FREUDIAN TWISTS

The Sears Tower

Understanding Chicago Through the Perspectives
Of Two Great Chicagoans

How I Learned to Stop Hating and Love My Tower

By SANJAY KESWANI
Editor-In-Chief of SanjHB.com
November 18, 2002

I have never enjoyed house guests. In addition to engaging in often pompous and single-faceted discussion, I once had to endure other things. From a time as early as I can remember, my family and I, whenever relatives or friends from out of town, region, or country came to visit us in Chicago, there was always but a single tourist destination point in mind (my parents’ mind that is—not mine). Be it my relatives’ or friends’ first visit, or their fifth, a single ritual had to take place before the actual festivities could begin. That ritual was our visit to the Sears Tower. Like a holy pilgrimage, at least once a year my devout Chicagoan family journeyed to that great “abattoir by the lake,” as noted scholar H.L. Mencken once put it, to view what I saw at the time as, the symbol of boredom. I have since talked sense into my family after visiting the Tower countless times as a child; however, upon further contemplation, I have realized the Sears Tower is no symbol of boredom by any means. To the contrary, the Sears Tower is perhaps the most poignant symbol of a Sandburgian Chicago in existence.

By “Sandburgian,” I am of course referring to the American poet and biographer, Carl Sandburg. Mr. Sandburg, born in Galesburg, Illinois, was the son of poor Swedish immigrants. So poor was his family that Mr. Sandburg was forced to leave school at the age of 13 to become a day laborer. Later he served in the Spanish-American War where he developed his socialist philosophies. These philosophies are at the heart of his early work. In 1916, while working as a journalist at the Chicago newspaper the Daily News, Mr. Sandburg published his first widely read book of poetry, Chicago Poems which “reflected his early association with the Social-Democratic party,” according to biographer Richard H. Crowder.

According Mr. Crowder, “[his] influence has not always been acknowledged,” but his style and his compassion for the working class have “all left their mark”. Mr. Sandburg’s compassion gave rise to many dominant themes within his writing. Among them were the ideas of the city: rebuilding, the blue collar, pride, and humanity. These themes can perhaps be reflected best in two of his poems from Chicago Poems: “Chicago” and “Skyscraper.”
 

Print this essay
Send a response
Donate to SanjHB.com
Join the Community

SIMILAR TOPICS:

 · Essay: The Environmentalist & The Economist
05.09.2002

 · Essay: The Individuality of Chicago Writing
12.26.2003

 · Essay Series: Balancing a Nation
04.30.2004

 · Essay: Madame Delphine
10.04.2000

There is no better reflection of one of Mr. Sandburg’s themes than in Chicago’s West Loop business district. Prior to the Sears Tower’s construction, the site was an aging industrial center—essentially undeveloped real estate “awaiting a major project to transform them,” according to Chicago historian Jay Pridmore. Mr. Sandburg believed, as reflected in his poem “Chicago,” this rebuilding process is a glorious Chicago tradition: Shoveling,/Wrecking,/ Planning,/Building, breaking, rebuilding . . .” The pace of the poem builds to a heroic urgency at the excerpted section which further lends to the need to rebuild for progress’ sake if for nothing else but to keep with the tone of the poem.

Such were the ideas flowing through architect Bruce John Graham’s mind throughout his distinguished career. Mr. Graham was born in 1925 in La Cumbre, Columbia, a small city near Bogotá, to American parents. He received his bachelor’s degree in architecture at the famed University of Pennsylvania in 1948. After graduating, Mr. Graham worked for several years in the Chicago architectural firm of Holabird, Root and Burgee. In 1951 he joined the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) as chief of design and was elected a partner in 1960.

At the time, Sears was looking for an architectural firm with a strong backing in economical and innovative design, functionality, and beauty of construction all in one. Already under Mr. Graham’s belt was the John Hancock Center whose design had not only one him awards and praise, but also was considered one of the most functional buildings in existence, combining all the necessities of life into one relatively small container (retail, residential, parking, commercial). The John Hancock Center was also one of the tallest buildings in the world—and was built at one of the lowest price tags, thanks to SOM employed structural engineer Falzur Kahn. Mr., Kahn's extraordinary new construction technique dubbed the “framed-tube” kept costs low, enabling a tower like Hancock to be built. Sears chose the SOM team as designers for its new building. Mr. Graham, a specialist in high-rise corporate structures, had designed skyscrapers and office complexes in Chicago and worldwide. He would head the project as chief architect. Mr. Khan would follow as chief engineer.

As chief architect, Mr. Graham was a Chicagoan in “every pulse beat” as Mr. Mencken once said. Speaking of his current Florida community Mr. Graham says “it’s not my community. I’m a Chicagoan. I’m a Chicago architect”. It was no wonder that Mr. Graham designed such an intrinsically Chicago building. Aesthetically, no structure could be more Chicago. From the tower’s Sandburgian image of “broad shoulders” to its overall hugeness, the building implicitly taunts the New Yorkers, just as Mr. Graham so often did. Indeed, the Sears Tower stole New York’s height record just two years after it was set, all of which proves that the Sears Tower was intended to be a source of Chicago pride from the start.

One can easily see the effects of the construction of the Sears Tower in the West Loop. Before a dead industrial district, the West Loops is now a bustling business center with law firms and insurance companies dominating the landscape. A more poignant display of Sandburg’s destruction and rebuilding cannot be seen: the construction of a single building—the Sears Tower—had spurred an unprecedented redevelopment of the entire area, according to Mr. Pridmore, creating something greater than could have been imagined before.

Even the construction of the building itself was fundamentally Chicagoan in nature. Mr. Sandburg identified the Chicagoan being the rough and tough:

Blue collar worker in his poem “Chicago”:
HOG Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling . . .
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, Cunning
as a savage pitted against the wilderness . . .

Mr. Graham had a great respect for the Chicago construction worker. He felt, comparatively, that in Chicago workers were not only more skilled, and more efficient, but also have an innate love for their work relative to workers from any where else in the country (i.e. New York, Florida, and California). This is evident in an interview of Mr. Graham conducted by Betty J. Blum in late May, 1997. In the interview, Ms. Blum comments on how “unusual” it was that the workers on the Sears Tower were actually inspired by their jobs and enjoyed their work—going about what they loved without much conflict. Mr. Graham did not agree:

I think by and large the buildings I worked on in Chicago the workmen have loved . . . I can’t tell you how much I admire Chicago construction workers.

With this sensibility, the Sears Tower was designed. According to Mr. Pridmore, Sears did not want a monument, but that is exactly what they got—a monument to the Chicago worker for the Chicago worker.

The Chicago construction workers felt great pride in their monument as well. Mr. Sandburg addresses this point too, in his “Chicago”:

Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of
Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog
Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with
Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

Mr. Pridmore does note, however, that Sears itself chose the site and design of the Sears Tower out of an ingrained love of the city.

Even Chicagoans on the street of the West Loop, when asked about what they think of their tower, come up with responses such as, “it is Chicago,” or simply, “I love it.” The Chicagoans love the Sears Tower, not because it is any corporate symbol of economic dominance and supremacy, but rather because it is a “humane building,” as Mr. Khan once stated. Mr. Graham agrees:

I’m going to say it again and again. The first ones to recognize the Hancock building were the cab drivers, not the press . . . They understood it.

Similarly, Mr. Graham asserts, the Sears Tower is a people’s tower, not some esoteric thing. In this sense, the Sears Tower and even the John Hancock Center reflect the Chicagoan’s human and civic identity. Mr. Sandburg goes as far as to assert that the skyscraper “has a soul”. The soul is given to the skyscraper by those who work there every day, and those who created it and lost their lives in so doing, according to Mr. Sandburg. Their souls have “gone into the stones of the building”. In such a manner, the Sears Tower too, has a soul. The people of Chicago must sense this as no elitist can.

As a child, I always hated those times of the year that visitors came to the Keswani household. Essentially it spelled not only trite and uninteresting conversation, but our journey to what seemed to be the then cliché Sears Tower. In my old age I have discovered not only that the Sears Tower is a symbol of what is means to be a Chicagoan, but what it is to be an American. According to Mr. Mencken, Chicago is, after all, the most American of American cities. No truer symbol exists of Mr. Sandburg’s Chicago. As a child, I vowed never to return to my symbol of boredom. Today I plan my return to my city’s symbol of greatness.