Ronald Reagan Wrecked

click images for larger view

The great Lee Bey is reporting today that the University of Chicago is currently demolishing the apartment building where Ronald Reagan lived as a small boy.  DNAinfo.com Chicago,  which also has some nice photos, is saying the University promises to put up a plaque.

The structure was already cast in the deep shadows of Rafael Viñoly's hulking new Center for Care and Discovery (translation: it's a really big hospital).  When I wrote about this last December, it was less about history and more about the way that the U of C is super-densifying its campus at the expense of any sense of community or human scale.

Read: Say Goodbye to Ronald Reagan's Apartment: The Supply-Chaining of Hyde Park

Color Jam's Stockholder, Arquitectonica's Spear, Bey, Anthony Wood, Archi-Treasures' Jewels - its the July Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events

So now it begins.  The holiday week is over and the July Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events is ramping up to warp speed.

While some organizations take the summer month off, others are taking their place.  With their new exhibition, Skyscraper: Art and Architecture Against Gravity, the Museum of Contemporary is offering a full roster of events, beginning this Tuesday with Color Jam's artist Jessica Stockholder in conversation with MCA curator Michael Darling.   This Friday, July 13th, Joanna Szupinska offers a curator's tour of the exhibition, and on Saturday Lee Bey offers his own perspective in a Skyscraper Gallery Talk, with Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat Executive Director Anthony Wood offering his own take on Saturday the 28th.. On Wednesday the 18th, Laurinda Spear of Arquitectonica stops by for a conversation with Margarita Blanco and Marisa Fort.

Elsewhere this week, on Thursday APA Chicago holds one of its event in its Daniel Burnham Forum on Big Ideas: The Next 50: Planning, Architecture and Landscape Architecture.

On Wednesday the 18th, Archi-treasures offers up its annual Jewels in July benefit at the DIRTT Green Learning Center, while on Wednesday the 25th,  APA Chicago offers up the mayors of Chicago, Gary and Milwaukee for its annual luncheon on the topic of The Cities That Work.  Saturday, the 28th, the Chicago Art Deco Society holds a benefit to support the Chicago Art Deco Survey at the elegant ballroom of the historic Art Deco Powhatan Apartments.

The bad news is that July 19th Pecha Kucha Less is More at the Society of Architectural Historians home turf, the Charnley-Perskey House, is already sold out.  The good news is that if you haven't already bought a ticket, you won't have to suffer through my presentation.

But wait!  There's much, much more!   Check out the over three dozen events still to come on the July Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

so much for that idea . . . Shepherd's Temple/Anshe Kanesses coming down

click image for larger view

Lee Bey is reporting the current owners have decided to give up the fight to save the century-old building from demolition.  So, stop by in a week or so and see another monument of Chicago history be ground into dust.

Our original reports here and here.