Marshal Fields [from GapersBlock.com]
GapersBlock directed me toward this post on the Architecture Chcago blog by Lynn Becker about the loss of Fields. It is very well-written. I have pasted some of the article below. This gets at much of what I do not like about the strip mall, Wal-Mart America. There is very little local culture left in America. We have sold uniquiness in the name of price. Nothing is local anymore. Creativity, thought, detail, these are the things that make life an adventure. Anyway, we are sad at the loss of Fields because now, State Street will just have another Macy's on it. Who cares?
...In its current manic form, market economics is relentlessly hostile to any authentic sense of "place." Uniqueness is just a way station to an inevitable ubiquity. If someone in Denver or Mobile comes up with a wildly successful new concept for a store or restaurant, it's almost always just a matter of time until they cash in for the big payoff - franchising, a national rollout - where what made the concept special is homogenized and standardized in order to make it replicable to everywhere U.S.A... Someone like Marshall Field or John Wanamaker - or even a Bill Gates or Steve Jobs - all became fabulously rich as a side effect of devoting their lives to creating something really new and unique. The approach of a number-cruncher like Lundgren (CEO of Federated Department Stores) is much more parasitical. It's less about creating something great than squeezing out value from an existing asset without ever really doing anything to replenish it. Today, Federated is a Department Store chain, but you get the sense that if a McKinsey consultant told Lundgren there was more profit to be had rolling drunks in the alley, the company's focus might change overnight... In Chicago, one thing needs to be done quickly. Amazing as it may seem, the Field's State Street Store, built in stages and designed by Daniel Burnham, is not an official landmark, although the designation process, for which Federated has indicated support, is well under way. It's essential that the process be expedited, in order to protect the building's stunning first floor, atriums and great Tiffany dome for the time, probably not too far off, when Federated radically reduces the space it devotes to retail, and begins lobbying for a a massive retrofit of interior spaces for alternative uses. In the end, if the alternative is to make things available more cheaply and efficiently, unique local character may seem an anachronistic luxury, but its loss is an assault on America's future. Creativity comes, not out of uniformity and constricted choice, but out of the range of possibility that only variety can provide. By developing mass production and insisting on paying his employees a superior wage, Henry Ford helped invent modern America. When he achieved dominance, he stopped evolving - he was a little bit too proud in saying that you could get a Ford in any color you wanted, as long as it was black - and his company pitched into a deep decline...
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