Residential · Streeterville
860–880 Lake Shore Drive
860–880 N Lake Shore Drive, Chicago1951
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe · International Style
Light study
Noon
12:00
Flat light. Good for comparing materials, less kind to depth.
The grid is a light instrument. East glass goes pale at sunrise; the black steel stays graphic against a white winter sky. In the afternoon the west elevations turn reflective and the towers read as two dark slabs.
The study applies a color treatment to the photograph. It is a way of looking, not a measured solar model.
Photo: Teemu008 · CC BY-SA 2.0 license · source file
Mies van der Rohe’s paired apartment towers — the steel-and-glass argument for how Chicago might live beside the lake.
860 and 880 North Lake Shore Drive are two 26-story apartment towers designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and completed in 1951, after construction that began in 1949. They were among the first residential high-rises to commit fully to a steel-and-glass curtain wall.
The pair is set at a slight angle to the street and to each other, so the space between them is as deliberate as the elevations. Dark steel, a regular grid, and the lake just east: the International Style, used here not as an office type but as a place to live. They are a Chicago Landmark and a National Historic Landmark.
Herbert Greenwald was the developer who took the risk. The collection treats the two addresses as one work. It does not represent any apartment inside them.
- Completed
- 1951
- Height
- 26 stories, paired towers
- Use
- Residential
- Architect
- Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
- Style
- International Style
- Recognition
- National Historic Landmark
Neighborhood
Streeterville
This is Streeterville at its most literal: the drive, the water, and a thin parkway. The towers face the lake with almost nothing ornamental between the glass and the horizon. Oak Street Beach is a walk north along that same edge.
- The lakeImmediately east of the drive
- Oak Street BeachNorth along the lakefront
- Michigan AvenueA few blocks west
Near north · lake to the east
- One Bennett Park
- The St. Regis Chicago
- Aqua Tower
- 860–880 Lake Shore Drive
- 875 North Michigan Avenue
- Marina City
Lake Michigan
860–880 Lake Shore Drive · Streeterville. Open the building from its pin.
The pin map above is ours. A street map of 860–880 Lake Shore Drive loads from OpenStreetMap only if you ask for it.
Sources
In the book
Also in the collection
