Chicago is a two-newspaper town: the Tribune and the Sun-Times. They are as different on many issues as north side and south side, republican and democrat and Siskel and Ebert.

The issue of Soldier Field is no exception: The Tribune's Blair Kamin was positive at first remarking that the benefits of more green space "seem[ed] to outweigh" the negatives. He asked that the city take a second look at the new grandstand, which towers over the original building's classical colonnade. They didn't. Kamin then turned into a vocal critic accusing the city and the Bears of sacking one of the nation's "cultural treasures." He was accused by the architect of record, Dirk Lohan, of usurping his role as critic by becoming an activist in favor of its preservation. Whereas the Sun-Times's Lee Bey was on board early stating in a November 2000 column that it "holds the promise of being a good thing. The old soldier by the lake, with its spalling concrete, tight confines and bad sightlines, is as fit for modern football as is a leather helmet." He went on to say "if an aging Soldier Field is to survive, this is likely the only way to do it." Lee Bey then went on to join Mayor Daley's administration as front man for the Soldier Field expansion.

How could two intelligent, open-minded critics end up at opposite poles?

The $606 million dollar refurbishment of Soldier Field (the Tribune recently quoted the price at $632 million and the Reader $636 million) has recently opened and many of us are intrigued. Unlike the demolition of Comiskey Park and its historic neighborhood fabric, this project saves the building by inserting a bowl with seats, boxes and services into the War Memorial's shell. The idea of building atop an old stadium has precedent in the numerous Roman villages created atop old stadia. The curved and canted massing is very provocative and the choice of materials, the smoky glass and colored glass differs amiably from the landmark's white terracotta. It is a composition of two very contrasting objects – the stadium is static, stone and massive. The addition is in motion, its steel and glass cantilevers appear ready to spin like a top and take off. Unfortunately, the bowl hangs over the old west colonnade like a dirigible. But is it lighter than air or a lead zeppelin? The colonnade on the east side is unmolested by the grandstand and therefore the view from the lake is better than that from Lake Shore Drive on the west. The surrounding parkland is improved with the introduction of underground parking and a park on top. So it's mixed bag. The massing is either daring or it's monstrous. A lot depends on how the finishes turn out. Is the mass transparent and reflective? Or is it just massive? We’ll have to see this fall.

Second, missing in all of the discussion has been any talk of what this form in motion will look like from the inside? I imagine that the main interior hall will be like the inside of a snail. The circulation spine wraps and unfolds as you travel through it. This could be visually interesting. I speculate the stadium will be much like the Harold Washington Library. There are some interesting pieces and interior spaces but overall, it doesn't hang together. But we'll wait and see...

The two conventional solutions for a new Chicago Bears Stadium would have been to build a new stadium elsewhere and for Soldier Field to become a building without much purpose. Who would pay to upkeep a War Memorial? It's sad but no one seems willing to do this. The other was to tear down the old stadium and build a new one. The architect Dirk Lohan suggested a third option: to insert the seats, corporate boxes and new services into the old colonnade. This was the riskiest. The new stands have better sight lines and fans are closer to the field.(The actual designer was Carlos Zapata of Wood + Zapata Architects in Boston. Zapata's work is reminiscent of Zaha Hadid's in its motion, shard-like forms and transparency. Lohan rarely designs buildings himself but farms them out to individuals in his office and plays the role of elder statesman. So the fact that someone else designed the building is consistent with Lohan's standard practice with the exception that they were not in his direct employ.) It was also the most creative. We have already seen the results of a poorly implemented second option -- Comiskey Park. It is a drab, barren park that sits in a sea of parking lots. The Sox cannot even fill it when they're in first place. The Sox owner tore down an historic park and destroyed the remaining neighborhood fabric because of his need to "modernize" and make more money. The new Soldier Field, when looked at in this light, is much more successful. The new refurb eliminated the sea of parking spaces and added much new green space to Chicago's front yard. It preserved the historic colonnade but only from the outside. From the inside, the colonnade is gone. Are the cantilevers exciting enough to make up for it? Do the better sight lines, a louder environment and a closer proximity to the field create for better football spectating? We'll have to see. But it's a modern stadium that we're talking about, not a war memorial.

Kamin rejects that and Bey embraces it. One can argue that buildings change. And the way that people view them changes over time as well. Think of the Toll Houses or Les Barriéres of Claude Nicolas Ledoux. They were built by Louis XVI to provide control and to collect tariffs at the gates of Paris. They were associated with the corrupt government and during the revolution angry citizens burned many to the ground. One hundred years later one of them is reputedly (see Brendan Gill's "Many Masks") the source of F. L. Wright's inspiration for the massing of the Charnley House on Astor Street. And today several of Les Barriéres are national monuments and were restored by the State and one houses a small museum dedicated to the architecture of Ledoux. They are considered architectural gems, not symbols of an oppressive government.

So it's interesting. Both critics came to the table with open minds, studied the situation, took respectable critical positions and then took these positions to extremes. Imagine if Roger Ebert forsook "Sneak Previews" for Hollywood so he could push a summer blockbuster, a movie that Gene Siskel didn't merely critically dismiss but actively campaigned against. Reality is stranger than fiction. Blair Kamin decided that Soldier Field was foremost a War Memorial and vociferously opposes the new stadium as sacrilege. He has become a crusader against it and the Stadium's architect Dirk Lohan has accused him of taking his criticism too far and becoming an activist. Lee Bay, on the other hand, decided that the War Memorial is a football stadium and joined the Mayor's staff leaving the Sun-Times without an architecture critic. (The Sun-Times chose NOT to replace him.) He went equally far in the opposite direction. He issued a very curious press release stating that the city would seek renewal of the stadium's National Landmark Status. One outcome is clear: Architectural criticism in Chicago has lost one of its major voices and we hope to see the vacuum filled.

What do you think?