When it comes to butt-ugly architecture, it’s hard to beat the Ryugyong Hotel. Situated smack-dab amid the authoritarian dreariness of the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, the so-called Hotel of Doom was begun in 1987 but never finished, and it stands today as an unoccupied 105-story testament to cold, hard commie filth.
And now it has company.
There on the South Side of Chicago, in a place just begging for some aesthetic beauty, stands the Obama Presidential Center, an $850 million (and counting), 240-foot-tall slab of concrete and a hulking monument to the naked narcissism of our nation’s 44th president.
It’s funny — not funny — but while the Trump-deranged legions have been shrieking about Donald Trump’s conversion of the old East Wing of the White House into a magnificent ballroom, they’ve been door-mouse quiet about the grotesque “Obamalisk” that now blights the skies above Chicago’s historic Jackson Park.
“Obama, of all people, should not be building a palace for himself, a fortress in the middle of a public park,” said renowned Chicago architect Grahm Balkany, a self-described progressive. “It’s just contrary to what I thought he believed in.”
As the New York Post’s Chadwick Moore writes, the project, which makes a guy yearn for High East German architecture, spelled trouble from the jump:
While Chicago seems a natural home for Obama’s monument, the former president made the city bid against two other locations — New York and Hawaii — to host his center. The city sweetened the deal with the prized lakefront Jackson Park public land. This occurred under the Chicago mayorship of Rahm Emmanuel [sic], who also served as Obama’s chief of staff at the White House.
Moore adds:
One of many lawsuits filed against the Obama Foundation over construction revealed it was able to acquire the public land from the city via a 99-year-long “land use agreement” as opposed to a lease. It cost the Obamas just $10, according to University of Chicago law professor Richard Epstein, who was involved in a lawsuit against the Obama Foundation over the building.
Ten bucks for 20 acres of prime Chicago real estate? Nice price if you can get it. As for those lawsuits, one was launched earlier this year by a Chicago-based subcontractor who’s claiming — get this — racially discriminatory building practices.
The building, whose sheer height forbids it from being legally called a presidential library, has wildly overrun its cost estimates while bulldozing historic land, clearcutting nearly 1,000 century-old trees, and defiling the non-feudal “public park” vision of one of our nation’s foremost landscape architects, Fredrick Law Olmsted. Adding insult to injury, Obama chose a New York-based architect instead of one from Chicago, a city renowned for its architecture.
Beyond that, a presidential library contains, by definition, its namesake’s presidential papers — its documents and records. But not this structure. Oh, it’ll have a permanent exhibit dedicated to Michelle Obama’s dresses, but nary a sheet of Obama’s papers. Those are stashed somewhere in a Chicago warehouse, and their permanent destination is unknown.
My first thought upon seeing the structure was: What on earth is this guy thinking? Is he trying to be remembered as a self-absorbed socialist in sheep’s clothing? On the other hand, what was I expecting? The building’s weirdness and ugliness are of a piece with Obama’s official presidential portrait — the one where he looks like he’s being gobbled up by the left-field wall at Wrigley Field.
Apparently, even 240 feet wasn’t tall enough for Obama. It tells us all we need to know about him that he encouraged his architects to make the alien structure even taller. In his defense, maybe he had a fever, and maybe he thought the only cure was more cowbell.
For the defense, here’s Obama Foundation spokeswoman Emily Bittner: “Everyone who sees the Obama Presidential Center is blown away by its beauty, scale and the way it will be an economic engine for Chicago and a beacon of hope for the world. We look forward to welcoming all visitors to the 19.3-acre campus next spring, to experience a presidential center that not only honors the Obamas’ legacy but also lifts up the next generation of leaders.”
Why, yes, of course. And if you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan.
Blown away by its beauty? Bittner must not have bothered to check with any humans — especially architecturally inclined humans. “I always see it as a cenotaph, a tombstone, a crusader fortress in brutalist style,” said W.J.T. Mitchell, an art historian at the University of Chicago. “It’s not a beautiful building. Its monumentality violates the spirit of the democratic urban park.”
You’re telling us. But remember: This is the guy who does that Mussolini chin thing and buys up coastal mansions while warning the rest of us about the rise of the oceans.
Now that I think about it, what could be more fitting?
