“If one is lucky enough to visit an apartment there, the experience is like walking into a glass house suspended in air or on a promontory over the lake…[T]hose who live, work and teach in his buildings continue to feel the special aura of the environments and themselves as participants in the original experience. They all believe that the order his architecture imposed was totally liberating.”
Paula Deitz, New York Times, June 8, 1986
The people who live at 860|880 Lake Shore Drive are just as interesting and remarkable as the buildings. Get to know some of them through these brief stories.
Treasured family history and the lure of the city drew Alexander Horn to Chicago.
Don and Jane Hunt are like the couple in the song, “I Remember It Well” (We met at nine /We met at eight./ I was on time. / No, you were late)….
John Ronan: Essay in Steel and Glass
John Ronan always wanted to be an architect. Even as a kid he was drawing house plans and building structures with Legos. He’s still drawing…As John Ronan notes, the horizon line in the 860|880 apartments is almost exactly halfway between floor and ceiling taking on the quality of a Mark Rothko painting.
Photograph by Barbara Ray, used with permission.