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It has emerged
Suddenly, the Trump Tower seems very real -- and even a little terrifying
By Blair Kamin
Tribune architecture critic
Published February 10, 2006
For years, Donald Trump's Chicago tower has lingered in the imagination and nowhere else -- a convenient prop for the developer's reality TV show, a model to be ogled at press conferences, a picture in the real estate ads.
No more.
The first structural columns for the 92-story hotel-condo tower have popped above Wabash Avenue and, all of a sudden, the project seems very real and, truth be told, a little terrifying.
You look at those round, gray concrete columns and you imagine them stacked endlessly in the sky. Patches of blue will disappear. So will cherished views, like the one from the Michigan Avenue Bridge of the elegant black slab of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's IBM Building.
Yet the heart beats faster at the prospect of Chicago reaching into the sky. Busting into the clouds is in the city's blood. Nothing like this has happened since the boxy, black mass of the 1,450-foot Sears Tower, once the world's tallest building and still the nation's tallest, soared above the gritty Loop in 1974.
As if to signal that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks did not quash the urge (or the will) to build tall, the Trump Tower's spire will rise to 1,362 feet -- by coincidence, the exact height of the destroyed Two World Trade Center. (Its skyline "twin," One World Trade Center, actually was 6 feet taller).
Fear, wonder, dread, delight -- skyscrapers have long spawned such ambivalent feelings. Piling floor upon floor saves space, but these behemoths steal light and air. They have been deemed "both avatars and annihilators of civilized life," Judith Dupre wrote in her 1996 book, "Skyscrapers," five years before the trade center towers were themselves annihilated.
Don't ask Paul James to muse on such grand ideas. He has a more immediate concern: Getting Trump International Hotel & Tower built on its choice site along the Chicago River.
James is a senior vice president at Bovis Lend Lease, the worldwide construction giant and the Trump project's construction manager. "Up to now, we've been below the radar screen," James said, referring to foundation work. "From now on, we'll be a rising beacon."
But the beacon is rising slowly.
Trump Tower Chicago has 10 parking garage floors in its base, for example. Each floor has a "footprint" of 44,000 feet, about a third larger than the floors of the football-shaped Hyatt Center office building on South Wacker Drive. It will take eight or nine days, James estimated, to pour enough concrete for one of those garage floors.
The Trump Tower's concrete frame is scheduled to be "topped out" in early summer of 2008. Add the time needed to cover the frame in a silvery blue coat of stainless steel, glass and aluminum, the materials specified by architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and the completion date stretches to spring, 2009.
Erecting a typical high-rise, 45 to 50 stories tall, takes about two years, James said, adding: "I'm doing two of those."
Why, I asked James, does it take so long to build a skyscraper today?
The 1,250-foot Empire State Building, a Depression-era wonder of riveted steel construction, went up in the astonishingly short time of one year and 45 days. Trump's tower is expected to take roughly 4 1/2 years.
James offered several reasons beyond the fact that a concrete frame goes up more slowly:
- In the throes of the Depression, with millions of Americans out of a job, wages for construction workers were low and there was an unlimited supply of labor. Work rules were far less safety-conscious. "In the 1930s, if somebody didn't like the work rules, there were 10 people in line waiting to get the job," James said. "You can't wear people out today."
- The Empire State Building team followed a relentless schedule -- seven days a week, virtually around the clock. In contrast, Chicago's overnight noise restrictions only allow construction from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays. The rules permit weekend building, but the wages are as much as double-time, discouraging Bovis from using a full crew.
- It takes longer to outfit a residential building than an office building. At the Trump skyscraper, which will have 286 hotel units and 472 condominiums, the builders have to put in all the bathrooms and kitchens, James said. In a typical office building, he added, the developer builds the exterior shell and the core, then lets tenants furnish their spaces.
Even as it moves from the ground into the air, the Trump Tower's construction remains a fascinating spectacle -- a riveting drama even if it has no rivets.
Two towering yellow cranes move materials around the site. Concrete trucks whir, their contents pumped upward to the emerging superstructure.
The outlines of the project, such as the welcome distance it keeps from the frilly white Wrigley Building, are becoming clearer, yet its ultimate impact on the skyline and the riverfront remains shrouded in mystery.
Beast or beauty?
Monster or gentle giant?
We'll know better come 2008.
Suddenly, the Trump Tower seems very real -- and even a little terrifying
By Blair Kamin
Tribune architecture critic
Published February 10, 2006
For years, Donald Trump's Chicago tower has lingered in the imagination and nowhere else -- a convenient prop for the developer's reality TV show, a model to be ogled at press conferences, a picture in the real estate ads.
No more.
The first structural columns for the 92-story hotel-condo tower have popped above Wabash Avenue and, all of a sudden, the project seems very real and, truth be told, a little terrifying.
You look at those round, gray concrete columns and you imagine them stacked endlessly in the sky. Patches of blue will disappear. So will cherished views, like the one from the Michigan Avenue Bridge of the elegant black slab of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's IBM Building.
Yet the heart beats faster at the prospect of Chicago reaching into the sky. Busting into the clouds is in the city's blood. Nothing like this has happened since the boxy, black mass of the 1,450-foot Sears Tower, once the world's tallest building and still the nation's tallest, soared above the gritty Loop in 1974.
As if to signal that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks did not quash the urge (or the will) to build tall, the Trump Tower's spire will rise to 1,362 feet -- by coincidence, the exact height of the destroyed Two World Trade Center. (Its skyline "twin," One World Trade Center, actually was 6 feet taller).
Fear, wonder, dread, delight -- skyscrapers have long spawned such ambivalent feelings. Piling floor upon floor saves space, but these behemoths steal light and air. They have been deemed "both avatars and annihilators of civilized life," Judith Dupre wrote in her 1996 book, "Skyscrapers," five years before the trade center towers were themselves annihilated.
Don't ask Paul James to muse on such grand ideas. He has a more immediate concern: Getting Trump International Hotel & Tower built on its choice site along the Chicago River.
James is a senior vice president at Bovis Lend Lease, the worldwide construction giant and the Trump project's construction manager. "Up to now, we've been below the radar screen," James said, referring to foundation work. "From now on, we'll be a rising beacon."
But the beacon is rising slowly.
Trump Tower Chicago has 10 parking garage floors in its base, for example. Each floor has a "footprint" of 44,000 feet, about a third larger than the floors of the football-shaped Hyatt Center office building on South Wacker Drive. It will take eight or nine days, James estimated, to pour enough concrete for one of those garage floors.
The Trump Tower's concrete frame is scheduled to be "topped out" in early summer of 2008. Add the time needed to cover the frame in a silvery blue coat of stainless steel, glass and aluminum, the materials specified by architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and the completion date stretches to spring, 2009.
Erecting a typical high-rise, 45 to 50 stories tall, takes about two years, James said, adding: "I'm doing two of those."
Why, I asked James, does it take so long to build a skyscraper today?
The 1,250-foot Empire State Building, a Depression-era wonder of riveted steel construction, went up in the astonishingly short time of one year and 45 days. Trump's tower is expected to take roughly 4 1/2 years.
James offered several reasons beyond the fact that a concrete frame goes up more slowly:
- In the throes of the Depression, with millions of Americans out of a job, wages for construction workers were low and there was an unlimited supply of labor. Work rules were far less safety-conscious. "In the 1930s, if somebody didn't like the work rules, there were 10 people in line waiting to get the job," James said. "You can't wear people out today."
- The Empire State Building team followed a relentless schedule -- seven days a week, virtually around the clock. In contrast, Chicago's overnight noise restrictions only allow construction from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays. The rules permit weekend building, but the wages are as much as double-time, discouraging Bovis from using a full crew.
- It takes longer to outfit a residential building than an office building. At the Trump skyscraper, which will have 286 hotel units and 472 condominiums, the builders have to put in all the bathrooms and kitchens, James said. In a typical office building, he added, the developer builds the exterior shell and the core, then lets tenants furnish their spaces.
Even as it moves from the ground into the air, the Trump Tower's construction remains a fascinating spectacle -- a riveting drama even if it has no rivets.
Two towering yellow cranes move materials around the site. Concrete trucks whir, their contents pumped upward to the emerging superstructure.
The outlines of the project, such as the welcome distance it keeps from the frilly white Wrigley Building, are becoming clearer, yet its ultimate impact on the skyline and the riverfront remains shrouded in mystery.
Beast or beauty?
Monster or gentle giant?
We'll know better come 2008.
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