860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments

The 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments is an International Style skyscraper designed by Mies van der Rohe, and built between 1949 and 1951 in Chicago, IL.

Its precise street address is 860–880 Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, IL. You can also find it on the map here.

The 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments is a structure of significant importance both for the city of Chicago and the United States as a nation. The building embodies the distinctive characteristic features of the time in which it was built and the International Style style. Because of that, the 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments was officially declared as a national landmark on June 10^th 1996, and was included in the National Register of Historic Places on August 28^th 1980.

The building underwent a major restoration in 2009. The architect commissioned to undertake this restoration was Architects Krueck & Sexton.

Mies van der Rohe was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but here is a list of the people we do know also played their part in making the 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments a reality:

• Georgia Louise Harris Brown in charge of Structural Engineering
• Sumner S. Sollitt Company as the Main Contractor
• Herbert Greenwald as the Main Developer

The 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments can be categorized as an International Style building.

The 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments was completed in 1951. By 1951 the International Style movement had already left its early days behind and could be considered a mature movement, which does not mean it was loved and accepted by everyone, on the contrary. The International Style was accepted by the architecture community way before it was by the general public, and it is therefore likely that the 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments was not well received by everyone at the time.

The 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments uses a frame structure made of steel columns and concrete slabs.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade uses a non-load bearing window wall system.

Window wall systems are installed between floor slabs, allowing the edge of the slabs to be visible from the exterior (unlike curtain walls).

Window walls are easier to install than curtain walls, often resulting in reduced construction time and cost. However, the exposed edge of the slabs are weak points in terms of thermal insulation and needs to be carefully detailed to avoid thermal bridging and potential condensation issues

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features glass and steel in a language that is characteristic of Mies's architecture.

Mies was famous for his quote "less is more", which summed up his pursuit of minimalism and his rejection of any ornamentation. Since the steel mullions on the facade are not technically structure, he was criticized for breaking his own rules, to which he replied that the mullions were, in fact, communicating the structure of the building to the outside observer, therefore making the building more "honest", and not used as an ornament..

Other materials found at the 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments include, aluminum, for the window frames, sanded glass, for the lobby's glass walls, and travertine marble, used for the exterior spaces on the ground floor which go around each of the towers and connects it to one another.