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Millennium Park Without the Pritzker Pavilion? It Almost Happened

By DNAinfo Staff | November 2, 2015 11:31am | Updated on November 2, 2015 2:28pm
 The Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park under construction.
The Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park under construction.
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Chicago Public Library

DOWNTOWN— A new biography of architect Frank Gehry, who designed Millennium Park's ribbon-like music pavilion, says he first rejected the offer because he thought the deadlines were too tight.

The book, "Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry," recalls how the early design for the now-signature park was a rather traditional Beaux arts approach "in deference to [the Mayor Richard M. Daley's] professed flower and planter beds."

Author Paul Goldberger writes that local philanthropist and architecture activist Cindy Pritzker "was not impressed" and that "a park with gaslights and ornamental ironworks was not the way to commemorate the arrival of the 21st Century."

"I didn't understand what millennium they were talking about. I thought it was terrible," Pritzker told Goldberger. She told city officials "if you build with someone like Frank Gehry, you wouldn't need anything else."

Pritzker, an admirer of Gehry, thought the project had a better chance if she let Daley, city officials and planning committee members invite the architect directly —  "she wanted the city to be invested in the project," Goldberg writes.

A delegation went to Los Angeles to talk to Gehry but he declined the job offer, saying there wasn't enough time (at that point, two years) to get the work done for the start of the millennium.

 Photos from the construction of the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park.
Pritzker Pavilion construction
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Said Pritzker: "So one of them said, 'That's too bad, because we know who will be very disappointed in you. He said, 'Who's that?' They said, 'Cindy.' He said, 'I'll do it.' "

See the making of Cloudgate, aka the Bean.

A number of versions of the pavilion, named for Cindy's husband Jay Pritzker, were created, including one described as "simpler and heavier" with a more exposed structure that Gehry thought related to Chicago.

"It was a big shoulders thing and it was sort of Louis Sullivan or Frank Lloyd Wright. He said to me, 'You know, this is very Chicago.' And I said, 'I know, but I wanted it to be very Frank.'"

The 24-acre park opened in 2004, four years behind schedule, at a cost of $490 million. It attracts about 5 million people annually.

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