That was fun, now everybody start sweeping

March 2, 2005 7:19 AM

Deconstructing the Chicago Skyline - the dismantling of the Sun Times building through time lapse photography. An enterprising team of co-workers (with a previously obstructed view of the city) record (16MB avi) the razing of a Chicago icon, one floor at a time, courtesy of a new Chicago icon.
posted by cbjg (29 comments total)

Thanks for the links!

Having lived in Chicago for a few years, I can say that this demolition is long, long overdue. It looked like a giant 1970s cardboard box. The only reason to miss the Sun-Times building is that its position across the river from the Tribune building highlighted the tackiness of the Sun-Times and the anachronistic, never-warranted pretentions of the Trib.
posted by ibmcginty at 7:51 AM on March 2, 2005

[pet peeve] Deconstruction doesn't mean what you think it means. [/pet peeve]
posted by signal at 7:57 AM on March 2, 2005

[pet peeve] Deconstruction doesn't mean what you think it means. [/pet peeve]

"deconstruction is often used in a loose way as a synonym of critical analysis"

My apologies for an innocent play on words. While it has been a while since I got my philosophy degree, I felt the word's usage here was appropriate given the amount of "critical analysis" given to the decision to raze the building.
posted by cbjg at 8:13 AM on March 2, 2005

I wonder where these people work. I'm guessing in the Wrigley Building somewhere. (I work right across the street and the Wrigley Building blocks my view of the demolition.)
posted by SisterHavana at 8:23 AM on March 2, 2005

Good god damn. I can't tell you how happy I am that such an eyesore as the Sun building has been removed. Almost makes me want to go back to Chicago just to see the view down the River from the Michigan ave. bridge.
posted by Freen at 8:25 AM on March 2, 2005

A recent Trib article talked about how Daley is pushing Trump to place a spire on top of the new Trump Tower that would add 326 feet to the building, bringing the total height of the new building to 1,451 feet. That is one foot taller than the Sears Tower.


As the Trib's architecture critic, Blair Kamin, puts it:

Beyond the giddy numbers game lies a troubling issue: Is Donald Trump's spire going to be a thing of breathtaking beauty or is it going to be a giant, ill-proportioned folly whose impossible-to-hide agenda is to write The Donald's name in the Guinness Book of Records?

posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 8:29 AM on March 2, 2005

cbjg: I think that your use of it in the FPP was a perfectly good use of the word, but when the blogger used it to clealy mean "the reverse of construction" when he said "Here’s a video timelapse of the deconstruction through Feb. 11.", that's where we entry grey territory. On the other hand, what should be call it, disconstruction? Unconstruction? I think this is an acceptible neologistic homonym.

(Phew, I said that without using the word cromulent)
posted by Plutor at 8:29 AM on March 2, 2005

From IBM Plaza or from the 401 North Plaza, you could see the bulldozers pushing waterfalls of debris. I like to think that they're disposing of some of Ebert's crazier reviews.
posted by torregrassa at 8:30 AM on March 2, 2005

Trump doesn't deconstruct, he deconstroys.
posted by torregrassa at 8:34 AM on March 2, 2005

Can anyone on a Mac view the movie? I can't get it to work on Quicktime player, WMP 9, or VLC.
posted by gwint at 8:44 AM on March 2, 2005

gwint - nope. I tried mplayer, too.
posted by atom128 at 9:03 AM on March 2, 2005

For anyone having problems playing this file, it's encoded in the following format: Windows Media Video 9. Hope that helps.
posted by exhilaration at 9:23 AM on March 2, 2005

Wow, that Trump flash site is awesomly bad.
posted by corpse at 9:28 AM on March 2, 2005

When I was a kid, my dad took me to watch the printing presses run. I've been back in Chicago, camped out in a hotel directly across the river from the old girl, Monday - Thursday since November, and have been transfixed by the demo. I requested front rooms every week, and every week they had dropped another floor. It's now just a big ol' hole in the ground.

BTW, that's a beautiful corner of the world, and probably the single most desirable lot in the city. The IBM building right across Wabash is a Mies van der Rohe mid- century masterpiece, and the Wrigley building on the other side is a Chicago landmark. I dread an outsized McMonster on that lot. It'll dwarf everything. The guys who took the photos better enjoy their unobstructed view while it lasts.

One more thing: can anybody confirm that the manager of the project is some guy who won on "The Apprentice?" Is that something you'd have to have a tv to know?
posted by ubi at 9:29 AM on March 2, 2005

i've been looking for time lapse photography software, but nothing i've come across works with my camera. harbortronics is mostly compatible with nikon, olympus or high-end canons, but i have a sony t1. we went the tedious route using the stop motion studio free trial and connected a sony digital 8 via firewire to record a time-lapsed painting, but that only does 30 frames...

anyone know any other options?
posted by kooop at 9:45 AM on March 2, 2005

Cool, thanks for the links, cbjg - I haven't been to Chicago in a few years so didn't even know this was in the works. But what ubi said - I am a bit worried about the trump blight on the neighborhood.
posted by madamjujujive at 9:45 AM on March 2, 2005

thanks for the links, cbjg and Steve, it's very good stuff. excellent Kamin article.

also, if you play the .avi file backwards the building grows back, it's funny -- and you hear Satanic messages in the background, too

it's probably the first time that VLC didn't manage to play an .avi file, weird -- I had to use Windows Media Player, as exhilaration says.
posted by matteo at 9:52 AM on March 2, 2005

koop: Framethief Might be what you're looking for, if you've got a mac, and your camera will output directly to firewire or usb.
posted by Freen at 10:06 AM on March 2, 2005

Having never been to Chicago I was wondering why they didn't just implode it, until the building shrunk enough for me to see the background. Great links, thanks!

FWIW - It's playing fine for me under mplayer 1.0pre6-3.4.3, which sees it as a [WMV3] 640x480 24bpp 30.000 fps 1874.5 kbps.
posted by togdon at 10:08 AM on March 2, 2005

I liked the old barge, but that's just me.

Just wait until Trump's ill-conceived piece of crap starts dropping its shadow over its neighbors. People will find themselves longing for the days of the Sun Times building.
posted by mrbula at 10:09 AM on March 2, 2005

Deconstruction is the hand demolition of buildings in the reverse order of their construction in order to carefully remove materials for reuse and recycling.
posted by Hlewagast at 10:16 AM on March 2, 2005

Ugly as it was, I don't remember Chicago without it, but then I was constructed only a few years before the Sun-Times building was. It's interesting that in a post above it is called "a giant 1970s cardboard box", since in fact that it was built in the mid-1950's.

What's next to come down, Marina City?
posted by SteveInMaine at 10:45 AM on March 2, 2005

Oh, how I long for a Chicago dog, or combo, or beef with peppers (sweet).
posted by SteveInMaine at 10:47 AM on March 2, 2005

Great video. Thanks! Is that the same Trump Tower as was in the first Apprentice?

Detroying crazy Ebert reviews? I thought you were going to link to Spawn.
posted by Arch Stanton at 10:58 AM on March 2, 2005

[hijack]

SteveInMaine: Here you go!

[/hijack]
posted by SisterHavana at 10:59 AM on March 2, 2005

Marina City is not a designated landmark. I seem to recall there was too much interior alteration for it to be said to "retain a high degree of architechtural integrity" which is one of the criteria for landmark status, under the city's Commission on Landmarks ordinance. I could be wrong, however; that's just a vague recollection I have in my head--I couldn't find anything to back that up. I think it's a shame that it's not already landmarked. I love Marina City, but more importantly, it was revolutionary in design and construction methods.

It meets the other criteria, I think. You can, of course, always submit it to the council for landmarking.
posted by crush-onastick at 2:18 PM on March 2, 2005 [1 favorite]

There's also a slideshow. Try setting the interval to something like 1.5 seconds.

As a former Tribster and fan of Chicago architecture, it's definitely good to see this one go. I just wish the phallus monstrosity that the Donald was building weren't so goddamn ugly AND tall. This makes me hate that show even more.

SisterHavana, those hotdogs are going to be looking might tasty come April, when I would've been eating a 'em at Wrigley.
posted by jimray at 6:06 PM on March 2, 2005

crush: Chicago, like most local landmarks commissions, tends to defer to the owner's wishes -- and most owners don't want landmark designation. Despite the tax and prestige benefits, it places limitations — unlike National Register status — on their economic use and modification of the property. (See Field, Wrigley.) Note that none of the newest Loop 'scrapers is on that list, either, including Hancock, Sears, Standard Oil-Amoco-Aon, and First National-Bank One. I don't know if Marina Towers -- just under 40 years old, yet -- has ever come before the commission, but I suspect not.

One more thing: can anybody confirm that the manager of the project is some guy who won on "The Apprentice?"

His name is Bill Rancic.

And for pete's sake, coming from a former Comp. Litter, deconstruction means exactly that, whether you're talking about semiotics or steel: taking it apart. The choice of engineering metaphors was no accident.
posted by dhartung at 11:04 PM on March 2, 2005

For those of you having trouble with the AVI (sorry, I'm looking into that), there's also a Flash video timelapse from earlier in the deconstruction.

And, yes, the choice of the word was deliberate. At the beginning of it all I really hoped for brute destruction or implosion (not possible because of the river), but over time I came to see the deconstruction as a very precise dismantling that was a thousand times more fascinating. Not exactly building in reverse, but not aimless destruction either. De-construction. QED.
posted by immerito at 5:49 AM on March 3, 2005