Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Arts Club interior was a work of art as distinguished as the works in the Club's art collections. It was an exceptionally important work in Mies's entire career, and was unique in being the only interior he designed in his American career for a building not also of his design. Purpose designed for the Arts Club, it benefited from Mies's studies of a museum for a small city throughout the forties, where he carefully studied the relation between modern art and its environment. Another project which informed the Arts Club was that for the Resor House in Wyoming. There he explored the relation of displaying art in a dwelling. In the Arts Club, Mies Explored how best to exhibit art in the intermediate scale of a club - larger than domestic, smaller than institutional. Mies gave great care and attention to this project. Unlike interiors he had done in Germany, often for exhibitions, where he was responsible for designing or selecting every element, in Chicago he had to incorporate the club's existing furnishings along with its collection.

Inserted on the second floor of a new, straightforward commercial building, Mies was able to achieve a relatively high ceiling for the rooms of the club. The major elements were the entrance stair of three flights which led from the street to the second floor club rooms: the gallery, at the top of the stairs; the lounge, ahead as one finished the last flight of the stair; and the dining room, behind one as one completed the ascent. These three rooms ran along the same long north wall of the building. The gallery and dining room were substantially lit by natural light. The lounge included a slightly raised but relatively deep stage at one end. Offices, kitchen and other support spaces were at the back of the gallery and the dining room.

Mies carefully set the height of the second floor ceiling for two related reasons - the proportions of the linked spaces of the club, and the volume of light to be admitted by the window wall in the dining room. He was also very concerned to have a private street entrance for the club, a purpose nobly achieved by the justly famous staircase. Obviously, the original developers of the building were willing to honor Mies's requirements because they wished to have the prestige afforded by having the Arts Club as their tenant.

Occupying the space of a typical shop front, the street level entrance hall and its stair leading to the second floor club rooms, were hardly noticed by most passersby on busy Ontario Street, one block from bustling Michigan Avenue. However, a glance through the curtains on either side of the centered door provided a view of an ethereal vision of the white stair floating between the first and second floors. More intriguing than inviting, the stair seen from the street was principally the effect of the white painted steel stringers and square sectioned rails of the case, moving back and forth in precise diagonals in three flights. The two intermediate landings provided a place of rest, but more important a view back through the hall, through the glass wall of the entrance, to the street. The floor and walls of the hall were covered in travertine, conveying a sense of both permanence and reticence.

The north facing, floor to ceiling windows, whose drapes need not be drawn at lunch time, provided subtle and enhancing light. Necessarily a long narrow space to place the greatest number of diners near the window, the procession to the tables was an opportunity to greet one's colleagues interested in the club's purposes. Because of the subtle and beautiful ambience created by Mies's development of the spaces of the Arts Club, members and guests discovered the nobility of simple material used beautifully, rather than valuing it for the cost of the materials.

It is indeed unfortunate that this unique work, the home of the Arts Club for more than forty years, has ceased to serve as a memorial to those with the vision to ask Mies for the design and as a monument to its architect and the quality of his design.

This discussion of the qualities of Mies's design is occasioned by the recent destruction of the building in which the club was located, along with the three other buildings on its block for a redevelopment as a commercial retail and entertainment structure. Why, one might reasonably ask, is a new development about to occur which is unable to preserve the club or the other buildings in the block? The new building will have less square feet than the existing buildings. Could it be, as one member of the city's landmark commission observed, that there is no reason to preserve the club because it is not of very high design quality? What caused the Arts Club to arrive at a point where a last minute protest campaign was deemed the only possible means to achieve the preservation of the club?

The answers to these and related questions begin by noting that a series of failures contributed to the final result. At the core of the problem, one must at least acknowledge as a possibility that a significant number of members of the Arts Club had no desire to see the space preserved. The club has recently acquired a building site near the former club space, and in a limited competition has asked Chicago architect John Vinci, best known for his zeal for preservation and skill in restoration, to design the new facility.

The block on which the Arts Club was located - Michigan, Ontario, Wabash and Ohio - had been assembled by the John Buck Company, a leading Chicago developer, usually associated with projects in which qualities of design are valued. His architect for this project is Beyer, Blinder, Belle, of New York, a firm well regarded for its work in historic preservation, and the current firm of the year of the American Institute of Architects. The assembly process began several years ago, and Buck and Club representatives agreed that there was plenty of time for an orderly move to take place. The club early accepted the likelihood that it would be impossible to stay, and instead began looking for another site, preferably in a new building, in which it was expected it would be possible to insert Mies's space unaltered. At the core of these actions was an assumption that the resolution of the issue was a private matter. Despite the fact that the club has had a longstanding program of lectures, recitals and exhibitions which were open to the public, it saw itself, and was so viewed, as a private association.

Such a private attitude, coupled with the vague assumption that the club could be moved, led members of the club, both those who later became public advocates for its preservation and those who did not require the preservation of the space, to ignore the opportunity to have the space designated by the Commission on Chicago Landmarks under the provisions of the city's landmark's ordinance. For its part, the commission and its staff, always having to choose among many worthy and competing buildings or districts to consider for designation, decided that by keeping abreast of the developments regarding the Arts Club, they had no further responsibility. It seems to ask too much of a public agency which has been kept out of the decision making loop, to expect it to anticipate the wrongheadedness and failure of the directly involved parties and choose to intervene. However, since the removal of the club space was from the outset part of the consideration, the commission could reasonably have been expected to recognize the possibility of the importance of the space. Another issue was whether the commission could designate an interior alone (rather than as part of a building.) If it determined that designation was possible, the commission would need to specify what it termed the critical features of the design. Had this been done, the club could have been aware of its responsibility if it chose to move the interior.

Only at the end was there an effort, mounted by some members of the club and the wider interested public, to designate the interior in a public process under the rules of the landmark commission. However, by this time, the developer had moved so far on his project that it was easy for most commission members to convince themselves that the designation process was being initiated at such a late date that an undue burden would be placed on the owners and developers if designation were granted. Using this logic, the public agencies and developer were let off the hook by being able to point to the inaction of the club as the primary reason for the decision not to designate.

The real losers are those for whom all involved have a distinct responsibility - posterity. The Arts Club is a key work of the most important architect to practice in Chicago in this half of the century. His international importance is likewise great. Work by such figures is regularly given great respect by those responsible for preservation of such work. A seminal, modestly scaled work by an important figure in architectural history has been lost through inadvertence and oversight at least as much as through the demands of development. Rather than finding this to be a simple morality play in which good and evil squared off, the loss of the Arts club space by Mies van der Rohe seems more likely to result from the narrow viewpoints of most of the participants.

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