Planning begins It is September 14, 1959. An unmanned Russian spacecraft, Luna 2, has become the first man-made object to make contact with the moon. In three days, the United States will attempt to launch a navigation satellite but it will fail to reach orbit. In Chicago, Building Service Employees International Union president William McFetridge announces to local news media plans for a $25 million skyscraper apartment and commercial project. According to a front-page article the next day in the Chicago Daily Tribune, under the headline “Plan River Site Skyscraper,” Marina City will be “a pilot project in a national program of using union reserve funds to help insure the future of the downtown areas of major cities.”

McFetridge says his union is interested in similar projects in New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Cleveland, Denver, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

Monthly rents for the “air-conditioned apartments” will be $125 for an efficiency, $165 for a one-bedroom, and $210 for a two-bedroom. Adjusted for inflation, that would be $909 for an efficiency in 2009, $1,200 for a one-bedroom, and $1,528 for a two-bedroom apartment.

Civic leaders praised the project. John W. Baird, president of the Metropolitan Housing and Planning Council, was “glad to see the trade unions investing their funds in urban renewal housing.”

When planning began earlier in 1959, the first drawings of the project included two 40-story rectangular buildings – but the “footprint,” or required surface space, would have overwhelmed the site. Goldberg submitted a second design in which the towers were 65 stories and round. Wind tunnel tests at Illinois Institute of Technology concluded the new shape was more efficient, at least more wind-resistant. (Left) 1959 illustration by Bertrand Goldberg Associates shows two 40-story rectilinear apartment buildings, ten-story office building, and “boat parking garage” originally designed to house 1,000 boats.

The idea of round buildings may have come from an earlier, rejected design for Executive House (now Hotel 71), a hotel built in the north Loop in 1960. Or it may have come from Chinese-American architect I. M. Pei, who in 1949 designed “The Helix,” a 22-story cylindrical apartment building for New York developer William Zeckendorf.

Inside the core were elevators and stairways, surrounded by a circular corridor, then a ring of bathrooms and kitchens, followed by living quarters and balconies. The Helix was never built. A version of it was proposed in the mid-1950s for lower Manhattan, but that was not built, either.

Goldberg did design a cylindrical motel in 1957 that was not built. The idea may have endured and found its way into the design of Marina City two years later.

Geoffrey Goldberg, the architect’s son and himself an architect, has his own theory. In 1952, his father completed work on a design for a railroad car. Because of a steel shortage, the challenge was to design a rail car that used steel more efficiently. According to Geoffrey’s own research into his father’s work, Goldberg created a “monolithic tube-like structure” made of layers of strong plywood. The plywood was then laminated under heat with special plastics. The “Unicel Prefab Freight Car” was unveiled with much fanfare at Merchandise Mart in Chicago and The Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York. (Left) Exterior of a Unicel freight car. Inside was a tube constructed of specially-laminated plywood.

“I believe the boxcar done in the early 1950s was for my father the real structural breakthrough. It is a tube structure. And put that together with the use of curved concrete in a later project – work in the mid-50s for a sewage plant in Nashville – and it’s not too far to get to a vertical tube, the concrete core, at the heart of the towers at Marina City.”

The unusual shape was not the only problem. The Federal Housing Administration initially turned down the loan request because, according to Goldberg, single adults or couples living downtown did not meet their standard of a “family.” Goldberg went to Washington, D.C., personally – more than once – to lobby for Marina City and get the FHA to broaden its interpretation.

Furthermore, the mixed use (commercial and residential) violated zoning regulations. Goldberg worked with Planning Commissioner Ira Bach, who supported the project and got the necessary approvals.

Located on a 3.1 acre site between State and Dearborn streets, 300 feet along the river by 537 feet to the north, Marina City consists of five buildings... A two-story 300,000 square foot commercial platform, built over a marina, that covers three acres. Two 65-story towers, each containing 18 floors of parking for 450 vehicles, a floor with laundry, storage, fitness, and meeting rooms, 32 floors of one-bedroom and efficiency apartments, eight floors of one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments, a roof deck, and a mechanical penthouse. In each tower are 336 efficiency apartments, 67 one-bedroom apartments, and 45 two-bedroom apartments. A 16-story 280,000 square foot office block on the north edge that includes a 13-story hotel. A saddle-shaped 100,000 square foot theatre building now occupied by House of Blues Chicago.