The unheralded site of Michael Reese Hospital on Chicago’s South Side is one of Chicago’s greatest architectural assets.  At this site, Walter Gropius executed his only built work in the State of Illinois, a surprisingly complete portrait of the artist, comprising site planning, urban design, and execution of individual buildings.

Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus and one of the undisputed world leaders of architecture during the twentieth century, is generally not known to have executed works in Illinois.  His master planning effort at Michael Reese is not widely published, although it is documented in certain cases.  Meanwhile, in perhaps the most glaring absence to-date in the histories of Chicago architecture, the individual commissions that Gropius worked on are almost completely unknown.  (For a discussion on the causes of this strange situation, please see our FAQ.  Editor’s Note: Our FAQ is under development and will be posted shortly.)

Dedication Stone for Walter Gropius The “Gropius Tree” was dedicated at Michael Reese Hospital in 1957. It was inspired by Richard Lippold’s “World Tree” sculpture (1950), which is located at Gropius’s Graduate Law Center, Harvard University.

Walter Gropius’s commission at Michael Reese Hospital began in late 1945.  The administration of Michael Reese Hospital, at the time the largest hospital in Illinois, created a Planning Staff to chart the hospital’s expansion, and hired Gropius-trained architect and planner Reginald Isaacs to lead the effort.  Isaacs in turn suggested immediately that Gropius be brought on-board as the “Architectural Consultant,” a position that soon would lead to a starring role in the Reese expansion. Michael Reese Hospital, under Isaacs and Gropius’s direction, became the first private institution in Chicago, perhaps the US, to actively advocate for and independently effectuate an urban renewal program.

Master Planning

With the Michael Reese Planning Staff, Gropius led the design of an urban expansion that went far beyond a mere hospital campus. Under his guidance, the expansion became a full-fledged neighborhood planning effort, with the goal that the hospital expansion could result in a model for neighborhood rebirth on Chicago’s South Side. In early 1946, Gropius wrote of the planning process, “A standard plan and report of one neighborhood unit would result from this work which could be a guiding model for the rest of the region.”

Thus, the Michael Reese Master plan as originally conceived encompassed far more than the improved plant of the hospital itself. Instead, Gropius and Isaacs advocated for a broad, model neighborhood. Included were shopping facilities, improved housing for existing residents of the area and for Michael Reese’s nursing staff, improved recreational opportunities, and educational structures. Moreover, above all of these concerns, and central to the plan, was the creation of open and green spaces, considered a key deficiency in the highly dense Douglas neighborhood. To achieve this goal, the majority of structures, particularly residential units, were conceived in tower blocks that would permit the lowest land coverage. Another intriguing aspect of the planning was the preservation or “conservation” of notable neighborhood buildings, highly unusual in the scope of American urban renewal schemes.

The plan of the hospital proper was centered in three distinct groupings. To the far north, surrounded by existing industrial uses and a large railroad staging yard, back-end functions such as the power plant, services, and laundry facilities were clustered. At the center of the campus, near the historic intersection of East 29th Street and South Ellis Avenue, one would find an urbane intersection with buildings built close to their lot lines, anchored primarily by existing hospital structures, which were to be upgraded and maintained.

Cover of Two Cities Exhibition Booklet Cover artwork, designed by Susanne Wasson-Tucker, Bulletin Supplement to the exhibition Two Cities: Planning In North and South America.. The exhibit ran at the Museum of Modern Art from June 24-September 21, 1947, and later was shown at the Art Institute of Chicago. This planning document was reported at the time to be the best-selling exhibition supplement MoMA had yet produced.

This urban streetscape would then move southward along Ellis, eventually leading to the hospital’s new “center of gravity,” as Isaacs described it, established by new groupings of modern hospital buildings, set organically among lushly landscaped and open, park-like grounds. “The process will somewhat resemble the creation of city squares,” Isaacs explained, “each built successively of, and by, its own time.” The notion of the green space south of the campus was one of tranquility, harmony, shelter, and peace, all considered critical aspects of the healing process by the hospital planners.

Rounding out the master plan were groupings of residential units in towers, some built on air rights over the Illinois Central tracks to the east (similar to the original scheme of the Chicago Olympic Village), and some at the western edge of the site, along what is now Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.

Gropius continued to refine his campus planning ideas over the next several years. In 1953, a major iteration was done to study a major grouping of new structures, and Gropius at this time brought in the noted landscape architect Lester Collins, chairman of landscape architecture at Harvard University. The Gropius / Collins master plans closely mirror the final, built form of Michael Reese: including structure placement and program, unifying material usage, landscaping, conservation, and overall concept.

The planning effort at Michael Reese Hospital was considered by many to be at the forefront of progressive city planning practice for its time. The project was lauded by numerous parties for its vision, sociological concern, aesthetic accomplishments, and overall thoroughness. Perhaps the biggest accolade came during Summer, 1947, when the Museum of Modern Art, under the direction of Philip Johnson and Susanne Wasson-Tucker, mounted a major exhibition called “Two Cities: Planning in North and South America.” The exhibition, highly successful and long-running, compared the Michael Reese / Gropius planning in Chicago to a plan for a new city in Brazil by Paul Lester Wiener and  José Luis Sert.