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By Brent Hoffmann, Class of 2005

Rick is a many-degreed docent. His first was a BA degree in philosophy from St. Johns College in Santa Fe, N.M.  But his subsequent jobs were in research.  “I was a quantitative researcher at an advertising agency in Chicago,” he explained.  “Then I worked on strategic research for McDonald’s and, eventually, headed up consumer research for Discover Card in River Woods, Ill.

“But my real passion was for engineering, particularly involving the mechanical systems in buildings,” he said.  Rick followed up his philosophy degree with a MA in mathematics from the Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, then an MBA from the Univ. of Chicago.  “I also have a masters of energy engineering from the University of Illinois-Chicago.  I picked up that degree at about the same time as becoming a docent in 2008.  And for several years, I was an examiner for the LEED program of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The LEED program has evolved since I left” he continued.

“I’ve always loved architecture as well as art and design,” Rick continued.  “I’m very fond of history, particularly that of Chicago and of the western U.S., having grown up in Denver.  But most importantly, I’m a ham. I love having an audience.”

As a sustaining docent since 2013, due to health issues, Rick leads only the Mies and Modernism: The IIT Campus tour. “I was the director of the Jackson Blvd. Historic District tour until it was ‘put in the vault’ about a decade ago,” he said.  “And I co-developed a tour of the Symphony Center, that was similarly discontinued. When leading tours, I focus on architecture and design rather than digressing into history, economics, sociology or human-interest stories. If you’re not fascinated by architecture, you’ve got the wrong tour guide.

“I once led a one-person tour for an art historian who was flying back to Italy that evening,” continued Rick. “It was on a very cold afternoon and the Modern Skyscrapers tour was supposed to be two hours.  But my tour taker was interested in ‘anything architectural,’ and it was her only chance to see Chicago. So, we combined the Modern with the Historic tour routes, found a bunch of cafes to warm up in, and did it in four and half hours.”

Root Inspired

“On a Monadnock tour, several of my tour takers couldn’t believe that the walls of the old building were load bearing.  I’ve come to agree with that assertion, even though the CAC tour manual then had that as a key point. But Gothic architects in the 12th century developed skeleton frames in France to allow in light through the enormous stained-glass windows.  John Wellborn Root probably saw them as a student in Paris in the 1860s, and they may have inspired his design of the Monadnock. Just because a skeleton frame is made of brick or stone doesn’t mean it’s not a skeleton frame.

“I also pay attention to tours in other cities because my career in marketing has accustomed me to knowing what the competition is doing.  But there’s no place better than Chicago for architecture.  Our city’s probably torn down more significant architecture that most other cities have ever built.”

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