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Modernism On Trial: An Analysis Of Historic Preservation Debates In Chicago, Stephen M. Mitchell

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores preservation issues regarding modernist architecture in Chicago. As urban and public history research, the project examines the new questions brought to the forefront by recent controversies over the preservation of modernist architecture. Modernism, and an "all concrete" variant known as "Brutalism," popular in the mid-twentieth century, aimed to remove ornament and historical references common in neoclassical, neo-Gothic, Beaux Arts, and Art Deco architecture and replace them with minimal, clean, glass-and-steel buildings. Modernists who, on principle, did not believe in preservation of past forms are now in the unlikely position of making such an argument for their own …