By Maurice Champagne, Class of 2004
Now that CAF is about to move, maybe it’s time to notice the Borg Warner Building.
Most of us ignore the building as we pass; others barely acknowledge it as a modernist design, and even some deny its modernism. We usually credit the Inland Steel Building as the first modern building downtown, especially if we define “downtown” as within the confines of the L tracks. We all know that the Prudential was completed in 1955. But looking at the Prudential it’s hard to see its modernism, with its solid façade and small windows. The Borg-Warner has a modernist glass and steel façade and was completed a few months before the elegant Inland Steel. So what is really the first modernist building “downtown”?
William Lescaze, a Swiss-born American architect famous, along with George Howe, for the design of the 1932 Philadelphia Savings Fund Society Building, designed the Borg-Warner for A. Epstein and Sons. (The Philadelphia building is now a Loews Hotel, where the docent enrichment trip attendees stayed in 2017.)
Feeling that the design needed color, Lescaze suggested to Epstein the use of blue aluminum panels for the façade under the windows for the Borg-Warner. Modernism? Only two piers on the Michigan Ave façade are exposed, unlike the Mies designs with their exposed pilotis. Most of the façade is in line with the rest of the buildings on the block. And the Borg-Warner is not an all-glass and steel structure. The back wall to the west is all brick! Does that negate the Borg-Warner as a modernist design? The Michigan Boulevard Historic District runs from Randolph to 11th Street, and it excludes the Borg-Warner Building. Should it be included now that it’s 60 years old? Or is it not a pure enough modernist design for you?
I’ve heard various theories about why the west wall is brick. One is that, in the late 1950’s, there was no such thing as sound deadening glass. Because of the noise of the L, the wall needed to be brick to reduce the sound of the train. Does anyone know the reason?