StructureHub

Is $300,ooo a fair price for this building?  Less?  The USPS hopes not, although it has little expectation of higher bids when it puts the old Chicago Post Office building up for auction on August 27th.

Any hope for a price worthy of the large, central, location evaporated over the last 10 years, as re-development plans wilted in the face of bad timing (recession), numerous stakeholders (old, big building next to canal, over busy road, and terminus for many railroad tracks), and complex questions regarding re-development (partial or total teardown?  What about the road below?  Housing, offices, something else?).

Despite those questions and the fact that whatever is actually done with the property will cost millions of dollars, I find it hard to comprehend why no feasible re-development plan has yet to gain traction.  It would be a different story if the Chicago building (designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst, & White and finished in 1932) had much historical or architectural signifance.  But it has next to none, essentially an industrial building with scattered elements of generic refinement - which themselves have the misfortune of possessing the usual bland-government-building aura and tone-deafness of scale.

I generally prefer preservation of old buildings, but this building fails to offer justification for doing so, besides the fact that it may be more environmentally conscious to save it.  Nonetheless, I would favor preserving portions of the building, such as the grand hallway below, even though it offers little more than reminder of the federal government’s tradition of bad architecture, such as the awful Rayburn House Office Building in Washginton, DC.

Image courtesy of mirsasha & back_garage