900–910 North Lake Shore

[1] The developer of the buildings, Herbert Greenwald, worked with Mies for roughly a decade on several residential highrise projects that preceded and followed 900-910 including Mies' first skyscraper, the Promontory Apartments, located south in Hyde Park, and the sister buildings to the southeast, 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments.

Walter Gropius, who had appointed Mies to replace him as head of the Bauhaus before immigrating to the United States, again recommended him for the job.

The curtain appears as an uninterrupted sheet of glass that stands apart from the buildings’ structural skeleton as a separate, continuous element.

Having immigrated from Europe due to the Nazi era, Chicago became the center of Mies van der Rohe's life's work, where by far the majority of his buildings were designed and reside.

Oft cited for his “rational” approach to building design, Mies’ architectural philosophy began with articulating a vision, then determining how to make it feasible from an engineering standpoint.

Certainly, his discovery–and the abundance of–steel in Chicago defined his expression of modernism from then on [6] The Verdi marble in the lobby at 900/910 gives the building an aura of lasting elegance.

It is thought that the particular climate of the United States at which Mies arrived provided the ideal fertile ground for him to develop his ideas.

While the 900/910 building design was distinctly Miesian, Fujikawa can be credited for managing the project and meticulously overseeing details in its execution so that it accomplished its original vision.

SOM took over the IIT commission when Mies retired and readily imitated the aesthetic of his highrise building designs.

He did reassemble some of his former colleagues from the Bauhaus by securing them faculty positions at IIT, including Walter Peterhans, Ludwig Hilberseimer, and John Barney Rodgers.

[11] At the same time Mies came to Chicago so did another former leader of the Bauhaus and favorite of Gropius, László Moholy-Nagy, to open an eclectic and multidisciplinary design school.

Early drawings of the buildings were labeled the “Esplanade Apartments” and they were marketed as such in later years with the name appearing in collateral and on signage.

The sundeck has served multiple purposes over the decades since 900/910 were built, offering residents a meeting place for evening cocktails and views of the Navy Pier fireworks.

From the southside of Chicago, Hunt broke ground as an African-American sculptor creating public works, many of which can be found in the permanent collections of the top museums across the United States.

In 2019, Israeli artist Assaf Evron, who resides in Chicago, created Collage for the Esplanade Apartments public art piece, displayed in thirty of the lower units facing Lake Shore Drive.

The committee goes to painstaking lengths to ensure that any updates or changes to the historic buildings are in keeping with Mies’ original intention.

Occasionally custom work is required to maintain the buildings’ aesthetic, such as the die cut numbers in the elevator.