Tuesday Trivia: 10 Things You Probably Don’t Know About Marina City
Yesterday we published a review of the new book Marina City: Bertrand Goldberg’s Urban Vision. Today, we present
Ten Things You Probably Don’t Know About Marina City
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You’ve heard of the retail and office complex at “Block 37” in the Loop. Well, Marina City is on “Block One” of the City of Chicago plan.
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The land Marina city sits on was formerly a rail yard.
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Marina City was originally called Labor Center.
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The original plan for Marina City called for two 40-story towers, and a third 10-story tower.
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Marina City once had its own ice skating rink and supermarket.
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Marina City’s architect, Bertrand Goldberg, first experimented with curved concrete in the design he made for the city of Nashville’s sewage treatment plant.
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Marina City was built for the Chicago janitors’ union.
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Ten years before Marina City became a reality, its architect designed a smaller, but very similar, set of twin towers for a South Side motel that was never built.
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The boatyard underneath the Marina City complex was once known as Phillips Pier 66, after the oil company.
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What is now the House of Blues was called the Field Television Center at the time it opened, because WFLD Television had its studios there.