NorthwesternUniversity Medical School’s shuttered Prentice Women’s Hospital on the city’scentral lakeshore campus of the University may be considered a thing of beautyby architecture buffs, but the controversy over what to do with the outdatedshell, empty for the last 5 years, is getting very ugly. The University wantsto tear down the structure and replace it on the high priced lakefront sitewith a modern medical research facility. Preservationist groups andarchitecture aficionados claim the existing shell can be adapted to researchuse, and that this early example of groundbreaking hospital configuration –four open plan “villages of care” on each floor – should be kept around forposterity.
Designedby Chicago architect Bertrand Goldberg, the Prentice Women’s building is ranked11 on the National Trust for Historic Places list of most endangered buildingsworth preserving. Goldberg’s 1970’s design has since been emulated by hospitalsall across the country, in efforts to humanize and sensitize interactionbetween patients and caregivers in the hospital setting. Sixty prominentarchitects have petitioned Mayor Rahm Emanuel to force the University to savethe structure, and Mayor Emanuel has punted the issue over to LandmarksCommission chairman Rafael Leon. Northwestern has agreed to delay demolitionplans until the Landmarks Commission holds a hearing on the matter, yetchairman Leon refuses to put the issue on his agenda, further delaying aresolution.
Thehospital campus, situated on the city’s prime Gold Coast lakefront just northof Navy Pier, is the site of ongoing high priced construction projects fundedby some very generous benefactors, whose names now adorn the facades of thehospital structures they have funded. Controversy over these developments, andthe congestion they cause neighborhood residents, is nothing new – one of thelatest contretemps involved the helicopter landing pad atop the new Lurie Children’sHospital. The University needs to restore the empty Prentice site to usefulpurposes. Anyone who forgets that Mayor Emanuel is a Northwestern grad schoolclass of 1985 alumnus is missing the point.
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