These are heady days for Chicago’s crane enthusiasts. Yellow and red lattices are swinging around the city’s airspace like mosquitoes at a northwoods cookout. And one of those cranes is helping build Loyola University’s Quinlan School of Business at 2 East Pearson Street.
Chicago Architecture Blog photographer Daniel Schell swung by recently and took these pictures of the progress. The building, designed by friends-of-the-blog SCB, is rising steadily, and has reached about the halfway point in its $40 million climb to ten stories. But at the same time, it is absolutely dwarfed by its partner residential tower next door at 1 East Chestnut Street.
The school is named after McDonald’s C.E.O. Michael Quinlan who ponied up the cash for the building. It replaces a couple of run-down one-story buildings that were being used as the university’s printing office. Even though this is a university classroom building, it will still engage the neighborhood, meaning there will be ground floor retail space. Inside, the classrooms and professors’ offices are arranged in “vertical neighborhoods.” And a wide staircase bunged through the middle of the building (called a “Social Stair”) is intended to foster the serendipitous meetings that often are the catalysts of progress in the business world. It’s expected to open in August of next year.
