirements from the 1980s.

Now that is a cool fence cover....would love to get my hands on that!

Crappy phone pic from today

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw...-no?authuser=0

Crappy? That shot's killer. What a great view that you don't get to see everyday. Thanks.

Note to Colemonkee: Agreed. River City needs a bath in a big way. Lol. Wtf? Get it together. Brutalism. Gotta love it.

It would be amazing to have that railyard decked over and developed some day. With the amount of vacant land still available in the central area however, it probably won't happen in my lifetime. A man can dream, though... :cool:

Once Riverline, The 78, and the area around OPO are built out the numbers for decking this over will start to make sense. Maybe in 15-20 years. North of Roosevelt will come first, if they can figure out what to do with that electric substation.

I wonder what the interior looks like... maybe it can be a museum or something?

I think you are referring to the Union Station Powerhouse with the two stacks on the right edge of that picture above? The electrical substation is that mess of outdoor electrical equipment that appears just below the Willis Tower in that picture.

I agree, the powerhouse has a great Battersea Power Station feel to it. If it is ever decommissioned, I hope it can be saved.

Actually it wouldn't be to bad if they could deck it over and make a large park . I know I know we all want more tall buildings built over it but seems like downtown could use another sizebale park (something smaller than grant park but larger than just a scattered pocket park ..something akin to Bryant park in NYC).

^ like Crescent Park in the 78! ohh, oops, forgot... can't have that and a casino too...

A park would be absolutely fine, as long as the utility/rail uses are somehow buried. Not that I don't like seeing railyards and infrastructure, they just don't belong out in the open anywhere near downtown and along such a prime spot on the river.

Right yeah, I forgot there was a substation there and interpreted it as power station. I think the Union Station Power House has already been decommissioned?
https://preservationchicago.org/2020...n-power-house/

Thanks. I should have guessed. Too bad it’s in such a difficult spot.

Preservation Chicago and others keep beating the drum for preservation of the Union Station steam plant, but it's not clear what could actually be saved. Unlike a powerhouse, it's not a concrete frame in which generators were installed. It's a big boiler around which some catwalks and a brick skin was placed—and that skin would at this point have to be completely replaced. So you spend $millions to take down all those bricks, remove all the useless boiler stuff, construct a new frame with actual floors and stairs and elevators, and then lay all the bricks again. That's not preservation; it's taxidermy.

Why would all the bricks need to be replaced? From their website, Preservation Chicago was saying there was an interested party who would turn it into a data center.

A train/railroad museum would be cool. Do we have one in Chicago? The 78 Casino proposal talked about incorporating a museum, they are located at the former site of a giant rail yard and their observation tower is inspired by a rail bridge. Seems like it might be a perfect match.

Not in Chicago - but pretty close - Union Ill.


Ill Railway Museum - a few more shots

A smaller museum - next to active and busy tracks would be pretty cool.

And? Most of the notable structures in Europe are taxidermy then. By your logic, I guess they weren't worthy of preservation after they got bombed to oblivion during the war.

Well, some of the things done in Dresden in the 2000s are most curious, but that was a deliberate decision to try to rebuild the Altstadt as best they could, for reasons of urbanism and also as a counterpoint to the decades of socialist towers in the park. Warsaw made the same decision, but 50 years earlier, when they built buildings with the same function as the old. Dresden starts to approach stage-set design by putting a modern convention center and hotel behind four-meter-wide marktbauen.

"Data center" is a pipe dream, although Related did look at the property hoping that could work. Remember, this "building" has no interior floors; just catwalks and piping around the boilers. So if you've built a new skeleton and put on a new skin, what exactly have you preserved? The idea of an industrial structure?

Today 1/15
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...a4271987_b.jpg

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...c4644589_b.jpg

I suppose part of preservation is exactly that: preserving the idea of something, as represented by the something. The question for me being: Is the present something sufficiently materially similar to the original something? The desired qualia of the viewer of the structure can be the same if the visual presentation of the contemporary thing is close enough to the original (whatever is sufficient to trigger the contemplation of history, culture, etc.). I don't know what portion of new vs. original material marks the transition out of "close enough" for me (nor do I similarly have a resolution to Theseus' paradox), or what level of quality of ersatz material is convincing enough.

If they were to use modern materials in a paint-by-numbers recreation, to the extent that the building lies in that uncanny valley of resemblance, the experience gets corrupted for me; there's dissonance when the present structure is perceived to be too far removed from what I believe to be its original appearance (hence why I like something like anastylosis best). Which now has me thinking about the value of authenticity in historic preservation: Does something still have value as a historical emblem if it only visually signals or alludes to the thing and isn't the thing itself? Was that what you were touching on in your "... idea of an industrial structure"?

For me, the steam plant is right on the cusp of being worth preserving. I like the visibility it has from many distances, vantage points, modes of transportation... that it can be seen by many, even incidentally. It has solemnity without feeling austere; there's a grounding quality to it. And I love how that feeling foregrounds my perception of the skyline from the SW. If enough people feel that way and could all agree to allocate resources (in the form of tax dollars or whatever) to the maintenance of the structure, then there's a case for preservation. I don't see a case for forcing the hand of a private land-owner.