A pair of identical 26-storey towers set at a right angle on the Chicago lakefront, commissioned by developer Herbert Greenwald, who had hired Mies for a smaller project in 1946 and returned with a tower-sized commission in 1948. Mies clad the steel structural frame in glass and applied non-structural black steel I-beams to the surface to keep the grid legible from outside, a device he reused at the Seagram Building. The towers were among the first residential high-rises built as steel-framed glass curtain wall, setting the template much of postwar American apartment building followed.
Facts
Year Created LocationChicago, Illinois, United States 1 Architectural StyleInternational Style modernism 1 Structural SystemExposed black-painted steel I-beam mullions applied over a structural steel frame, among the first residential towers built in steel-and-glass curtain wall construction 1 Primary MaterialSteel frame and glass curtain wall 1 Building TypeResidential apartment towers (a pair) 1 Commissioned ByHerbert Greenwald, Chicago real estate developer 1 Construction Height (metres) Storey CountEach of the two towers stands 26 storeys. Current UseOccupied residential cooperative apartments 1 Visitor AccessPrivate residence; exterior viewable from the public street 1 Connections
Created By
In Form
Source Gardner's Art Through the AgesFred S. Kleiner (after Helen Gardner)
In Genre
Entity-backed identity for the genre enum value this work already carries, resolved to an arts art-form by an explicit value-to-entity map (phase 3 bucket conversion, docs\design_entity_backed_browse_buckets_20260928.md). The genre fact itself, with its own citation, stays on the work unchanged.
In Movement
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Wikipedia
Wikimedia Foundation- 860-880 Lake Shore Drive article
Genre reference
A pair of identical 26-storey towers set at a right angle on the Chicago lakefront, commissioned by developer Herbert Greenwald, who had hired Mies for a smaller project in 1946 and returned with a tower-sized commission in 1948.
View the Source Gardner's Art Through the Ages
Fred S. Kleiner (after Helen Gardner), Cengage LearningIn Form: Architecture, chapters on architectural history across periods
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