Lawson House vs Carbide & Carbon Building

Comparing the Lawson House and the Carbide & Carbon Building is interesting because they both stand in Chicago, IL, and were completed within 2 years of each other, but they were designed by different architects.

This offers a unique glimpse at how rival designers approached projects in the same city during the same era.

The Carbide & Carbon Building is clearly the larger tower of the two, both in terms of height and number of floors. It rises to 502ft (153m) with 37 floors above ground, while the Lawson House reaches 272ft (83m) with 24 floors above ground.

Of course, each project may have faced different briefs or regulatory constraints, which we don't really know about and could also explain the outcome.

Both the Lawson House and the Carbide & Carbon Building were designed in line with the aesthetic conventions of the Art Deco style.

At the time, this style was at the height of its popularity. So both Perkins, Chatten & Hammond and Burnham Brothers followed what was in many ways expected of them, producing designs that fit comfortably within contemporary architectural norms, rather than breaking with convention.

The Lawson House is primarily residential, while the Carbide & Carbon Building is primarily hotel.

However, both of them have shifted purpose since their completion. The Lawson House evolved from residence to residential, while the Carbide & Carbon Building moved from commercial to hotel.

The Carbide & Carbon Building incorporates a 4-star hotel with 396 rooms. More information is available at the official website.

The Lawson House offers 408 residential units.

These two towers illustrate the many possible ways to combine structure and enclosure in skyscraper design.