Gallery: The Lincoln Tower in 1987.
When the
design of the Norwest Center was revealed, the main reaction might have
been not awe, but relief. It wasn’t another featureless flat-top box
like Multifoods or Pillsbury, but no one had expected that it would be.
The architect was Cesar Pelli — a lanky, genial, Argentinian who was one
of the finest architects of the 20th century — and he’d produced a
solid addition to downtown’s towers. The tower was a glass-and-stone
square that rose 45 stories, tapered slightly, and ended in a pyramid
that would transform the skyline.
Perhaps
you’re scratching your head and thinking, hold on, that doesn’t sound
right. That doesn’t sound like Norwest at all. You’re right. Pelli went
back to the drawing board after the project’s original partners changed
and the site was split in two, and returned with the slender,
Rockefeller Center homage we now call the Wells Fargo Center. The
original design joined the ranks of unbuilt projects that would have
made Minneapolis look quite different — and in almost every case, we
should consider ourselves lucky.
Ads by ZINC
|
1. Almost every case. Consider first the Lincoln Tower,
now known as 333 South Seventh Street Tower. A late postmodernist
design from Kohn Pedersen Fox. Monochrome stone in a pleasing
arrangement; classical proportions; a ziggurat roof that recalled the
exuberant tops of Jazz Age skyscrapers built at the end of the 1920s
boom. There’s a nice lawn out front, trees, lawn chairs and sofas in the
warm months. When you look at it from one angle, you can’t imagine it’s
missing anything.
But it’s
only half the project. The original design included a second tower, a
mirror image of the other, built on the plot where office workers now
play beanbag. The market crash of the late 1980s doomed Phase 2, and now
the tower looks like a twin that lost its sibling and lives out the
rest of its life alone. Together, they would have been a formidable pair
— but the green space, across the street from the park outside
Government Center, makes for a nice oasis. Two buildings would have been
better. One has worked out just fine.
2. Speaking of Hennepin County Government Center:
Early plans anticipated a thicket of office buildings rising up around
the slit-windowed behemoth, stuffed with lawyers to toil in the courts.
One design had identical structures about 15 stories tall lined up
perpendicular on either side, a junior-league Brasilia. It didn’t even
look good on paper. To be fair, a row of handsome International Style
buildings — black glass with nickel trim, glowing from within when the
sun began to set — would have been a crisp rebuke to the
block-straddling Colossus of Government. But it was too late to hope for
something simple and elegant. They would have built mirror boxes, one
after the other, or dull brown brick slabs with copper-tinted windows.
That’s all they knew how to do for a while.
No comments:
Post a Comment