Chicago Tribune
--------------------
Stadium has lost landmark look, U.S. says
--------------------

By Hal Dardick and David Mendell, Tribune staff reporters. Tribune staff
reporter Gary Washburn contributed to this report

July 21, 2004

Setting a flying saucer stadium inside the classical columns of Soldier
Field destroyed its historic character, so the structure should be stripped
of its National Historic Landmark status, federal architecture analysts said
this week.

The National Park Service on Tuesday sent its recommendation to withdraw
landmark status, the highest honor the government bestows on buildings and
places, from the Chicago Park District, which owns the structure. Federal
officials also recommended removing the venerable stadium from the National
Register of Historic Places.

That was the first step in a monthslong process to decide whether the
stadium will lose its historic designations, something historic
preservationists warned would be triggered by the controversial $660 million
renovation of the Bears' home.

Soldier Field "no longer retains its historic integrity," states a
three-page report written by staff for the National Park System Advisory
Board. "The futuristic new stadium bowl is visually incompatible with the
classical colonnades and the perimeter wall of the historic stadium."

"During the process of new construction, many historic features and spaces
were obliterated," it continues. "With the exception of the colonnades,
exterior walls and a small seating area on the south end of the bowl, very
little of the historic fabric remains."

The report now goes to the Advisory Board Landmarks Committee, which in
September will make a recommendation to the full board, which will forward
its recommendation to the U.S. secretary of the interior for a decision.

If the stadium is stripped of the designations, neither the city nor the
Bears, which paid for much of the renovation, will lose any funding. The
field also would not lose any protected status.

But it would lose the prestige of being considered one of the nation's most
historic structures.

"National Historic Landmark status is la creme de la creme of listed
National Historic Register properties in the United States," said David
Bahlman, president of the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois, a
not-for-profit group that, along with Friends of the Parks, unsuccessfully
sued to block the Soldier Field renovation.

Of about 78,000 properties on the National Register, fewer than 3,000 also
have landmark status, said Carol Shull, keeper of the National Register and
chief of the National Historic Landmarks Survey.

Other places on the list include the White House, Monticello, the Empire
State Building and Frank Lloyd Wright's Home and Studio in Oak Park.

Critics of the stadium redesign by Chicago architect Dirk Lohan have decried
how it altered the structure, which first opened in 1924 and was named in
honor of World War I veterans. But Mayor Richard M. Daley, whose
administration helped fund the renovation, has long defended it.

Daley spokeswoman Jacquelyn Heard said Tuesday that despite the
recommendation, Soldier Field could end up keeping its designation.

"Our expectation has always been that the columns would keep landmark
status, if not the stadium as a whole because of the renovation," Heard
said, noting that the process has just started.

"It is entirely possible that our expectation could [come] true."

In 2001, before the renovation started, Park District officials dismissed
threats that the federal government would strip the site of its landmark status.

David Doig, then general superintendent of the Park District, noted that the
National Park Service in the mid-1990s backed off its promise to remove the
same status from Adler Planetarium. The saucerlike addition to the
planetarium also was designed by Lohan.

But in the case of Soldier Field, the Park Service has followed up on its
warnings--the first of which came in March 2001 before the renovation was
even approved--with a written recommendation. That and the public meetings
to follow are expected to rekindle a debate pitting historic
preservationists against avant-garde architects.

The preservationists have railed against the design, but it has won praise
in some architectural circles.

New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp wrote that the
renovation should be viewed as "a model for cities that are looking toward
architecture to strengthen their identities as contemporary cultural centers."

Opposition to the renovation was fierce in 2001, when the city's Plan
Commission first held hearings on the proposal, months after Daley announced
the plan and the General Assembly quickly approved a deal to fund it.

At the Plan Commission meeting, Ald. Burton Natarus (42nd) asked Doig what
the Park District would do if Soldier Field lost its landmark status. "I
think we would move forward," Doig said.

After the Plan Commission approved the deal, Friends of the Parks and the
Landmarks Preservation Council sued, in part contending the design would
ruin Soldier Field's historic character.

One suit was taken to the Illinois Supreme Court, but the groups lost.

Erma Tranter, president of Friends of the Parks, said Tuesday that the Park
Service recommendation "doesn't surprise us. It was clearly one of our
arguments when we tried to preserve Soldier Field."

Meanwhile, Jonathan Fine, president of Preservation Chicago, a historic
preservation advocacy group, praised the recommendation.

"It's about time," Fine said.

"If you destroy the landmark, you should be punished for it."


Copyright (c) 2004, Chicago Tribune

--
To terminate puerile preservation prattling among pals and the
uncoffee-ed, or to change your settings, go to:
<http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/bullamanka-pinheads.html>