Mies’ City Planning at the Chicago Federal Center

Mies’ urban and landscape planning is underappreciated and, oftentimes, not even recognized. Designating the Illinois Institute of Technology Mies Campus—by Mies, Caldwell, and others—as an arboretum is an important step for the university.

In The Loop, a comprehensive plan is currently under threat at Mies’ Chicago Federal Center (please see the map for reference). At first glance, the Federal Center might seem like a plaza surrounded by a court house, an office building, and a post office. Mies’ site plan from 1959 shows the present configuration of the federal buildings. In addition, it also shows both city blocks where the buildings are: the full blocks bounded north and south by Adams and Jackson streets, and west to east by Clark, Dearborn, and State streets. The existing buildings on State Street are indicated on his plans as well as the buildings on Adams Street occupied then and now by the Berghoff Restaurant. In addition, Mies uses the buildings on either side of Quincy Street, which begins heading west at State Street, to frame and lead to the transparent ground level entrance to the Court House and the plaza beyond with Calder’s Flamingo clearly visible. This direct and significant view serves to link the retail life of State Street to the presence of the federal government just beyond. Further, two of the buildings on State Street—the Century Building and the Consumers Building—are among the finest of early Chicago School skyscrapers whose framing and expression are repeated in the structure and facades of Mies’ buildings.

The Concourse of Union Station provided a view from its majestic windows eastward along Quincy Street to the Federal Building by Henry Ives Cobb, crowned by its dome in the center of the block. Now, with the destruction of the Concourse and the construction of the Sears Tower, the east facing axis along narrow Quincy Street begins at Franklin Street, past the Federal Reserve Bank, the Rookery to Alexander Calder’s Flamingo, near enough to the center of the Federal Center block, that it provides a ground level dome like form recalling the dome of the earlier court house. 

Today, we have an opportunity to preserve the framing of the Chicago Federal Center from east and west by retaining the Century Building and the Consumers Building linking the retail of State Street with the governmental presence in the Federal Center to the banking and trading presence on LaSalle Street.

The preservation of this complex interrelation of multiple institutions at the center of a great city provides us all with a physical manifestation of these elements. 

Kevin Harrington
Professor Emeritus of Architectural History, Illinois Institute of Technology