THE ARCHITECTURE, URBANISM, AND ECONOMICS OF CHICAGO'S NORTH MICHIGAN AVENUE, 1830-1930. (VOLUMES I AND II) (PLANNING, FINANCE, ILLINOIS)

This dissertation examines the development of Chicago's North Michigan Avenue from the city's founding in 1830 to the Depression of 1930. North Michigan Avenue is the city's most vital and prestigious commercial boulevard, containing some of its most significant architecture and urban planning features, and exemplifying the business and economic conditions of a great era in Chicago's building history. Developed by many of the city's leading architects, business, industrial, and political figures, North Michigan Avenue is both a microcosm of Chicago history and a model of city planning and development of national importance. The purpose of this study is to reconstruct the conditions which made possible the development of the avenue, to understand its planning and architecture as instruments of economic exchange.;Chapters three through five analyze the commercial and residential architecture built on the avenue during the 1920s, after its widening and the construction of the Michigan Avenue Bridge. Essential to this study is a discussion of property owners, their economic, social, and political backgrounds, and their goals for developing the area. Among the buildings analyzed are the Wrigley Building, Tribune Tower, London Guarantee Building, the Drake Hotel, and the Palmolive Building. The concluding chapter reviews the ideas explored in the dissertation, summing up the essence of the avenue as a major commercial boulevard, and reviewing the roles played by the important architects, developers, and financiers responsible for its character.;The first two chapters contain a brief historical outline of Chicago and the Near North Side and the planning imperative of the early 1900s, the beautification of the city as proposed in the Burnham Plan of 1909. The social, political, and economic factors that contributed to the rapid growth of the area and formed the basis for future development are explored. This section concludes with an analysis of the North Central Business District Association Plan of 1918, which attempted to enforce a high quality of land use and building design in the avenue's development.