Save the Mies!

A small building on a southwest corner of the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) at 35th and Federal.

It's called the "gunnery" or the "watch stand" building.

The drawings for it are in the Mies van der Rohe Archive, signed by Mies. It is by Mies.

Apparently it was an entrance to an underground facility used for weapons testing during the 1950s. Some think that later, IIT security guards, may have tested their firearms in there.

The public transit organization Metra wants to build a station on that spot.

They would tear it down.

So far, the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency has not moved to stop them.

The Illinois Historic Preservation Agency determined the building had no real merit and gave the green light to tear it down to build the train station.

The Illinois Institute of Technology, wants a Metra stop there very badly. They're considered a partner in the project. U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush (D-1st) is also pushing for it. The station would serve his constituents and the Chicago White Sox stadium.

Metra's studies and construction drawings are finished. Stimulus funds have been approved.

A contractor has not been chosen, but will be in the next couple of weeks. A conference will be held in two days at IIT ! to solicit minority subcontractors for this project financed with public dollars.

Last month Metra was promised more than $140 million from President Barack Obama's stimulus package. That's what's causing this now. Metra will spend more than $10 million on it.

Maybe Metra didn't know that what was on the site was by Mies. But it looks like his work, and it is on or by the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology, which Mies van der Rohe designed.

This is Chicago. When you build in Rome, expect antiquities. When you build in Chicago, great and important Modernism.

Not long ago Chicago tore down the Arts Club that Mies designed, and that's a great and irreplaceable loss. Not to mention the Louis Sullivans Chicago is infamous for destroying.

I know some "Miesians" in Chicago are not worried by the loss of this small, rather overlooked project.

But I say, why not rework the project to save the building designed by Mies van der Rohe? That is not impossible.

Save everything in Chicago designed by Mies. He is that important. We owe it to future generations.

Just as the details of a building of his tell about the whole, so the details of his design career, such as this little outpost, will tell you, or a future visitor, about his greater works.

More information when I get it, and photos. Stay tuned.

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