Introducing “Rooftop: Second Nature” — Remarks at the Opening Reception, 9 Feb. 2017

425 S. Wabash (looking east), Chicago, IL, June 2013 (photo: Brad Temkin)
425 S. Wabash (looking east), Chicago, IL, June 2013 (photo: Brad Temkin)

Nature within the urban landscape is simultaneously close at hand and hidden from view — a paradox of proximal obscurity. Yet its myriad forms are as diverse in kind as their human denizens. City parks, urban farms, back yards, forest preserves, vacant lots, and green rooftops — all these and more comprise the spaces of urban nature.

Despite the ubiquity and diversity of urban nature, it remains largely invisible to and thus unappreciated by many city dwellers. We are much more likely to assume nature exists “out there,” away from our cities and suburbs — especially in remote places characterized by few people and sublime landforms. An implicit corollary to that is that the city is unnatural.

Lurie Children's Hospital (looking southwest), Chicago, IL, May 2012 (photo: Brad Temkin)
Lurie Children’s Hospital (looking southwest), Chicago, IL, May 2012 (photo: Brad Temkin)

Yet the recent coinage of the seemingly oxymoronic phrase urban wilderness signals that we have begun to re-envision the role of nature within metropolitan landscapes. This nature is almost always hybrid in character, a product of human design and action even when appearing “natural” in outward form. Consider our location right here, along the southwestern rim of Lake Michigan — where the surveyor’s grid was laid down upon the marshy prairie, a river’s current audaciously reversed, and lakefront parkland perched atop thousands of tons of landfill.

Gage_Gallery_Spring_2017 rooftop promo emailThe intersections of the made and the natural can be apprehended in such settings . . . if one observes carefully, knows where to look, and possesses a spirit of exploration. The dramatic roofscapes by Brad Temkin in Rooftop: Second Nature are striking visual compositions that reveal the city from a different and unfamiliar angle, as well as information-rich object lessons in how green infrastructure enhances urban sustainability.

More broadly, though, this exhibit speaks to the vital role played by the environmental arts and humanities in envisioning a more sustainable future for humanity as well as for the millions of fellow species on our beautiful yet vulnerable planet. Thought-provoking ideas, artwork, architecture, poetry, stories, historical accounts, theater, music, and film are necessary complements to painstaking ecological analysis and pragmatic environmental policy.

Why? Because ideas and vision matter. Compelling narratives, whether literary or visual, can animate science, challenge our use of technology, inspire policy, and change hearts and minds. Such narratives must guide our thinking to ensure that social equity and environmental justice are not trampled in the relentless pursuit of short-term profits from, say, building oil pipelines across sources of drinking water in the Great Plains; or dumping the “overburden” of mountaintops into the creeks and rivers of Appalachian coal country; or selling more Pepsi or iPhones.

Skeptics of climate change cannot be persuaded by scientific data and evidence-based policy alone — certainly not when science itself is under unprecedented attack in our society; not when environmental laws are in imminent danger of being dismantled; not when the very status of an observed and documented fact is undermined by the brazen contempt for reason and unsettling embrace of doublespeak that now constitutes the discourse of the new administration.

In such fraught and perilous times, a sustainable future can only be achieved, let alone properly envisioned, with the full participation and engagement of the environmental arts and humanities.

By showing us the “second nature” of the urban landscape in these images of green rooftops, Brad Temkin’s art not only delights and inspires with unexpected manifestations of beauty, but also implicitly challenges us to consider what “first nature” is, and what sort of relationship we want with it — one which in we are conquerors . . . or stewards.

This is a slightly edited version of a short speech I gave at the opening reception for Rooftop: Second Nature on 9 Feb 2017 at Roosevelt University’s Gage Gallery, 18 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago IL. The Gallery is open 9am-5pm weekdays and 10am-4pm Saturdays.

How To Save a Historic Building from Becoming a Parking Lot

Here in my hometown of Joliet IL, we have several architectural gems in the old downtown along the east bank of the Des Plaines River. Prominent among these is the acclaimed Rialto Theatre, which I’ve written about previously in my stint as a citizen journalist for the Joliet Herald-News.

The Rialto Theatre, Joliet IL, c. the late 1920s (Photo: Legends of America)
The Rialto Theatre, Joliet IL, c. the late 1920s (Photo: Legends of America)

Often referred to as the “Jewel of Joliet,” the Rialto is one of the most ornate and fantastically splendid theaters in the US that dates from the golden age of movie and vaudeville house construction in the 1920s. It is an inseparable part of Joliet’s civic identity — not to mention one of the things that kept the struggling downtown district from withering away in the post-industrial era.

Given this history, it’s shocking but probably not surprising that when the Rialto was only about 50+ years old, it was nearly demolished to put in a one-square-block parking lot in the late 1970s (a dark time indeed in Joliet’s history when unemployment in the city reached 25%). Fortunately, this travesty of architectural desecration did not happen. This excellent story by Bob Okon of the Herald-News explains why.

Dorothy Mavrich, Credited with Saving Rialto, Dies

Dorothy Mavrich at the Rialto in 2008 (Shaw Media)
Dorothy Mavrich at the Rialto in 2008 (Shaw Media)

JOLIET – Dorothy Mavrich, who led a grassroots effort to save the Rialto Square Theatre from demolition, died Tuesday afternoon.

Mavrich, 94, decided at a point in the 1970s when the Rialto, now called the “Jewel of Joliet,” appeared headed for demolition that the theater should be saved.

She stood on street corners with a can to collect money and raise awareness, led fundraisers, and persisted in pursuing the Rialto owners to the point that one labeled her a “crackpot.”

Some over the years have disputed whether she got more credit for saving the Rialto than deserved, pointing to former state Rep. LeRoy Van Duyne’s influence in bringing in state money to ultimately close the deal.

But Mavrich is widely seen as the leader of the cause and the person most responsible for preserving the Rialto.

“There’s no doubt that she started the groundswell, the grassroots effort to save the place,” said James Smith, chairman of the Will County Metropolitan Exposition and Auditorium Authority that oversees the Rialto.

“She was a little lady with big ideas,” said Lynne Lichtenauer, a longtime friend who joined the cause early and later became executive director at the Rialto. “If it were not for Dorothy, the Rialto Square Theatre would not be on Chicago Street.”

Lichtenauer was with Mavrich when she died at the Joliet Area Community Hospice home. Mavrich had a stroke last week, Lichtenauer said.

She noted that Mavrich not only worked to save the Rialto, but later led the creation of the Cultural Arts Council of the Joliet Area, which provided more than $400,000 in local funding for the arts.

Mavrich was a piano teacher for 50 years. She taught at the old Joliet Conservatory of Music, located across the street from the Rialto. She told The Herald-News that she was at a concert listening to the Rialto pipe organ when she was inspired to save the theater.

“I thought, ‘My God, I can’t believe they’re going to tear this down for a parking garage,'” she told The Herald-News in 2013 as she was about to receive an award from the Joliet Area Historical Museum.

Mavrich’s persistence was evident in a story about her insistence on seeing Robert Rubens of the Rubens family, which owned the Rialto and whose name is on the sign today. Lichtenauer said Mavrich finally walked into Rubens office when there was no secretary to keep her out.

“She said, ‘I’m Dorothy Mavrich.’ He said, ‘You’re the crackpot everybody keeps telling me about,'” Lichtenauer said.

Eventually Rubens gave his blessing to Mavrich’s preservation effort, Lichtenauer said. And she later helped get the Rubens name back on the Rialto sign.

Mavrich loved telling the story, said Smith, who heard it many times himself.

“She was such a diminutive little lady,” Smith said, “but she was a powerful person.”

The Rialto Square Theatre Foundation, the organization that raises money to support the theater today, issued a statement saying, “Our community has lost a guiding light – Dorothy Mavrich, the lady who saved the Rialto.”

RU’s Wabash Building Reviewed by the Chicago Tribune’s Blair Kamin

The new 32-story Wabash Building has gotten a lot of buzz within the Chicago architecture scene the last few months as its official ribbon-cutting on May 5th approaches. Today’s lengthy review in the Chicago Tribune by the Pulitzer Prize-winning architectural critic Blair Kamin, though, is a watershed moment in the building’s emergence onto the Chicago skyline — as well as the region’s educational landscape. As Kamin writes,

[T]here is reason to think that Roosevelt University’s striking new $123 million tower in downtown Chicago (left) will amount to something more than an eye-grabbing envelope.

The 32-story tower, which flaunts a zig-zagging silhouette and an equally arresting skin of blue and green glass, represents Chicago’s latest innovation in skyscraper design. It is a vertical campus, stacking everything from a student union to lecture halls to dorm suites within a single, all-encompassing structure.

Located at 425 S. Wabash Ave. and known simply as the Wabash Building, the tower is the nation’s second tallest academic building after the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning. More important, it marks the first time that the dramatic expansion of colleges and universities in Chicago’s Loop has made a major mark on the city’s vaunted skyline. Happily, that impact is worth celebrating.

The tower’s powerfully sculpted exterior soars memorably above the mighty wall of historic buildings along Michigan Avenue (left), including Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler’s adjoining Auditorium Building, which has served as Roosevelt’s home since 1947. It achieves a genuine, artful dialogue between past and present.

As noted elsewhere in Kamin’s review, as well as in Laura Janota’s “Growing A Green Campus” essay in the Fall 2010 Roosevelt Review alumni magazine, the Wabash vertical campus is a LEED-Silver building that incorporates a host of sustainable features — from recycling facilities to energy- and water-efficient fixtures to sustainable building materials. As such, it is an integral part of RU’s continuing efforts to green its physical campus, from its buildings to its exterior landscapes (in the case of the 22-acre Schaumburg Campus).

Time To Lock Down on Joliet Budget Talks

Ever since last April’s elections, I’ve been waiting for some blockbuster news to come out of City Hall in downtown Joliet. Now it’s late July, and though the outside temperature has been in the 90s, things are mighty cool in the city’s governmental chambers. So cool, in fact, one might think all’s well in the land of casinos, racetracks, and intermodal shipping container transfer centers.

But this deafening silence from Joliet’s leadership worries me a tad. I can’t help but wonder what we’ve been doing about that teensy little $27 million budget deficit projection for 2012.

Sure, there’s been some encouraging news from other quarters. Just last week Joliet scored a $820,000 grant from the Illinois EPA for upgrading its sewage infrastructure in order to significantly reduce the amount of untreated waste we routinely dump into the Des Plaines River. As an enthusiastic proponent of minimizing combined sewage overflow events, I’m sincerely impressed.

Also laudable is State Senator Wilhelmi’s recent tour of the Joliet Correctional Facility with a bevy of high-ranking state officials, an effort to underscore the need for preserving one of Joliet’s key historical and architectural assets. It’s possible to imagine Joliet someday making some tourism industry hay, Alcatraz-style, from its uneasy international reputation as a prison town.

The old Joliet Prison, shuttered since 2002 (photo courtesy of Joliet Herald-News)

There’s only one little hitch: raising the tens of millions necessary to secure and restore the monumental but crumbling limestone structure. By comparison, breaking out of jail is child’s play.

The subject of money leads me back to that $27 million deficit looming in front of us.

Again, it’s been almost four months since the April election. Our fiscal clock is ticking very loudly. Where is the budget crisis mitigation plan from our City Council? What is Mayor Giarrante doing to lead this critical effort?

I have a couple of friendly suggestions for City Manager Tom Thanas, whose job surely must be one of the most stressful in Will County. First, reassign the brilliant technocrat who wrote that blockbuster EPA wastewater grant to plugging the leaks in the city’s budget, which surely could use some re-engineering.

Secondly, get in touch with Senator Wilhelmi and see if you can hold a special budget meeting in the old Joliet Prison, where the peeling paint, rusting cell bars, and weed-filled exercise yards are evocative symbols of neglect and decay — and a grim foreshadowing of the city’s future if we cannot put our fiscal house in order.

Perhaps such a setting will impart the proper sense of seriousness and urgency the situation demands. And if some of Joliet’s well-compensated police officers could patrol the grounds to make sure that no Councilman or Councilwoman escapes until an initial plan is hammered out, all the better.

This column was written as an op-ed piece for the Joliet Herald-News‘ 29 July 2011 edition and published as “When Will Joliet Officials Deal with $27 Million Deficit?“. After my column’s deadline last week, HN reporter Bob Okon wrote on July 27th that the Joliet City Council had again rescheduled its summer budget meeting for Monday, August 1st, which is a regularly-scheduled “pre-council” meeting that has a public comment period scheduled at the end. Read HN reporter Cindy Cain’s coverage of that meeting, which announced that the projected deficit for 2012 isnow $23 million and floats various possibilities for reducing the city’s expenditures.

The Council’s regular meetings are on the 1st and 3rd Tuesdays of each month at 6:30pm. For more information, check the City of Joliet’s website.

Joliet Junior College’s Green Opportunity in Downtown Joliet

            Last week as I walked down Chicago Street in downtown Joliet on my way to work, a giant crane — the jaws of its bucket suspended high in the cold gray winter sky — began the demolition of The White Store.

            Here in America, we’re good at a lot of things. One of them is knocking down buildings we consider to be worn out, old-fashioned, and/or irrelevant. Some of these structures were admittedly unremarkable in their architecture; others, though, were beautiful in design and possessed historical significance. One need only study the sorry history of lost buildings in Chicago to realize this.

            The imminent razing of Joliet’s 102-year-old White Store signals an end to the occasionally controversial debate over its fate, but is also an apt moment to pause and reflect on what kind of building should take its place in Joliet Junior College’s downtown campus redevelopment.

            Fortunately, JJC’s project is not an isolated endeavor, but part of their comprehensive master plan for the institution’s growth and evolution. Another factor is that the building design has not been finalized, to my knowledge.

            Consequently, I offer the following humble suggestions to the project’s leaders, with the caveat that I am neither an architect nor an urban planner — merely an interested citizen.

            (1) Go local. The Chicago region has a long and illustrious architectural history, and is exceedingly rich in design talent and building innovation. The downtown campus redevelopment could be a showcase project for a deserving firm, tie Joliet’s contemporary cityscape into that regional architectural legacy, and in the process feed the northeastern Illinois economy.

            (2) Make it green. With its LEED-certified greenhouse as well as other campus sustainability initiatives, JJC is leaping to the forefront of environmentally progressive colleges and universities. Building a model green structure would further this momentum, and create an environmental destination in downtown Joliet (much like notable green buildings draw visitors and media to other cities).

            (3) Be bold. This building must be special — a visual statement possessing flair and integrity. It should be unique in character and well-fitted to its purpose, yet harmonize with the heterogeneous architectural landscape of downtown. The last thing the world needs is another functional yet blasé box of a building.

            (4) Get lucky. The State’s financial house, unfortunately, is crumbling as fast as The White Store is, leaving JJC’s funding prospects uncertain. A miraculous economic turnaround in Illinois wouldn’t hurt, would it?

This article was published as “JJC’s Plan Should Be Bold, Green” in the Joliet Herald-News on Feb. 3rd, 2011. I write a monthly op-ed piece for the paper on local environmental, culture, and political issues. This is the same newspaper that I delivered as a kid, on foot and on my bike — including the days after the legendary Blizzard of ’79 that hit the Chicago region with a snowfall nearly equal to this week’s storm.