MarinaCity
#Chicago #CornCobs#MarinaCity #Chicago #CornCobs
In 1962, on the north bank of the Chicago River, workers poured concrete contaminated with chloride ions into the structural columns of what would become the tallest concrete building in the world. The building was Marina City. The architect was Bertrand Goldberg. The result by completion in 1964 was two cylindrical towers 65 stories each, 587 feet tall, standing at 300 North State Street in downtown Chicago. The world called them the corn cobs. Photographers called them the most photographed apartment buildings in America. Wilco put them on the cover of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The American Institute of Architects called them a masterpiece. And in 1989, the engineers at Wiss Janney Elstner Associates climbed the facade with diamond-tipped core drills and pulled out samples that proved the entire skin of both towers had been corroding from the inside out since the day it was poured. The Modac coating went on in 1977. 1.7 million dollars in facade repairs went on in the early 1990s. More than 1 million dollars in balcony concrete repairs went on between 2009 and 2010. 2.1 million dollars in railing replacements went on in 2016. 1,920 handrail posts, 1,300 balusters, 1,020 bottom rails, every one of them flagged by city engineers. Residents of an iconic Chicago landmark were barred from their own balconies for 8 weeks, 12 weeks, 16 weeks. The corn cobs have been tearing themselves apart on a documented schedule for six decades. This is the story of how Bertrand Goldberg, the man who promised a vertical city of the future, designed a building that cannot be cured, only patched, recoated, and patched again.
Marina City at 300 North State Street, Chicago — two reinforced concrete cylindrical towers, 65 stories each, 587 feet tall, completed in 1964 as the tallest concrete structures and the tallest apartment buildings on Earth at the same time. Designed by Chicago architect Bertrand Goldberg, a former student of Mies van der Rohe at the Bauhaus who rejected the rectilinear glass-and-steel orthodoxy of mid-century modernism. Each tower contains a spiral parking ramp on floors 1 through 19 holding roughly 896 cars, with 450 apartments on floors 20 through 60. There are 16 pie-shaped wedge units on each floor, with every wedge ending in an open semicircular balcony cantilevered over the Chicago River. Total balcony count across both towers — 1,248. In 1989, the Marina Towers Condominium Association hired Wiss Janney Elstner Associates, one of the most respected structural engineering firms in the United States, to investigate why the towers were deteriorating only 25 years after completion. The firm pulled core samples with diamond-tipped drills and returned with two findings. The concrete jacket protecting the embedded steel reinforcement was too thin in critical zones — modern standards call for 1.5 to 2 inches of cover over exterior rebar, Goldberg's 1959 specification fell short in places that mattered.
🔴 IN THIS VIDEO
How architect Bertrand Goldberg designed the tallest concrete buildings on Earth and embedded a disease into the columns at construction
Why the 1989 Wiss Janney Elstner report identified two fatal findings that defined every repair dollar spent since
How chloride ions destroy reinforced concrete from the inside out and why the chemistry cannot be reversed
The 1,248 pie-shaped balconies cantilevered over the Chicago River and why every one of them is a water trap
Why Chicago's 50 to 70 freeze-thaw cycles per winter have been compounding the damage for 60 years
The 1977 Modac coating that changed the towers from gray to tan as the first defensive measure
The 1992 Chicago Tribune coverage and the bankruptcy judge who said Marina City would fall into the river
The 2015 city code violation that put yellow caution tape across one of America's most photographed landmarks
Why the 2016 landmark designation arrived the same week residents lost access to their own balconies
How the Marina Towers Condominium Association became the longest-running facade repair project in American skyscraper history
Why every condo owner who has bought a unit since 1977 has inherited the original construction mistake
The Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album cover and what residents actually see when they step outside
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