Does the demolition of the Prentice Women’s Hospital mark a Penn Station Moment for the preservation of Modernism?

Bertrand Goldberg’s Prentice Women’s Hospital (1975) in Chicago met the  wrecking ball on October 11, after a lengthy and bizarre process, involving landmark status approved and revoked, a mayoral op-ed, and little kids in preservation t-shirts. They were born at Prentice, and in the hospital’s destruction, they may have learned their first political  lesson. It was a sad day for Modernism, and a sad day for common sense: Northwestern University’s insistence that they needed that site and no
other for a new biomedical lab never held up to scrutiny. It would be nice to think that Prentice would be the last structurally daring, imaginatively conceived concrete building clawed to rubble, but it probably won’t be. Something more beautiful has got to go.

The demolition of Prentice hospital is not Brutalism’s—or even Modernism’s—Penn Station Moment, as architectural historian Michael R. Allen suggests in Next City. Unfortunately, it is going to take the sacrifice of another postwar landmark to create the kind of broad-based, politically connected, media-savvy preservation movement to support Modernism each time it is threatened. The modern preservation movement has had its victories. M. Paul Friedberg’s Peavey Plaza (1975) in Minneapolis
was saved from “revitalization” in October, after the Preservation Alliance of Minnesota and the Cultural Landscape Foundation settled a lawsuit filed with the City of Minneapolis. Paul Rudolph’s Orange County Government Center (1967) is still with us, but its future remains in doubt. Modern preservation is still niche.

Maybe someone needs to start ModPAC.