Sunday, September 26, 1999
Save Our Treasures
Striking architectural gold at Shillito's
BY OWEN FINDSEN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Shillito's atrium is 120 feet high and 60 feet wide with a 45-foot wide skylight.
(Steven M. Herppich photo)
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Shillito's department store was one of Cincinnati's grandest spaces when it opened in August 1878. It was so elegant it inspired a new nickname for Cincinnati: “The Paris of America.”
The French link came from the store's grand, six-story Victorian atrium, modeled on Paris' fashionable Le Bon Marche.
The atrium was covered and forgotten for most of the 20th century. Only its glass dome was visible from the store's sixth floor. Now it is back, as the focal point of the Lofts at Shillito Place, an apartment complex opening Friday.
“I'm more proud of this than of anything else I've ever done,” says Arn Bortz, partner of Towne Properties Inc., which did the renovation and restoration.
Only one picture
The existence of the Shillito's atrium took renovators by surprise.
“No one thought there was anything special here,” Mr. Bortz says. “We knew there was an atrium because you can see the skylight from the roof. We figured it was just a hole through the floors. What we didn't realize was that we had the spectacular quality of architecture that we have here.
“Then we got a call from the Turner Construction people. "You'd better come down here,' they said.”
What they found when they started tearing out the floors of the old department store was the six-story space, 120 feet high and 60 feet in diameter topped by a 45-foot diameter hexagonal skylight built on a steel framework.
The only picture of the old atrium that has been found is a poor copy of an 1884 engraving showing the dramatic space when it was nearly new. A broad, wrought-iron staircase rose from the first level, and wrought-iron railings surrounded the six levels of balconies.
“The iron railings are gone,” Mr. Bortz says. “They were torn out when the floors were filled in. We built new railings from scratch.”
The brand-new, energy-efficient skylight is based on the framework and design of the original.
“There was enough pattern and evidence of color left that we could completely duplicate what was there,” Mr. Bortz says.
Cincinnati artist Rick Janney “spent eight weeks on his back like Michelangelo, painting all this. His people cleaned all this, made stencils of all the patterns and matched the colors as closely as we could.”
@subhed:Brilliant colors
@body:
Victorian decor is expected to be dark, but this atrium is brilliant. Blue and gold striped bands divide green panels from rose-colored panels. Floral designs surround heraldic images of the British lion, German eagle and French fleur-de-lis painted in gold.
The atrium is the highlight of the building, which is important to architectural history. It was the first building created in the Chicago Commercial Style.
A similar treasure in Philadelphia has been visible all along. The five-story Grand Court in the 1911 John Wanamaker Department Store, designed by Chicago architect Daniel Burnham, always has been open. In 1992, it was restored when Macy's took over the building.
History books show that the Commercial Style began when Chicago architect William LeBaron Jenny designed that city's Leiter Building in 1879. It set the pace for the modern skyscraper by using an inner steel structure instead of load-bearing stone walls.
The Shillito building is the same construction and the same style, and it is two years older than Jenny's. In fact, William LeBaron Jenny is thought to have visited Cincinnati at the time Cincinnati architect James McLaughlin was designing Shillito's.
James McLaughlin was the son of William McLaughlin, co-founder with John Shillito of Shillito's in 1830. James McLaughlin was Cincinnati's premier Victorian architect. He also designed the Cincinnati Art Museum and Art Academy and Shillito's previous building on Fourth Street, which still stands as the former McAlpin's.
James McLaughlin designed two Cincinnati buildings with dramatic atriums, the Shillito Building and the 1865 Vine Street Opera House, which had a four-story square atrium inspired by the Paris Opera. The building housed the Public Library until it was demolished in 1955.
Concealed inside the Shillito Building's 1937 Art Deco limestone shell, designed by Cincinnati architect George Roth, is the original McLaughlin building.
“We have a building within a building,” Mr. Bortz says. “Before 1937 the building went only a portion of the way to Elm. In 1937 new construction carried it all the way to Elm. It was covered with limestone to give a consistent facade.”
@subhed:Art Deco Mecca
@body:
In the 1980s there was a surge of enthusiasm for 1930s modern design, called Art Deco. With Union Terminal, the Netherland Plaza and the Shillito Building, Cincinnati became a mecca for Art Deco enthusiasts. The Shillito building was cited as one of the few modern structures inspired by Pre-Columbian Mexican design.
That makes it a particular oddity, an architecturally significant building that hides another architecturally significant building.
Only the south wall, on Shillito Place, shows the original McLaughlin design. Originally red brick, it was painted gray to match the 1938 shell. Towne Properties has painted it a light red to suggest the original look.
“From a residential developer's point of view, I really would much prefer that we had the original building to work with, because the windows were large and now are largely concealed.
“Unfortunately they tore away a lot of the brick in 1937 to attach the limestone, so even if people had given us their blessing to take off the limestone, we would have had enormous expense to repair the brick.”
“We have this silly notion that something built long ago can't be as great as something built today,” Mr. Bortz says, “and really the opposite is true. Nobody would dare do a building like this any more.”
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