Wednesday, July 23, 2008

The Perfect Memorial Accidentally

From Cultural Chicago:
Though no one, to my knowledge, died as a direct result of what happened twenty years ago in June, the date still belongs on a list with those of three better known Chicago tragedies: the Great Fire, the Eastland Disaster and the death of Harold Washington, respectively. Because it was on that last date that the selection was announced for the winner of the design-build competition for Chicago’s new public library. It was to be named in honor of Washington – who had suddenly died in office just a half year before – Chicago’s first African-American mayor and a driving force behind the city’s effort to build the facility.
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On the positive side, at least the city got the site right. (Hint, hint, Chicago Children’s Museum.) Then way – way – down on its luck, the South Loop has since become a lively locus of higher education, the library complementing the presence of other cultural institutions, including Columbia College, De Paul University, John Marshall Law School, Robert Morris College, Roosevelt University, Jones College Preparatory High School and the International Youth Hostel. And for the facility itself – for everything it has to offer the citizens of Chicago and visitors to the city – we can and should be thankful. It is a wondrous civic resource, functional quirks aside. (Explain to me again why the library itself doesn’t really start until the third floor.) Then again, how much greater a tragedy would it be if the HWLC even failed in the use for which it was specifically designed? But just as its functionality is all internal, this is a building best enjoyed from the inside; the treatment of the interiors in general is pleasing, highlighted by the Winter Garden, an especially fine public space. So take with you into the HWLC the temperament of the Parisian who lunches at the base of the Eiffel Tower, because it’s the only place in the city where he doesn’t have to look at the damn thing.

What is truly remarkable about the HWLC, however, is how, through the unpredictable law of unintended outcomes, it so appropriately honors the memory of Harold Washington. Perversely, and despite everything going against it, there could possibly be no more fitting way to commemorate him than this. Washington was, after all, a man of humble means and a lifelong bibliophile, so naming the central public library after him was infinitely apropos. But more to the point, his premature death left an equally limitless legacy of unrealized potential. And when we look at this unfortunate edifice, how else can a longtime Chicagoan possibly react to it than to lament: Oh, what glory might have been!
If that's a perfect memorial tell that to the people who created this memorial on Vernon Avenue in the 6th.
You can read more about that memorial here!

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