The Marquette Building

The Marquette building, designed by Holabird and Roche in 1895, is one of those great, elegant, masculine, big-windowed Chicago office buildings -- and no expense was spared in its construction -- including the services of the young sculptor,Herman Atkins MacNeil (1866-1947), fresh back from Paris and ready to tackle a real challenge: how to tell an elaborate story - and still express the simple strength of this building's facade.




.. the success of which I think is shown in the above detail -- where the characters in a narrative also serve as architectural elements.




I'm not quite sure what's happening here -- and I guess the fun would gone if I ever looked it up.




Am I looking at N.C. Wyeth's illustrations for "Last of the Mohicans" -- or am I entering an office building ? This is the puzzle that I loved to ponder ...



back when I actually did work in this office building -- my first job when I came to Chicago -- as an office-temp in the publications division of a brokerage house.




He went on to specialize in Indians (with pieces now in the Met and the AIC) but I don't know that MacNeil ever got any better -- these pieces, despite their frenzied detail -- really do complement the building. (I'm guessing that the architects were watching him closely)- and I like the idea of all these tall, skinny, half-naked, wild anarchists - with big hooked noses - forever challenging that plump, proper priest.