860-880 Lake Shore Drive
- Architect
- Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
- Year
- 1949
- Style
- International Style
- City
- Chicago, IL
- Collection
- mies in chicago
860–880 Lake Shore Drive are twin 26-story apartment towers that Ludwig Mies van der Rohe completed in 1949 as his first high-rise commission, working with associate architects Pace Associates and Holsman, Holsman, Klekamp & Taylor. Rising 270 feet in Streeterville, they set the template for the steel-and-glass residential tower that would spread across American cities for the next generation. Both are designated Chicago Landmarks and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
the building
Twin towers, one plan. The two 26-story blocks are identical in shape and material, each built on a 3-by-5 grid of square bays measuring 21 feet a side. The south tower at 860 faces west–east while the north tower at 880 is turned north–south, so the pair reads as a single composition from the drive rather than two separate buildings.
Exposed steel frame. Above a ground-floor arcade and glass-walled lobbies, the facade exposes the steel skeleton itself as the ornament — vertical mullions run the full height of the towers, turning the structural grid into the building's only decoration.
the style
Mies used the International Style to argue that a steel frame and glass skin, honestly expressed, needed no applied decoration to be beautiful. The idea was untested at this scale for apartment towers when 860–880 went up in 1949, and its influence on postwar residential high-rises worldwide made it a textbook exemplar of the style.
More on International Stylethe architect
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe had already built his reputation in Germany, running the Bauhaus before emigrating to Chicago in 1938 to head the architecture school at Illinois Institute of Technology. 860–880 Lake Shore Drive was his first high-rise design in America, the building where his European ideas about steel-and-glass construction were tested at full urban scale.
More on Ludwig Mies van der Rohesignificance
Designated a Chicago Landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, with the city landmark designation finalized on June 10, 1996.
more by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
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