900-910 North Lake Shore

The 900-910 North Lake Shore is an International Style skyscraper designed by Mies van der Rohe, and built in 1956 in Chicago, IL.

900-910 North Lake Shore is not the only name you might know this building by though. The building is, or has also been known as Esplanade Apartments.

Its precise street address is 900-910 North Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, IL. You can also find it on the map here.

It was in this building that Mies finally saw his vision for what would become his signature curtain wall, with dark steel mullions, realized. He had first proposed this idea for the Promotory Apartment, completed in 1949, and later on achieved a visually very similar solution at 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments, just across the street, but it wasn't until this project where Mies was able to execute his dream facade without any technical restrictions.

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 at the very least we know that there was one other part involved, that was Herbert Greenwald as the Main Developer.

The 900-910 North Lake Shore can be categorized as an International Style building.

The 900-910 North Lake Shore was completed in 1956. By 1956 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 900-910 North Lake Shore was not well received by everyone at the time.

The 900-910 North Lake Shore 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 curtain wall system. This means the curtain wall modules are anchored to the building's structural frame, typically by being attached to the edge of the floor slabs. The curtain wall system connects to the slabs using brackets, anchors, and mullions, which transfer the loads imposed by wind and temperature changes, to the building's primary structural elements.

This setup allows the curtain wall to accommodate differential movement between the facade and the structural frame, such as thermal expansion, floor deflection, or sway from wind forces. This system's integration with the slab edges also allows for continuous insulation and weatherproofing layers.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features dark glass and steel. This became Mies's first true curtain wall, since the facade of the neighboring 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments, although having a very similar look, isn't technically a curtain wall.

Another material found at the 900-910 North Lake Shore is travertine marble, used for the exterior spaces on the ground floor which go around each of the towers and connects it to one another.