BENJA M IN H. M A R SH A LL C HIC AG O A RCHIT EC T
John Zukowsky Jean Guarino
Preface by Jane Lepauw Foreword by Tim Samuelson Afterword by Richard H. Driehaus
BENJA MIN M A R SH A LL SOCIET Y IN COLLABOR ATION WITH
ac a nthus pr ess ne w yor k : 2015
Aca nth us P r e s s l l c 48 West 22nd Street New York, New York 10010 www.acanthuspress.com 212-414-0108
Copyright © 2015, Benjamin Marshall Society Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify the owners of copyright. Errors of omission will be corrected in subsequent printings of this work. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in any part (except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Zukowsky, John, 1948- author. Benjamin H. Marshall : Chicago architect / John Zukowsky, Jean Guarino ; foreword by Tim Samuelson. pages cm. — (American architect) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-926494-89-3 (alk. paper) 1. Marshall, Benjamin, 1874-1944--Criticism and interpretation. I. Guarino, Jean, author. II. Title. NA737.M21683Z85 2014 720.9—dc23 2014009294
F R O N T I S P I E C E : Signed Portrait. Photo: Marshall & Fox, Drawings and Records, The Alexander Architectural Archive, The University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin.
Printed in China
CON T EN TS
Preface by Jane Lepauw
9
Foreword by Tim Samuelson
11
Shaping Modern Chicago A Note on the Book
17
43
Living Well is the Best R evenge 47
Theater s and Theatr icalit y 69
Homes Away from Home 85
Living the High Life 105
The Cit y that Wor k s 123
Afterword by Richard H. Driehaus An Interpretive Timeline Sources of Information Acknowledgments Index
141
143 159
161
165
Book Sponsors
168
7
PR EFACE
Jane Lepauw
BENJA MIN H. M AR SH ALL
is among the greatest yet least commemorated of
American architects. He might still be in the shadows but for a serendipitous confluence of events. When my husband, Didier, and I decided to leave Paris with our family for my hometown of Chicago, Didier quit his position as first violin with the Paris Symphony Orchestra. I sold our fine wine business, and we abandoned our active lives in the arts and in the Franco-American community. Almost immediately upon our arrival, we became realtors in Lake Forest and listed a magnificent 1911 Georgian estate on twenty-one acres overlooking Lake Michigan for $25 million. Lansdowne, as it was called, was designed by Benjamin Marshall for Harry Beach Clow, head of Rand McNally and husband of Elizabeth McNally. Until then we had never heard of Benjamin Marshall, nor—we soon learned—were we alone, although the owners of the property thought he had designed the Drake Hotel. Indeed, the expansive second-floor landing bore a strong resemblance to the Drake’s palatial style and grandeur. Our curiosity was piqued.
left: Benjamin Marshall, c. 1908, from the personal collection of Benjamin Marshall’s great-grandson Matthew Ehrhard.
9
Many inquiries later, after scouring countless architectural books, we were stunned to see how little was known about Marshall, especially after discovering that he had created East Lake Shore Drive, the Edgewater Beach Hotel, the Blackstone Hotel and Theater, and, indeed, the iconic Drake. How extraordinary that Chicago was in great part defined by Marshall’s luxury residences—to this day, among the city’s most elegant—while almost no one knew his name. Even more intriguing to us was that Marshall had been a celebrity in his heyday. Renowned for the extravagant Gatsby-esque parties he held at his Shangri-la studio and home on the lake in Wilmette, Marshall entertained Chicago’s social and political elite, writers, artists, Hollywood producers, and movie stars. Everyone—from President Hoover to the future king of England, Edward VIII, and the Ziegfeld Follies girls—was there. My husband saw the big picture right away. “We need to found a society on Benjamin Marshall,” he said. And so, in 2002, with the goal of publishing a book, we established the Benjamin Marshall Society.
Marshall resonated with us. His business acumen, his travels to China and Japan, his passion for show business, his love of the arts, and his open heart and mind for all people and all cultures moved us. This book became an obsession. Little did we know that we had embarked on a thirteen-year journey. The more discoveries we made, the more thrilling the quest: we realized that Marshall was a missing link in the city’s sequence of great builders. Our society would not only be fulfilling its mission to educate the public on Marshall and his abundant work, but it would also be filling in a gaping hole in Chicago’s great cultural continuum. With the Benjamin Marshall Society’s board and executive committee, Marshall’s family, and, of course, the critical support of Richard H. Driehaus, we never looked back. Written by John Zukowsky—prolific author and founder of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Department of Architecture in 1981—and Jean Guarino, this first book on Marshall is the crowning achievement of the Benjamin Marshall Society. How happy we are to welcome you to the heretofore untold story of Benny Marshall’s Chicago! Jane Lepauw President, Benjamin Marshall Society
10
•
BENJAMIN H. MARSHALL
FOR E WOR D
Tim Samuelson
IT H AS ALWAYS
been challenging to determine exactly where Benjamin H.
Marshall fits within the story of Chicago’s architecture. His buildings are not a comfortable fit with the themes of Chicago’s Modernist architectural explorations, but aspects of this spirit are certainly present in them. And although Marshall’s work often evokes the architecture of the past or the inspirations of faraway places, it is not necessarily a comfortable fit for consistent classification of any single style. Overall, there are two things that strongly stand out in his work. His buildings have the presence to be noticed and the power to be remembered. I can vouch for this firsthand. Among my earliest architectural memories of childhood were the tall-windowed towers atop the Edgewater Beach Hotel. As a small child, my parents explained that a fairy princess lived up there among the clouds. And at the time, I found the story perfectly plausible. As I grew older and studied Chicago’s architectural history in a more scholarly fashion, my attentions were diverted to Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, John Wellborn Root, and the other familiar names that filled the texts of the 1960s. And Marshall— he was hardly mentioned at all.
11
But when I interviewed elderly architects who practiced in the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s, Marshall’s name frequently entered the conversation. In fact, much of my early information about Marshall came via the spoken word from a variety of sources. One older architect spoke admiringly of how Marshall used his social connections and personal charm to land projects. Another stated that Marshall did not design his own buildings, but thought that his architectural office produced some consistently high-quality work. In a memorable description, a venerable architect described Marshall as a flamboyantly charming man who dressed stylishly and drove custom-designed Packard automobiles. He also described Marshall’s Wilmette home and studio, where the ceiling could roll away to reveal the starry night sky and the dining room table could rise from the floor fully set. The same architect described in a hushed whisper how Marshall would invite chorus girls from the downtown theaters he designed to visit the Wilmette villa and swim in its pool. The bathing suits provided by the genial host dissolved in water. So he was also Benjamin H. Marshall, 1920s party-guy extraordinaire. My greatest resource and mentor in understanding Marshall was a retired architect named Carl John Sterner, whom I met while doing research on Louis Sullivan at the Chicago Public Library. I saw him there often, obviously researching something with an intensity that matched my own. One day he asked what I was working on. When I mentioned Sullivan, he shook his head in disapproval and responded in a firm, confident voice: “I’m researching a real architect.” The “real” architect proved to be Benjamin H. Marshall. As a young architect, Mr. Sterner had greatly admired Marshall’s work and had even tried unsuccessfully to get a job in the Wilmette studio. With time, he came to be acquainted with Marshall himself. Now in retirement, Mr. Sterner was spending his time creating a book to affirm Marshall’s role in architectural history. He said he was publishing the book himself, and
12
•
BENJAMIN H. MARSHALL
it would not be for sale. He said he would give copies only to people who “deserve to have it.” When I encountered Mr. Sterner on subsequent research visits, he shared his insights on Marshall as we sat side by side at microfilm machines. He freely volunteered the information that Marshall was not really what could be considered a designer, but that his constant guidance and supervision was essential to what made his firm’s buildings special. Mr. Sterner described architectural designers as talent that could be hired—and said that Marshall hired the best available. He described Marshall as a man who knew what he wanted and carefully tended the development of every project from start to finish. This attention, Mr. Sterner pointed out, extended down to choosing the buttons on a hotel doorman’s uniform and recommending a soup to the Drake that was made from one of Marshall’s own recipes. In Mr. Sterner’s assessment, Marshall should be considered an architectural version of a great orchestral conductor. He assembles an “orchestra” of the best people possible and then gets them to execute his personal creative vision with taste, skill, and precision. And the story about the dissolving bathing suits? “Absolutely true,” said Mr. Sterner, breaking his usual formal demeanor with a wry smile, adding, “You can’t even begin to imagine what went on in that studio.” In subsequent visits, I was able to share some of my own Marshall research material with Mr. Sterner, who was particularly delighted when I showed him an obscure 1904 caricature of Marshall driving one of his famed automobiles. In the end, I did pass muster with Mr. Sterner; he told me I had earned the right to be given a copy of the book he was writing. Sadly, he died before it ever saw print. Mr. Sterner’s book may never have appeared, but decades later, it is heartwarming to know that there is finally a book about his “real” architect. And in this instance, everyone deserves to have it. So here’s to Benjamin H. Marshall, an architect whose buildings are noticed and remembered.
Cartoon from Frank Folwell Porter, Chicagoans As We See ‘em: Cartoons and Caricatures (Chicago: Newspaper Cartoonists’ Association, 1904).
following pages: Benjamin Marshall created East Lake Shore Drive starting in 1911, eventually building five out of the eight structures, and culminating in 1928 with the Drake Tower skyscraper. Photo: Tom Harris/Hedrich Blessing.
FOREWORD
•
13
BENJA M IN H. M A R SH A LL Sh aping Moder n Chic ago
John Zukowsky
BENJA MIN HOWAR D M AR SH ALL
(1874–1944) was an architect who helped shape
the Chicago we see today. Perhaps even more than some of his architect peers, he helped make Chicago a modern city. This statement alone might come as a surprise to those who equate modern with Modernism, but one must look beyond superficialities of style to see that Marshall created traditionally detailed buildings that functioned within modern society even though they were not Modernist, in any post–World War I (1920–1930s) European sense. Marshall’s works are an American hybrid of conservative and modern features, as witnessed in the work of a younger literary contemporary F. Scott Fitzgerald, in his novel The Great Gatsby (1925). The characters in this tragic novel of American excess during the interwar years all encounter, and attempt to adapt to, a postwar society in transition—an era on the cusp of prewar conservatism and a liberation of modern lifestyles—just as did Marshall and his contemporaries. This era was also one of fresh inventions that we ascribe to the first decades of the 1900s— airplanes, electric appliances,
left: Marshall & Fox, Sheridan Trust & Savings Bank Building, 4753 North Broadway Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, 1923–26. Photo: American Terra Cotta Company Records, Northwest Architectural Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
17
urban lighting, telephones, radios, and especially automobiles—inventions in the continuum of industrial development that were also part of Marshall’s life and that of his contemporaries. Marshall, though twenty-two years older than Fitzgerald, bridged the eras both before and after World War I in the evolution of architectural design in America, with creatively designed buildings on either side of that proverbial break in the architectural timeline. He grappled with the changing needs of society pre- and postwar, using traditional design forms, much as his local contemporaries did. These range from megafirms such as Holabird & Root and Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, to society architects David Adler and Howard Van Doren Shaw, and to smaller, less well-known firms, similar to Marshall’s, that specialized in traditionally detailed luxury apartment buildings—namely Fugard & Knapp, McNally & Quinn, and Rissman & Hirschfeld. This book attempts to document and showcase Benjamin Marshall’s work for the first time in a single volume—work that is under-recorded by recent history. The work of Marshall’s classically minded contemporaries, such as David Adler and Charles Platt, has earned multiple monographs. Marshall’s oeuvre may be under-published, but keep in mind that, unlike all those architects previously mentioned, he received a full-page biographical sketch in Chicago and Its Makers (1929) and was consistently listed in Who’s Who in Chicago and Who’s Who in America during the later 1920s. Marshall was a mover and a shaker in his day. If he was so important, why has he been ignored by recent history? Architect Larry Booth’s 2000 interview in the Art Institute of Chicago’s online Chicago Architects Oral History Project hints at a possible reason for this. He talked about the pivotal 1976 Chicago Architects exhibit and book, and his difficulty in convincing colleagues to include even Daniel H. Burnham. Booth said, “Burnham was thought of as déclassé, out, just a frou-frou. Just like
18
•
BENJAMIN H. MARSHALL
Benjamin Marshall is today. I don’t think we even put him in our show.” This may also explain why other 1910s and 1920s classicists, such as David Adler and Howard Van Doren Shaw, made the cut. Adler’s classicism, like Shaw’s, may have been perceived as simpler, cleaner, not as fussy, and therefore more acceptable than Marshall’s, especially when it came to the latter’s extravagant French detailing. This volume will update information from earlier texts as it delves into Marshall’s life. This is no easy task, considering the dearth of existing sources. There are no diaries, sketches, letters, personal photo albums, or postcard collections from Marshall. This lack of evidence is compounded by the auction sale of his estate in 1944 by Grants Art Galleries, a now- defunct firm whose records have not been located. As regards business records and project correspondence, the only fairly complete file found, from both the client and architect side, is that for the Maxine Elliott Theatre (1908–09) within the Shubert Archives in New York. The fact that there are few published sources on Marshall’s work and life, and few archival records, has led to speculations and perhaps exaggerations about his socio-architectural impact and personal life. Some of these are corrected here, but others must await a future historian who will find that treasure trove of diaries, notes, and correspondence. Perhaps this initial documentation will encourage the next step—for others to fully examine and interpret Marshall’s impact, within popular as well as academic publications. A brief biographical survey of Marshall’s background and the talents that likely informed his architectural output precedes a visual exploration of his buildings in the pictorial portfolio at the core of this volume. The discussion centers on the elements that help define him: Marshall’s persona in relation to his family status; his social and business connections; his eye for design and for creating dynamic, exciting spaces; and his talent for real-estate investment and development.
A NOT E ON T HE BOOK
THE ILLUSTR ATED CH APTER S
that follow are intended to give an overview of
Marshall’s work in spectacular new photographs, commissioned by the Benjamin Marshall Society from noted architectural photography firm Hedrich Blessing and executed by Tom Harris. These works are organized into thematic chapters and augmented by archival views that provide a historic context, as well as newer photographs from a variety of sources. The thematic chapters are essentially related to building types: grand private homes, theaters and auditoriums, recreational spaces, luxury apartment buildings, and commercial and industrial structures. It is interesting to note that Marshall designed few religious or institutional buildings, those few cited here appear in the Interpretive Timeline. The primary intent here is to bring attention to Marshall’s work over his lifetime in a variety of building types. A short description of what the reader will encounter precedes each thematic chapter. Short captions identify the illustrations. The remainder of this volume contains an outlined interpretive chronology of his life and work, selected published sources, and a note on sources, particularly the Marshall & Fox architectural library and archive housed at the University of Texas at Austin. These striking photographs are meant to visually demonstrate Marshall’s ability to create great spatial and architectural experiences. Perhaps these images will inspire others to continue researching and writing about this important figure in the shaping of Chicago.
43
LI V ING W ELL IS THE BEST R E V ENGE
Urban Houses and Countr y Estates
ALTHOUGH BENJA MIN M AR SH ALL
is best known today as an architect of
luxurious hotels and apartment towers, he began his career as a designer of large single-family urban houses. His seven-year partnership with Horatio Wilson mainly produced high-style residences for wealthy businessmen, most of which were in the upper-class Kenwood neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, where both architects lived. These included ten houses on Ellis Avenue alone, eight of which are extant. It was here that Marshall got his start as an architect-developer, building and designing a number of speculative houses such as those at 4900 and 4906 S. Ellis Avenue (1899–1900). They were designed in the classically derived Italian Renaissance and English Georgian styles that Marshall would embrace for many of his later country estates. Marshall was versatile in a variety of stylistic modes, as seen in the Tudor Elliott Phelps House at 4845 S. Ellis Avenue (1899), which is sheathed in brick and detailed in limestone. The house is situated on an oversized urban lot that
left: Marshall & Fox, interior courtyard of Samuel Insull House (now Cuneo Mansion), 1340 North Milwaukee Avenue,
Vernon Hills, Illinois, 1914–16. Photo: Tom Harris/Hedrich Blessing.
47
showcases its wide porch, bay windows, steep gables, and elaborate chimneys, while allowing for a portecochere and side driveway that leads to a stylistically similar coach house. One block west of Ellis Avenue, David F. Bremner Sr. commissioned Wilson & Marshall to design residences for himself and for his recently married son at 5001 and 5009 S. Greenwood, respectively (1899). The redbrick Georgian and Dutch Colonial style houses were intended to be connected by a columned portico. Wilson & Marshall’s urban houses featured luxurious interiors often executed in the French styles that Marshall embraced for his theater interiors. In the case of the two speculative homes mentioned above, the libraries were finished in San Domingo mahogany inlaid with pearl, the halls in Italian marble, and the dining rooms in Circassian wood with red silk tapestries. The parlors were decorated “after the style of Louis XIV, the woodwork being in burnished gilt, with bases of Mexican onyx.” Marshall’s love of technology was even shown at this early stage in his career, as it was reported that “all the windows open and close by electricity and the gas logs are lighted from the wall adjoining the bed space.” Following the start of his partnership with Charles Fox in 1905, Marshall became involved in a greater diversity of commissions, and his residential work expanded to the design of suburban and country estates, most of which were built in the 1910s. Whether in city or country, Marshall’s residences were typically commissioned by self-made millionaires or their offspring who desired costly yet tasteful houses. The Bernard A. Eckhart House on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive (1914–15, now the Polish Consulate) was one of the few city houses that Marshall designed during his time with Fox. As in his luxury apartment buildings, Marshall segregated the public and private living spaces and located formal rooms on the piano nobile of the stone-clad house that resembled an Italian palazzo. Marshall’s estate houses featured two basic plans, the courtyard plan or the long rectangular block,
48
•
BENJAMIN H. MARSHALL
which was often further elongated with wings. The former was used in the Charles Gates House in Minneapolis (1912–14, demolished) and the Samuel Insull House in present-day Vernon Hills (1914–16, now the Cuneo Mansion), both of which were magnificent Italian Renaissance–inspired villas. The Gates House had a U-shaped plan, which embraced an outdoor courtyard. The hollow square plan of the Insull House is arranged around a central courtyard that featured a retractable glass skylight powered by electricity, anticipating a similar version that Marshall later installed in his own Wilmette residence. These houses featured costly interior finishings, and their classical beauty was enhanced by loggias, broad terraces, grassy lawns, and formal gardens. The influence of Fox, a structural specialist, was shown in the use of steel framing to support the stone-clad Gates House, which was an astonishing 38,000 square feet in size! Its scale was immense considering that it was situated on a city-block site in contrast to the 4,500 acres that comprised Insull’s Hawthorn Farm. A steel frame was also used in the construction of the fifty-room log palace called Granot Loma, which was commissioned by Louis G. Kaufman (1920–27) on the shores of Lake Superior near Marquette, Michigan. In contrast, the Insull House incorporated a poured concrete frame of the type being used in many of Marshall & Fox’s hotels and club buildings. Built for the president of Commonwealth Edison, it had such electrical conveniences as a passenger elevator, central vacuum system, and stackable washing machine and dryer. Estate houses such as these were built in collaboration with sculptors, garden designers, decorators, furniture designers, and scores of other craftsmen. The Harry Clow House (1911) in the North Shore suburb of Lake Bluff is situated on a twenty-one-acre estate called Lansdowne on which Marshall worked with noted landscape designer Jens Jensen to carefully integrate the house with its site. The redbrick English Georgian structure exemplifies the classic country
house tradition and is a larger, more refined version of earlier homes in Kenwood that Marshall designed in this style. Its rectangular block plan has wings on either end, one of which is a fully glazed sun porch. Marshall honored the English heritage of his client Francis Stuyvesant Peabody by designing a magnificent Tudor Revival mansion for his 848-acre Mayslake country estate in the present-day western suburb of Oak Brook (1919–21, now owned and operated by the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County). Featuring rich brickwork, limestone detailing, and halftimbering, it closely resembles Compton Wynyates, a fifteenth-century manor house in Warwickshire, England. Its grand rear elevation overlooks a sweeping lawn that descends, in true English landscape form, to a small lake.
To some extent, Marshall’s residential career mirrored that of his contemporary Howard Van Doren Shaw, the leading country estate architect in Chicago’s North Shore suburbs prior to World War II, who also began his career designing homes in the city’s Hyde Park and Kenwood neighborhoods. Both moved easily among a variety of historical styles, although Shaw’s houses were considerably more restrained in terms of exterior detailing, while Marshall relished ornamentation that often featured a theatrical flourish, such as the elaborate cartouche atop the stone entrance surround of the Insull House. Marshall designed no urban houses and few country estates later in his career, as he became immersed in the 1920s in resort hotel developments and other ventures in Chicago and on the Gulf Coast. —JG
Wilson & Marshall, speculative house, 4900 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, 1899–1900. Photo: Tom Harris/Hedrich Blessing.
LIVING WELL IS THE BEST REVENGE
•
49
Wilson & Marshall, speculative house, 4906 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, 1899–1900. Photo: Tom Harris/Hedrich Blessing.
50
•
BENJAMIN H. MARSHALL
Wilson & Marshall, Elliott Phelps House, 4845 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, 1899. Photo: Tom Harris/Hedrich Blessing.
Wilson & Marshall, houses for David Bremner Sr. (left) and Jr. (right), 5001 and 5009 South Greenwood Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, 1899. Photo: Tom Harris/Hedrich Blessing.
LIVING WELL IS THE BEST REVENGE
•
51
Marshall & Fox, Insull-Cuneo Office of Samuel Insull House (now Cuneo Mansion). Photo: Tom Harris/Hedrich Blessing.
62
•
BENJAMIN H. MARSHALL
Marshall & Fox, first- and second-floor plans for Samuel Insull House (now Cuneo Mansion). Photo: Marshall and Fox, Drawings and Records, The Alexander Architectural Archive, The University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin.
LIVING WELL IS THE BEST REVENGE
•
63
Marshall & Fox, Francis S. Peabody House (now Mayslake Hall), 1717 31st Street, Oak Brook, Illinois, 1919–21. Photo: Tom Harris/Hedrich Blessing.
LIVING WELL IS THE BEST REVENGE
•
65
THE ATER S A ND THE ATR IC A LIT Y
IT WAS THE THEATER S
he built that brought Marshall to national attention in
the early 1900s, yet few of them survive today, in part because they were relatively small buildings in central locations where real-estate values often skyrocketed, making them obsolete within a decade or two. Tastes in entertainment also changed, from legitimate theater and musical revues in the early 1900s to more accessible silent films in the 1910s, and then to the talkies in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The venues for these shows became increasingly larger, further catalyzing their renovation or destruction. Marshall’s early theater designs came when he was very young, only twenty-four; he first renovated Hooley’s Opera House, transforming it into the Powers’ Theatre (1898, demolished), and immediately after, designed the Illinois Theatre (1899–1900, demolished). Like other Marshall theaters, both were elaborately decorated in French Louis XIV and XV styles. They served as a means for theatergoers to escape into another world, just as elaborate atmospheric movie theaters did later in the 1920s. Twenty-eight years old and the head of his
left: Marshall & Fox, interior of Maxine Elliott Theatre, 107–15 West 39th Street, New York, New York, 1908–09
(demolished 1960). Photo: Courtesy of the Shubert Archive, a project of the Shubert Foundation.
69
own firm in 1902, Marshall’s popularity with entrepreneurs tied to the powerful Theatrical Syndicate enabled his access to jobs across the nation, as well as to the era’s most celebrated performers. It must have been a dizzying time for this fledgling design star. But the disastrous fire at the Iroquois Theatre in December 1903 knocked him off his star-studded roller coaster. Following this setback, getting the Maxine Elliott Theatre job in Manhattan in 1908 was a real coup. The records for that project in the Shubert Archive and the contract books and drawings in the Marshall & Fox archive offer a glimpse into Marshall’s architectural operation. Maxine Elliott (née Jessie Dermott; 1868–1940) was a well-known actress of the era and a sharp businesswoman. Twice married, rumors (and rumors only) link her to financier J. P. Morgan in the 1900s, while her next intended husband, Tony Wilding, was a tennis player fifteen years younger than she. Wilding was killed in 1915 in World War I (while she was in Belgium, donating funds and time to the Allied cause). She returned to the United States thereafter, in 1917, for an attempted comeback in silent fi lms. Though unsuccessful, she retained her wealth and lived in Cannes, France, for the remainder of her life. She co-owned the theater with the Shubert organization, the land having been purchased by both and the building developed by their Elliott Theatre Company, with a budget totaling some $300,000 for construction and initial operation. Marshall’s records show a total of more than $200,000 for the actual construction and outfitting. Elliott’s control of the artistic direction and financial arrangements is outlined in Diana Forbes-Robertson’s book My Aunt Maxine (1964). Correspondence in the Shubert Archive indicates that she had some involvement in the decoration, seating selection, and design both of the theater overall and, particularly, of the dressing rooms. For instance, a July 17, 1908, letter from Marshall & Fox to J. J. Shubert states that “Miss Elliott selected a sample of tapestry from Johnson and
70
•
BENJAMIN H. MARSHALL
Falkenau, and asked that the order be placed.” On August 19, 1908, the architects wrote to Lee Shubert further regarding her changes to seating, lighting design, and decoration. Marshall & Fox initially created the drawings and specifications for the building in mid-June 1908, and the 900-seat theater opened at the end of December that year, with a punch list that went well into the first months of 1909. Correspondence describes the drama of it all: from initial problems with the land survey and approval process at the Buildings Department to the general contractor, John McKeefrey, not keeping to schedule and failing to coordinate with subcontractors; from union workers refusing to work for the carpet vendor to J. J. Shubert complaining that Marshall and Fox themselves were not on-site to keep the job on track; and from Marshall solving that problem by appointing site superintendents to issue weekly status reports, to the architects complaining that the Shuberts were shortchanging them on fees. The Shuberts wanted to pay five percent over Marshall’s estimated construction cost of $140,000, as opposed to the actual cost of more than $200,000. Finally, Marshall strongly advised J. J. Shubert on November 19, 1908, that they install a steel fire curtain for the new theater, but because the New York City building code did not require it, his suggestion was overturned, probably for cost reasons. Naturally, these stories share similarities with tales from many such jobs today. The New York Evening Journal (December 31, 1908) reviewed the Maxine Elliott Theatre very positively at its grand opening, calling the interior and its Louis XV- and XVI-style furnishings, ivory-toned walls, and green seating “as beautiful as the actress herself. And best of all, it is comfortable for all,” with each seat “22 inches wide . . . several inches wider than the average theater seat.” The article praises everything about the house and the opening, and states that it is “primarily a woman’s theater” in the comfort of its arrangements for visitors and performers alike,
as well as the numerous safety features, such as steel emergency doors and construction that was “absolutely fireproof, built of marble, steel, and concrete.” The theater was a great success during its operation, but in the Great Depression of the 1930s, use declined and it was closed. It became a radio station in 1941 and a CBS television studio in 1949—in fact, the original home of the Ed Sullivan Show. Elliott’s heirs sold their share to the Shubert organization in 1956, and the property was sold in 1960 to a developer who demolished it. Marshall’s design experience in this building type was essentially confi ned to the fi rst decade of the twentieth century. By World War I, the Shuberts had displaced the Theatrical Syndicate as the leading owners, developers, and managers of
American theaters, and from 1916 on, New York architect Herbert J. Krapp became the Shuberts’ virtual house architect. Marshall did few theater spaces thereafter, with the exception of the Rialto burlesque house (1913–17, demolished) on State Street in Chicago, where Abbott and Costello and Gypsy Rose Lee practiced their art, and the theater-scaled exterior and interior of the French Renaissance–style Murphy Auditorium (1923–26) for the American College of Surgeons. Inspired by the Renaissance-style Chapelle de Notre-Dame de Consolation (1900) in Paris, the Murphy Auditorium was designed to host august commencement ceremonies. Creating the theatrical experience in other building types, however, became one of Marshall’s goals in the decades that followed. —JZ
Wilson & Marshall, Illinois Theatre, 65 East Jackson Boulevard near Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, 1899–1900 (demolished 1936). Photo: HALIC, Ryerson and Burnham Archives, The Art Institute of Chicago. Digital File 16137 ©The Art Institute of Chicago.
THEATERS AND THEATRICALITY
•
71
74
•
BENJAMIN H. MARSHALL
left: Benjamin H. Marshall,
Iroquois Theatre, 24–28 West Randolph Street, Chicago, Illinois, 1903 (rebuilt 1904 as Colonial Theatre; demolished 1926). Photo of watercolor rendering: Chicago History Museum ICHi-68069.
right: Iroquois Theatre, shortly after the 1903 fire. Photograph by Charles R. Clark. Photo: Chicago History Museum ICHi-36009.
below: Lobby of Iroquois Theatre,
from the dedication program for the Iroquois Theatre (1903).
THEATERS AND THEATRICALITY
•
75
left: Marshall & Fox,
Shubert Theater (now Fitzgerald Theater, named after St. Paul author F. Scott Fitzgerald), 10 East Exchange Street, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1909–10. Photo: Tom Harris/Hedrich Blessing.
below: Marshall & Fox,
Blackstone Theatre (now Merle Reskin Theatre, DePaul University), 60 East Balbo Street, Chicago, Illinois, 1910. Photograph by J. W. Taylor. Photo: HALIC, Ryerson and Burnham Archives, The Art Institute of Chicago. Digital File 16320 © The Art Institute of Chicago.
80
•
BENJAMIN H. MARSHALL
above: Marshall & Fox,
elevation drawing of Rialto Theatre, 336 South State Street, Chicago, Illinois, 1913–17 (demolished 1954). Photo: Marshall & Fox, Drawings and Records, The Alexander Architectural Archive, The University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin.
right (exterior) and following pages (interior):
Marshall & Fox, John B. Murphy Memorial Auditorium, 55 East Erie Street, Chicago, Illinois, 1923–26. Photographs by Trowbridge Photography. Photos: American College of Surgeons Archive.
THEATERS AND THEATRICALITY
•
81
HOM ES AWAY FROM HOM E
Hotels and Private Clubs
PR IVATE CLUBS A ND HOTELS
often share similar functions as extensions of
the home and, sometimes, the workplace. Both often have striking spatial environments for social and business events. Perhaps the largest of such clubs at the time, on an almost resort-hotel scale, was the South Shore Country Club (1906–16). A discussion regarding Fox’s relationship with club founder Lawrence Heyworth appears in Aubrey O. Cookman’s story “Chicago’s Exclusive Playground: The South Shore Country Club,” in Chicago History: The Magazine of the Chicago Historical Society (V, no. 2 [Summer 1976]). Cookman wrote about the club’s original members, who were the movers and shakers of Chicago, including J. Ogden Armour, George Pullman, Martin Ryerson, and Harold Swift. He also recounted how Heyworth, a banking executive, wanted the club to look like a picture he had of “an old Mexican club.” The nine-hole golf course was designed by noted Scots American golf course architect Tom Bendelow (1868– 1936). Fox, with Marshall as his design partner, continued to spearhead
left: Marshall & Fox, solarium of South Shore Country Club (now South Shore Cultural Center), 7059 South South Shore
Drive, Chicago, Illinois, 1909–16. Photo: Tom Harris/Hedrich Blessing.
85
the club’s expansion, with a 1909 Adam-style ballroom and an enormous 1915–16 Mediterranean-style building, at a cost of more than $325,000, three times as much as the original. The club had its share of VIP visitors, Edward Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) and President William Howard Taft among them. By 1957 it had a whopping 2,200 members. It became part of Chicago’s Park District in 1974 and is now open to the public as the South Shore Cultural Center. Marshall’s two recreational passions were automobiles and golf. Dating back to horseless carriages in the 1880s and 1890s, by the early 1900s there were tens of thousands of gasoline-powered vehicles in America, and early auto enthusiasts created a variety of local and national clubs. One such was the Chicago Automobile Club, which, in 1902, served as the basis for the American Automobile Association (AAA). This organization was intended to coordinate various regional club efforts across the nation to promote safety via standardized printed road maps, and to lobby for construction of motorways suitable for automobile traffic. Marshall designed the Chicago Automobile Club (1906–07) building when he was second vice president of that organization. The new clubhouse was built the same year that Illinois became the first state to initiate a vehicle registration system, with 12,000 cars registered that year. The Chicago Motor Club grew out of this organization, moving its headquarters to the new Holabird & Roche–designed building on Water Street (now Wacker Place) in 1928. Marshall’s original club building had several later roles, serving as part of the John Marshall Law School, a naval recruiting station during World War II (1939–45), and the headquarters of the Chicago Bar Association, whose need for more space led to the structure’s 1988 demolition; subsequently, an award-winning high-rise by Tigerman-McCurry Architects rose on the site. Marshall’s more important work, however, relates to his love of golf. He was a founding member of the exclusive Old Elm Club in Highland Park, its
86
•
BENJAMIN H. MARSHALL
eighteen-hole course laid out in 1913–14 by prolific English golf course architect Harry Colt (1869–1951) and constructed by equally prolific American golf course designer Donald Ross (1873–1948). The club’s first president was Edward F. Carry, president of the Pullman Company, rail car builders, with Stanley Field, nephew of retailer Marshall Field and president of the Field Museum, serving as first vice president. Founding members also included Chicago magnates J. Ogden Armour and Louis F. Swift. The Evening Sun (May 27, 1914) reported that Old Elm membership was strictly limited to 150 men, each paying an entry fee of $1,500, the highest in the nation. Marshall himself sat on the board beginning in 1916 and, in the late 1920s, served on the house committee; he was vice president from 1929 to 1930. Aside from the original Tuscan villa clubhouse— which is surprisingly little altered today—he designed a variety of outbuildings that included the 1930 stucco garage. Some of these no longer exist. Like-styled additions to the locker room, lounge, and pro shop were executed by Walton & Kegley in the 1940s and by Jerome Cerny in the 1960s for this still all-male exclusive club. Marshall’s strikingly simple 1914 stucco clubhouse featured an open court at the center with a mechanically movable roof, with access to club, locker, and dining room facilities on the ground floor, and club servants’ rooms on the second. The construction budget was $60,000, but contract books in the Marshall & Fox archives record the total clubhouse costs at $49,407.18. Lewis Welsh in Golf Illustrated (May 1919) commented that since the course was laid out on level ground, “the English or Colonial-type [structure] would have been absolutely out of keeping with the surrounding country, so a combination of Spanish and Italian precedent was chosen.” He also stated that the movable roof over the central entry court provided a “novel treatment” of “California type” that was a distinctive feature of the club. Although Marshall & Fox designed hotels in the Loop such as the Kaiserhof (1914–15) and the Mor-
rison (1914–17), the Blackstone (1908–10) and Drake (1919–20) hotels earned the firm greater fame. The latter two were collaborations with brothers John B. Drake Jr. and Tracy Drake, Harvard School alumni, like Marshall. The success of the overtly Frenchinspired Blackstone—it received a gold medal for excellence in design from the Illinois chapter of the AIA in 1910—garnered the firm other hotel commissions across the Midwest during the next decade. The Blackstone came to be consistently linked with presidential campaigns and nominating conventions, as well as presidential and gubernatorial visits, whereas the Drake became the hotel of choice for society in Marshall’s era, hosting film stars such as Gloria Swanson in 1929, Prince and Princess Takamatsu of Japan in 1931, and noted aviator Italo Balbo during the World’s Fair in 1933. The Drake also had permanent residents. While manager of the hotel in the 1930s, Marshall altered the decor, the entertainment, and even the menu. Marshall’s son, Ben Jr., also became part of the hotel management team in 1946; Ben was in part responsible for the success of entertainment booked at the hotel’s Camellia House restaurant (1941, demolished), designed by Dorothy Draper. Marshall’s greatest hotel accomplishment was arguably the Edgewater Beach complex (1916–28), of which he was president. Contract books show that, as
with several of his other hotels, and even some large houses like the Eckhart mansion, Marshall Field & Company provided all the furnishings, from the silverware and china to the chairs and carpets, it being customary at the time for large department stores to have comprehensive decorating services. The two hotels—an eight-floor, X-shaped building from 1916 and an eighteen-story tower from 1923—along with an adjacent apartment building/hotel built in 1927–28, encompassed more than 1,000 rooms, as well as a private beach, exotically detailed theme restaurants the Polynesian Room and the nautical Yacht Club, gardens, a golf course, radio station WEBH, motor coach services, and even airplane rides. These elements all combined to create a resort in the city, with the likes of Xavier Cugat, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Hoffa, and Babe Ruth as guests and participants in this urban theater. The Edgewater Beach was so well known that it had its own cookbook, Arnold Shircliffe’s popular Edgewater Beach Hotel Salad Book (1926). Although Marshall had plans for similarly scaled operations elsewhere, only the 400-room Edgewater Gulf (1925–27) was executed, near Biloxi, Mississippi, promoted for its easy railroad connections to Chicago. Sadly, nothing of either hotel survives today, except for the Edgewater Beach apartments illustrated elsewhere in this volume. —JZ
HOMES AWAY FROM HOME
•
87
Marshall & Fox, elevation of South Shore Country Club (now South Shore Cultural Center), 7059 South South Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois, 1909–16. Photo: Tom Harris/Hedrich Blessing.
Marshall & Fox, South Shore Country Club (now South Shore Cultural Center) (original 1906 building demolished, extant buildings are those from 1909 to 1916 and later). Photo: Okrent Associates, Inc.
right: Marshall & Fox, dining room of South Shore Country Club (now South Shore Cultural Center). Photo: Tom Harris/Hedrich Blessing.
88
•
BENJAMIN H. MARSHALL
LI V ING THE HIGH LIFE
Luxur y Apartments
BENJA MIN M AR SH ALL SPEAR HEADED
the creation of some of the most
renowned luxury apartments in Chicago, developing, designing, and often constructing the most desirable buildings of this type in what were the most desirable neighborhoods in the city. His great genius, in many ways, was also to be owner or developer of a number of them. As part of Wilson & Marshall, he built low-rise apartment buildings on Chicago’s South Side at the turn of the century; with Wilson he also built his first North Side high-rise, the eight-story Raymond Apartments at 920 North Michigan Avenue (1900–01, demolished). As part of Marshall & Fox from 1905 through 1924, he built one low-rise, the French-style Bode Apartments in 1909, expanding his work of this smaller scale to the North Side in the Adam-style Morrison Apartments (1908). With Fox he later developed, designed, and built major high-rise luxury apartment buildings near the Raymond, a bit further north on Chicago’s Gold Coast,
left: Marshall & Fox, lobby of Benjamin Marshall Apartments, 1550 North State Parkway, Chicago, Illinois, 1911–13. Photo: Tom Harris/Hedrich Blessing.
105
at 1100 North Lake Shore Drive (1905–06, demolished) and 1200 North Lake Shore Drive (1912–14), as well as 1550 North State Parkway (1911–13). The last is his largest and most elaborate project: each floor held one six-bedroom apartment, with four servants’ bedrooms and seven public spaces within almost 9,000 square feet, the true equivalent of a villa within the city. The North Side buildings were all rental apartments. Marshall’s father owned the 1100 building, and Marshall himself owned the one at 1550. Marshall with Fox owned 199 East Lake Shore Drive (1911–13, with additions made in 1915–16). Many of the floor plans for these units, particularly those for 1550 North State Parkway, were written in French, emphasizing their exclusivity and in accord with the profusion of French classical decoration throughout the buildings, a trend in many of Marshall’s apartment buildings, small and large. Beyond owning and developing structures, Marshall also pioneered fractional home ownership. He first introduced the concept at 49 East Cedar Street, a small four-story building that was touted as a jointownership apartment house. Marshall lived here from 1908 through 1925, most likely on the top floor. In addition to the Marshall family, the Chicago Blue Book (1915) lists Albert Pardridge as a resident here. Pardridge was at one time a client of Marshall’s and coauthor of A Directory of Apartments of the Better Class along the North Side of Chicago (1917), which features Marshall-designed rental buildings. Perhaps Marshall’s greatest accomplishment in city living came with his developments along East Lake Shore Drive, structures that define the block as the street on which to live in Chicago. The earliest of these—999 Lake Shore Drive (1911–12) for Marshall’s commercial client Ogden McClurg and, for Marshall & Fox themselves, 199 East Lake Shore Drive—were bold undertakings and pioneering constructions on the block. Early photographs show the area completely vacant. These two buildings were the vanguard in converting this barren lakeside patch into some of the
106
•
BENJAMIN H. MARSHALL
most desirable real estate in Chicago. But the real key to the future for this block was the massive anchor property at the corner of Michigan Avenue and East Lake Shore Drive, the Drake Hotel, built in 1919–20. Having started to formulate plans as far back as 1911, Marshall & Fox were part of the project’s development team, with hotelier brothers Tracy Drake and John B. Drake Jr. After World War I and the completion of the Drake Hotel, other hotel and residential developments followed on East Lake Shore Drive, headed by Marshall, as well as Fugard & Knapp. Marshall’s other chief projects here were 209 East Lake Shore Drive (1924–25) and the Drake Tower (1928). The eighteen-story cooperative apartment building at 209 East Lake Shore Drive also included rentals. There were two units per floor, each having four bedrooms, three servants’ bedrooms, and four public spaces within approximately 6,600 square feet. The original plan was to have thirty apartments, with fifteen being sold and the remainder rented. The preliminary rendering published in the Chicago Tribune on July 20, 1924, is apparently the same one in Marshall’s studio photo (see Introduction). It showed a Tuscan-tile-roofed Renaissance high-rise that was more elaborately detailed than the sober classical building that was actually constructed. Plans in the archives reveal many design and decorative changes requested by VIP clients, among them meat-packing heir A. Watson Armour (16W); industrialist Vincent Bendix (7E); stockbroker Charles G. King (9E); publishing heir Ogden McClurg (16 and 17E, a duplex); Chicago Tribune executive Joseph Patterson (11E); heiress Mrs. Patrick A. Valentine (9W); banker E. C. Waller (8W); and Calumet Baking Powder Company bakery owner and thoroughbred horse breeder Warren Wright (15E). Marshall and his family and servants lived in 6W, his design changes from the standard plan being only minor ones. Marshall’s neighbor across the hall was industrialist Burt A. Massee (6E), an executive for the Palmolive Company, which built the famed Palmolive Building (later the Playboy Building)
around the block in 1929. On March 21, 1925, while 209 was under construction, police foiled a $3,100 payroll heist from Marshall’s temporary construction office around the corner on Walton Place; in the resulting shootout, the getaway car was peppered with bullets, and one of the robbers was injured. Marshall followed construction of the trendsetting apartments on East Lake Shore Drive with plans in 1927 for a massive apartment complex (see Introduction) adjacent to his famed Edgewater Beach
Hotel; the project was to combine apartment living with hotel amenities, as well as to accommodate hotel overflow in furnished flats. The Chicago Examiner article of September 4, 1927, described the scaledback pink stucco structure that was actually put up as an apartment hotel of 208 suites. It is today the lone survivor of the elaborate Edgewater Beach resort complex, but its spaces, particularly the lobby details and indoor swimming pool, give us a glimpse of what life was like here in the Roaring Twenties. —JZ
Marshall & Fox, Frederick Bode residential flats, 5825 Blackstone Avenue, Hyde Park, Chicago, Illinois, 1909. Photo: Tom Harris/Hedrich Blessing.
LIVING THE HIGH LIFE
•
107
Marshall & Fox, J .L. Stewart Apartments, 1200 North Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois, 1912–14. Photo: Tom Harris/Hedrich Blessing.
right: Marshall & Fox, lobby of J. L. Stewart Apartments. Photo: Tom Harris/Hedrich Blessing.
110
•
BENJAMIN H. MARSHALL
THE CIT Y TH AT WOR K S
Commerce and Industr y
IT WAS HIS
partnership with Charles Fox that led Benjamin Marshall to add a
variety of commercial and industrial building types to his design repertoire. Marshall & Fox received commissions for office towers, banks, factories, warehouse buildings, cafeterias, and store renovations throughout its nearly two decades together from 1905 through 1926. Both men established separate practices in 1924 as a result of a financial dispute, but they executed projects under the Marshall & Fox name until Fox’s death in 1926. The range of project types suggests that the partners benefited from the assistance of architects and engineers with a diverse array of talents, although the number of staff working for the firm at any given time is unknown. Fox, rather than Marshall, was probably more influential in obtaining large commercial commissions, due to his experience working for Holabird & Roche, a full-service Chicago-based practice that specialized in high-rise office
left: Marshall & Fox, detail from facade of Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Building, 547 West Jackson Boulevard,
Chicago, Illinois, 1911–12. Photo: Tom Harris/Hedrich Blessing.
123
Marshall & Fox, Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Building, 547 West Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 1911–12. Photo: Tom Harris/Hedrich Blessing.
128
•
BENJAMIN H. MARSHALL
Marshall & Fox, Lytton Building, 14 East Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 1912–13. Photograph by Kaufmann & Fabry Company. Photo: Chicago History Museum Prints and Photographs Department, ICHi-30199.
following pages: Marshall & Fox, Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company Building, 720 East Wisconsin Avenue,
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1912–14. Photo: Tom Harris/Hedrich Blessing.
THE CITY THAT WORKS
•
129
A F T ERWOR D
R ichard H. Driehaus
MOST CHICAGOA NS CR EDIT
Daniel Burnham with making our city beautiful.
His Plan of Chicago laid out the urban pattern we know today—one hundred years later—in its full maturity. Private buildings are pulled back behind a public lakefront that is filled with parks and cultural buildings, and over which they enjoy unobstructed views. It is in the logical simplicity of this arrangement, and in its appropriateness to a commercial city like ours, that Chicago’s beauty lies. Of course it was Burnham’s successors who were the chief implementers of his vision, and it was Benjamin Marshall who did more than any other architect to translate that vision into reality. Marshall designed the kinds of private institutions—clubs, theaters, hotels—that also have a public role and, perhaps even more than public buildings, create the impression of a sophisticated urban culture. Marshall’s buildings are so convincing in this regard because he was a master of tone as well as language, which allowed him to express, more than any of his contemporaries, the sense of fantasy and possibility at the heart of Burnham’s plan.
left: The Drake Hotel, Chicago’s iconic signature since its inception in December 1919. Photo: Tom Harris/Hedrich Blessing.
141
At the same time, Marshall brought to bear on the Plan of Chicago a transforming vision of his own. He was the primary architect, in all senses, of the high-rise lakefront edges of the Gold Coast, and of the high style of urban living that is enjoyed there. There is no such place in the Plan of Chicago, and yet could there be a more faithful translation of Burnham’s intentions into skyscraper terms? Appropriately enough, Marshall’s buildings on East Lake Shore Drive show him to be an architect of the city as well as its individual buildings. Starting with the Drake Hotel—the private public
142
•
BENJAMIN H. MARSHALL
institution par excellence—five of the eight apartment buildings on this short street were designed by him. And yet who would know it? What we see are not signature pieces but a complete urban scene, in which individual buildings work together to create a whole. That, unlike most American cities, Chicago itself as a whole owes something to Benjamin Marshall. He put all his mastery to work improving the shared experience of his city rather than honing a private style. Thus, there is no Marshall style, only a Chicago style that he made.
A N IN T ER PR ETI V E TIM ELINE
Jean L . Guarino
THE LIST OF BUILDINGS
in this timeline was initially compiled by
Dennis O’Connor and then expanded with additions by John Zukowsky and myself throughout 2013. It is not intended to be a definitive record of Benjamin Marshall’s designs but rather to provide illustrated highlights from his life and career. Buildings are grouped under the earliest date for a project, generally when design or construction began. The code (u) next to a date denotes a building with an undetermined status—i.e., it has not been located or examined—while (d) denotes a building that has been demolished. All others listed are extant. Addresses without cities are in Chicago; cities without states are in Illinois. Addresses reflect current street names and numbers. The bulk of the numerous remodeling projects listed in the Marshall & Fox contract books are not included in this timeline, nor are projects that were announced in various news articles or architectural journals without addresses, as their construction could not be verified.
143
southwest corner of Champlain Avenue and 48th Street, 1896–97 (d). J. B. Murphy House,
4834 South Michigan Avenue, 1896–97 (d). Fish was president of the L. Fish Furniture Company, which had a retail store and warehouse at 1911 South Wabash Avenue. David Fish House,
1897 Brevoort Hotel remodeling and recladding,
[1891] Marble & Wilson, speculative homes, 4938–44 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, Illinois. Photo: Tom Harris/Hedrich Blessing.
120 West Madison Street, 1897 (d). Clients: Alexander D. Hannah and David Hogg. Hannah later became a resident of the Marshall & Fox luxury apartment building at 999 North Lake Shore Drive. William J. Bulger House, southwest corner of Pine Grove
Avenue and Irving Park Road, 1897–98 (d). The For m ative Years: 1874–94 From his birth on May 5, 1874, through the next two decades, Marshall lived the life of a privileged son, an only child, in an upper-middle-class family with his father, Caleb, and mother, Celia (née Felicity). Ben had a prep-school education at the elite Harvard School, and contacts from his father, Caleb, likely led to an apprenticeship in men’s clothing design at Clement, Bane & Company and an office boy position with architects Marble & Wilson. In 1891 Caleb Marshall hired this firm to design four speculative homes at 4938–44 South Ellis Avenue in the South Side community of Kenwood, one of Chicago’s most exclusive residential enclaves at the time. The Marshall family had moved to this area in the early 1890s, and within a few years, they had settled into a spacious stone-fronted house on a prestigious thoroughfare, at 4730 Drexel Boulevard.
C. R. Lamb House,
256 Clifton Avenue, Minneapolis,
Minnesota, 1897. Wilson & Marshall participated in a nationwide competition to design the Illinois Trust & Savings Bank, proposed for the northwest corner of LaSalle Street and Jackson Boulevard, in Chicago’s Loop, 1897.
The Wilson & M arshall Years: 1895–1902 1895
The Marble & Wilson partnership split in the midst of a nationwide depression. Horatio Wilson took on the young and charismatic Marshall in a partnership that lasted until 1902.
[1897–98] Wilson & Marshall, Illinois State Building for the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition of 1898, Omaha, Nebraska (d). Photo: From the Collections of the Omaha Public Library.
Omaha, Nebraska, 1897–98 (d). Wilson & Marshall won a nationwide design competition for this building for Omaha’s Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition of 1898. Illinois State building,
1896 Speculative House, 4950 South Ellis Avenue, 1896. Cli-
ent: H. M. Wilcox. Wilcox supplied the firm with several single-family and apartment building commissions over the next several years.
144
•
BENJAMIN H. MArshall
1898
3858–60 South Ellis Avenue, 1898 (only south half remains). Client: H. M. Wilcox. Greystone Double-House,
4835 South Ellis Avenue, 1899. Phelps was a grain commission merchant. Elliott Phelps House,
4900 South Ellis Avenue, 1899–1900. Client: Benjamin Marshall. Speculative House,
4906 South Ellis Avenue, 1899–1900. Client: Benjamin Marshall. Speculative House,
[1898] Wilson & Marshall, Salsbury Apartments, Chicago, Illinois (d). Photo: Archival Image Collection, Ryerson and Burnham Archives, The Art Institute of Chicago. Digital File #1A3403_2861 © The Art Institute of Chicago.
northeast corner of Hyde Park Boulevard and Blackstone Avenue, 1898 (d). Client: E. F. Salsbury.
Salsbury Apartments,
Brownstone Two-Flat Building,
2934 West Wash-
ington Boulevard, 1898. Harry F. Vories House, 4522 South Greenwood Avenue,
1898–99 (d). Vories was vice president of the National Biscuit Company. 124 West Randolph Street, 1898 (d). Hooley’s was renamed Powers’ Theatre following its renovation. This project began Marshall’s association with Harry J. Powers and the influential Theatrical Syndicate, and was the first of many increasingly prominent theater commissions for Marshall over the ensuing decade.
[1899] Wilson & Marshall, speculative house, 4928 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, Illinois. Photo: Tom Harris/ Hedrich Blessing.
1899
Hor atio Wilson House, 4936 South Ellis Avenue, 1899.
Illinois Theatre, 63 East Jackson Boulevard, 1899–1900
This was designed as Wilson’s own residence.
(d). This Beaux Arts–style theater had an exuberant interior decorated in the French Renaissance mode that Marshall embraced for his subsequent theaters.
George West House and Stable,
Hooley’s Oper a House renovation,
4928 South Ellis Avenvue, 1899. Client: Horatio Wilson. Speculative House,
3952 South Ellis Avenue, 1899–1900 (d). West was treasurer of the National Biscuit Company.
Bremner and Bremner Houses, 5001 and 5009 South
Greenwood Avenue, 1899. Client: David F. Bremner Sr. Bremner was president of the National Biscuit Company and commissioned these homes for himself (5001) and for his recently married son (5009).
northwest corner of Grand Boulevard and 47th Street, 1899 (extensively altered). Client: A. O. Slaughter. Two-story store and office building,
Chicago National Bank, proposed for Monroe Street,
4745 South Ellis Avenue, 1899. Fenton was vice president of the National Bank of the Republic.
William T. Fenton House No. 1,
just east of LaSalle Street, in Chicago’s Loop. Wilson & Marshall participated in a nationwide competition for this commission in 1899.
AN INTERPRETIVE TIMELINE
•
145
BOOK SPONSOR S
Richard H. Driehaus Charitable Lead Trust
Joseph Antunovich, Dimitri D. Svigos, Matthew Ehrhard
Mr. and Mrs. Roger Hull, Daniel and Gloria Kearney, Jonathan Kinley, Louis and Dorothy Ehrhard, Virginia S. Hardy, Ruth Ann Phillips
Louis and Susan Ehrhard, Michael and Nancy Crane, Thomas E. Caestecker, David E. Hiller, Rick Fizdale and Suzanne Faber, Holly Hunt, Mr. and Mrs. Howard Crane, Deborah and Mark F. Saran, HervĂŠ and Isabelle de la Vauvre, Sandra and Bert Getz, Mr. and Mrs. William D. Staley, Thomas H. Baur, Bob and Lesley Zenter, Rebecca Halpern, The Robert Thomas Bobins Foundation, Conrad Miczko, Thomas E. Lanctot, Donald Lynch and Lori Lennon Lynch, Todd Protzman-Davis, William J. McCluskey, Marsha Goldstein, Lynette Bremer, Steven Monz, Jennifer and Laurence Saslaw, Lee Eisenberg, Blouke and Marianne Carus, Rose Ann and Michael Gallo, Brian D. White, Rodger A. Owen, Cindy Landreth, Dino and Eva Svigos, Suzanne M. Laundry, Ward Miller, Adrienne Russ, George Lepauw
168