Navy Pier

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Navy Pier at dusk.
Navy Pier at dusk.
Navy Pier at dusk as seen from John Hancock Center
Navy Pier at dusk as seen from John Hancock Center

Navy Pier is a 3,300-foot (1,010 m) long pier on the Chicago shoreline of Lake Michigan. The pier was built in 1916 at a cost of $4.5 million; it was a part of the Plan of Chicago developed by architect and city planner Daniel Burnham and his associates. As Municipal Pier #2 (Municipal Pier #1 was never built), Navy Pier was planned and built to serve as a mixed-purpose piece of public infrastructure. Its primary purpose was as a cargo facility for lake freighters, and warehouses were built up and down the pier. However, the pier was also designed to provide docking space for passenger excursion steamers, and in the pre-air conditioning era parts of the pier, especially its outermost tip, were designed to serve as cool places for public gathering and entertainment. The pier even had its own streetcar. It was known as a romantic spot for young lovers.

Contents

[edit] First use: as a pier

Even as Chicago Municipal Pier was being built, the invention of mass-produced cars and trucks was beginning to wreak havoc on the package freight and passenger steamboat industries of Lake Michigan. The pier proved to be much more successful as a public gathering place. During the 1950s, it is estimated that an average of 3.2 million visitors frequented the pier annually, with peak attendance for the "Pageant of Progress." This decade is sometimes called the pier's "Golden Age."

The use of the pier for serious marine purposes reached a temporary peak during World War II, when the city leased the pier to the U.S. Navy. The Navy's air group training arm made the pier a quay for a pair of converted flattops, the U.S.S. Wolverine and the USS Sable (IX-81), which were used as freshwater trainee carriers. At this time, 60,000 sailors as well as 15,000 pilots including future President George H. W. Bush, used this area for training. In honor of this service, Chicago Municipal Pier's name was changed to Navy Pier.

[edit] Second use: as a college classroom

With the war over, Navy Pier went to the University of Illinois, which used the facility beginning in 1946 for a two-year undergraduate program to educate returning veterans.[1] During its University of Illinois days, Navy Pier was also the site of a string of public events. The International Exhibitions of the early 1960s drew attractions from around the world, including circus and folkloric dance acts, arts and crafts, and international cuisine. In 1965, the University moved to the Chicago Circle campus, and the pier again fell into disuse.

[edit] 1976-1989, The Destiny of Navy Pier

At a ribbon-cutting ceremony on July 12, 1995 for a still-unfinished Navy Pier, Mayor Richard M. Daley proclaimed: “Navy Pier is reclaiming its destiny.”[2] The notion that the Pier’s ‘destiny’ lay in its conversion from a public lakefront gathering space to a gaudy, semi-private, glorified shopping mall conveniently leaves out much of Navy Pier’s modern history.

Though it had undergone various iterations since its opening in 1916 as Municipal Pier No. 2 – a functioning commercial pier as well as a public promenade jutting into the lake – “…by the early 1970s, the superstructure of the weatherbeaten and almost abandoned pier was beginning to fall apart. The remedy, endorsed by Mayor Richard J. Daley, was to rehabilitate the structure as Chicago's chief contribution to America's Bicentennial celebration [in 1976]. It was a splendid idea carried out with vigor and elan by Jerome Butler, then city architect…At a relatively modest cost of $7.2 million, Butler and his colleagues managed to give much of the pier a fresh, sparkling, almost pristine look…Being out on the huge structure somehow drove home the feeling that Lake Michigan was a great inland sea nearly 300 miles long, 90 miles wide and in places almost 1,000 feet deep. How could the city make the most of the pier's new look after the 1976 festivities?”[3] That question, posed by then Chicago Tribune Architecture critic, Paul Gapp would be the subject of local debate for the next 13 years. What was at issue was the fundamental nature of the pier. Was it to be left as a purely public gathering space, with buildings for gatherings, theaters, etc.? Or was it to be reborn as a semi-private facility essentially commercial in nature?

Much of the debate at the time was informed by projects in other cities across the nation that had ‘revitalized’ waterfront or other marginal areas; specifically, the projects of the Rouse Development Co.: Boston’s Fanueil Hall Market; Harborplace in Baltimore; and South Street Seaport in New York City were all examples of areas that had been re-developed as “festival marketplaces”, a term the Rouse company coined. Mayor Jane Byrne had entertained (solicited?) proposals from the Rouse Co. to develop Navy Pier similarly. By 1985, the deal had gone nowhere; and the Tribune’s urban affairs writer, John McCarron, would lament: “Today, Navy Pier is still a rusting hulk…The Grand Avenue, however, is booming into its fourth year as a solid winner in downtown Milwaukee, as big a success on its own scale as Rouse's more famous Quincy Market [part of Fanueil Hall Market] in Boston or Harborplace in Baltimore.”[4] McCarron and others conveniently ignored the fact that Chicago’s lakefront had always been one of the cities most loved and used resources, and that Navy Pier itself was less than a mile from the shopping on Michigan Avenue: that is, it was never in need of large-scale ‘revitalization’. A year later, John McCarron would write, without a semblance of criticism, of Mayor Washington and Governor Thompson “…redoubling their efforts to have Walt Disney Productions build an amusement and shopping extravaganza in Chicago.”[5] James Rouse himself was then working as a consultant for Disney, and Navy Pier was one possible site offered by the Mayor.

Though the debate would continue for the next four years, those opposed to the commercial development of Navy Pier, such as Paul Gapp, and the Streeterville Organization of Active Residents would increasingly be portrayed as elitist, lakefront dwelling snobs. Reverse classism in Chicago has always been effective, and the Tribune Editorial Board, among others, utilized it well.[6] A study by a Navy Pier taskforce in the winter of 1986 specifically had called for avoiding a Rouse-like commercial development of the pier in favor of a more balanced, public-oriented approach.[7] By contrast, a study produced by the pro-development Urban Land Institute in 1989 would emphasize the commercial option, even though their own study admitted that it would be much cheaper to simply repair the Pier and allow it to serve as a public space with occasional art shows and concerts, than to build entirely new facilities and add infrastructure to tempt commercial clients.[8]

In the summer of 1989, the debate was ended quickly and to the surprise of nearly everyone. A last minute piece of legislation, drafted by Mayor Daley and Governor Thompson, was pushed through the state legislature that created the quasi-public ‘authority’, the MPEA, which from then on would control the operations and future development of both McCormick Place and Navy Pier. The bill called for a 13-member board to manage the MPEA with 6 members to be decided by the Mayor, and the remaining six as well as executive officer of the MPEA to be chosen by the Governor. Further, the legislation allowed the MPEA to issue $150 million in bonds to pay for the renovation of the Pier; the bonds would be paid off by new State cigarette taxes. As William Recktenwald reported: “The new authority is a coup for Daley because it will take the responsibility for financing the pier renovation from the city and will allow the mayor to appoint his choices to the new panel.”[9]

The destiny of Navy Pier our Mayor invoked at its inauguration in 1995 might better be considered that of the city as a whole. Miwon Kwon, writing in 1997, noted the decline of urban planning and architecture in America in favor of “…other media more intimate with marketing and advertising…” as the vehicle for “expressing the vision of the city…”, she quotes Kevin Robins: “As cities have become ever more equivalent and urban identities increasingly ‘thin,’…it has become necessary to employ advertising and marketing agencies to manufacture such distinctions.”[10] The architect chosen to design the new Pier, out of more than 200 applicants, was Benjamin Thompson & Associates, who were not only the favorite of the Chairman of the MPEA, but had teamed up with Rouse Co. for Boston’s Fanueil Hall, Baltimore’s Harborplace and New York’s South Street Seaport.[11] Destiny, it seems, is as easily manufactured as urban identities.

[edit] Third use: as a public gathering place

From 1965-1989, Navy Pier was considered an underutilized eyesore. No government agency in or around Chicago wanted to invest money in it. Many advocates, inspired by the Plan of Chicago and the pier's successful use as a public gathering place in the 1920s, called for its reconstruction.

In 1976, Navy Pier began its third life as an area for public exhibits, when the East Buildings (furthest into Lake Michigan) were opened as exhibition halls. Special events including music and arts festivals began to draw crowds to the pier despite its aging infrastructure.

From 1979 to 1987, a submarine, the USS Silversides, was docked at Navy Pier.

In 1989, the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority took control over the pier. Major renovation and construction followed in the 1990s at a cost of $200 million (USD). As rebuilt in the 1990s, the pier's current layout includes fast-food kiosks, shops, a ballroom, a concert stage, and convention exhibition halls.

Centerpiece attractions include a 150-foot (46 m)-tall Ferris wheel, an IMAX theater, the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, the Chicago Children's Museum, the Smith Museum of Stained Glass Windows, and at the entrance to Navy Pier is a statue of Oak Park comedian Bob Newhart, sponsored by TV Land.

The pier now features a large front lawn showcasing numerous larger-than-life public art sculptures and an interactive animated fountain created by WET (of Fountains of Bellagio fame). The pier continues to be used as an embarkation point for tour and excursion boats. One of its most popular yearly attraction is the tall ships Venetian Night festival.

The pier and its grounds encompass more than 50 acres of parks, gardens, shops, restaurants and other shore entertainment. Navy Pier contains 170,000 total square feet of exhibition space, 50,000 square feet (5,000 m²) of reception space and 48,000 square feet (4,500 m²) of meeting room space.

[edit] Future plans

On January 13, 2006, the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, the government agency which runs Navy Pier, released plans for a major renovation of the pier which would include a monorail, a 260-foot (79 m) spokeless Ferris wheel, a roller coaster, floating hotel, and an 80,000-square-foot (7,000 m²) water park with a Great Lakes theme. The plan would include nearly double the current parking and a replacement theater with a greater capacity. At the time of the announcement, a price tag of $2 billion was announced.[12] [13]

[edit] Gallery

Navy Pier as seen from the shore

Navy Pier as seen from the John Hancock Center

The Ferris wheel at Navy Pier

Image taken from Ferris wheel

Navy Pier as seen from a sight-seeing boat
Navy Pier as seen from Aon Building.jpg

Navy Pier as seen from the Aon Building

Navy Pier from above

Navy Pier from the Lake Guardian

Panorama image of Navy Pier

Navy Pier as seen from the convergence of the Chicago River and Lake Michigan

A view walking in an easterly direction on the south side of Navy pier

Giant Wheel of Navy Pier

Carousel, one of many amusement options at Navy Pier

During construction, 1915. Chicago Daily News photo.

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ University of Illinois at Chicago History - Navy Pier Campus
  2. ^ Kendall and Cohen, Chicago Tribune, 7/13/95
  3. ^ Gapp, Chicago Tribune, 5/5/85. This article also contains an excellent short history of Navy Pier.
  4. ^ John McCarron, Ibid. 8/22/85
  5. ^ McCarron, Ibid. 12/11/86
  6. ^ For a patently offensive rendering of anyone not in favor of a Rouse-like development scheme see: Tribune, Editorial, 1/25/86, p. 10; also Tribune, McCarron, 5/7/89
  7. ^ Gapp, Ibid. 2/16/86
  8. ^ McCarron, Ibid. 5/14/89
  9. ^ Recktenwald, Ibid. 6/3/89
  10. ^ Miwon Kwon. “One Place After Another: Notes on Site Specificity.” October. 80 (Spring, 1997) p. 106
  11. ^ McCarron, Chicago Tribune, 12/23/91
  12. ^ Rummana Hussain More flash proposed for Navy Pier Chicago Sun TimesJanuary 14, 2006
  13. ^ Forrec Ltd. press release detailing proposed expansion.
v • d • e
City of Chicago
Flag of Chicago
:See also: Chicago metropolitan area
v • d • e
Chicago Landmark cultural venues
National Historic Landmark,
National Register of Historic Places,
Chicago Landmark
National Historic Landmark,
National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places,
Chicago Landmark
Chicago Landmark
Civic Opera Building • Congress Theater • Harris and Selwyn Theaters • Museum of Science and Industry • Navy Pier Headhouse and Auditorium • New Regal Theater • South Side Community Art Center • Sunset Cafe • Thalia Hall • Yondorf Block and Hall