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The tour begins on the Old State Capitol Plaza, by
the law office where Lincoln walked to work. He must have stopped right
here to talk, about the future of the country and the storms clouds
gathering over it. “The courthouse square was the heart of the
community,” says our guide, Anthony Rubano, the Pied Piper of
downtown architectural tours, offered six times through the summer and
fall. This was the last tour of the season conducted by the visionary
designer for the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. “The square
was the center for religion, entertainment, commerce and
government.”
When Midwestern towns were laid out in the early 19th century,
they were laid out on a grid, “imposing a grid of understanding on
the landscape.” On the courthouse square, the government building was
at the center, but then private enterprise formed the “walls”
of the outdoor “room” around it we call the square. Here Wall
Street meets Main Street comfortably, without the dichotomy between the
worlds of money and the masses referred to in recent days. The buildings
are on 25-foot lots because that was the optimum length of trees for
trusses. Buildings for all types of businesses went up shoulder to shoulder
on four sides.
The downtown plaza was the location of speeches,
rallies, protests. It was a true public space, as opposed to the fake
public space of a mall. It is a place that has welcomed presidents and
candidates — from Lincoln, to William McKinley, to Adlai Stevenson
— for a century and a half. (Until now it has done so without
charge, because it’s an honor to have them here. Sending Barack Obama
a bill for $50,000 is a good way to ask him not to come back.) Here’s
the ideal to remember: “Community and interdependence are evoked by
the public square,” Rubano says.
First stop on the east side of the square is the 1928
art deco Illinois Building, which, with its several setbacks as it rises,
brought the “romance of the skyscraper” to this prairie town.
Early evening sun “lights up the material” of the green tiles
on the building, which Rubano considers a piece of art. It is a
“triumphal announcement” that even Springfield can participate
in the international conversation of progressive architecture.
Next is JP Morgan Chase Bank, formerly Marine Bank.
Like the other two major banks on the square, it was redone in the 1970s.
Here an opaque glass curtain wall was added between spare columns, because
the bank president at the time liked the columns on the Bank of Ireland. On
the north side of the square is the National City Bank, formerly the
Illinois National Bank, completed in 1974. It was designed by the
powerhouse architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill with a pink
granite surface, handsome but severe. A passerby can’t see in. It
represents “corporate modernism” in a way that speaks of the
power of the corporation, rather than being about the people who benefit
from corporations. “It is sterile, aloof, not very accessible,”
says our guide. The U.S. Bank building, formerly First National, was
“reclad in a modernist language” in 1976. Like the other banks,
it is imposing and inaccessible.
Our introduction to the brick-and-glass sentries
standing around the Old State Capitol continues with the Myers Brothers
department store, built in the 1920s. Department stores evoke happy
memories. They were landmarks of commerce, where customer service was king.
They changed the way people shop. So did “dime stores,”
represented by the 1930s Kresge building at Fifth and Adams. Between 1934
and 1938 Kresge and Woolworth built hundreds of stores like this,
introducing Depression-hungry Americans to “everyday low
prices” made possible by a retail giant’s volume purchasing.
What will today’s politics and economics bring
to Springfield’s architecture? Will buildings become more
transparent, like business and finance need to be? Will the politics of
hope be memorialized in the hardscape? Will arts and entertainment continue
to supplant commerce downtown? If our buildings shape our future, as well
as reflecting our circumstances, what kind of buildings will we put up?
For now it is sufficient to admire the collage of
structures that is the charm of downtown. A huge amount of architecture is
packed into a relatively small space, and it works. Competing styles, like
competing businesses, not only coexist but thrive because of each other.
The vibrancy of diversity, represented in buildings and reflected in the
townspeople, forms the living center of democracy, the public square.
Contact Fletcher Farrar at ffarrar@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Oct 2-8, 2008.
