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Marina City helps tell story of Prentice debate

The Absent Column

(Above) Prentice Women’s Hospital under construction in the mid 1970s, from a new, short documentary. (Click on image to view larger version.)

October 31, 2013 – A short documentary on the Prentice Women’s Hospital preservation debate looks to Marina City for inspiration. The seven-minute documentary, uploaded to Vimeo last week, offers an overview of architect Bertrand Goldberg’s work, paying close attention to Marina City.

The Absent Column features interviews with both sides of the debate, including Chicago architect Gunny Harboe, preservationist Jonathan Fine, and representatives of Northwestern University, the current owner of Prentice.

Prentice is in the process of being demolished to make room for a $370 million medical research facility.

“The iconic Bertrand Goldberg building is Marina City,” says Jack Guthman, an attorney and friend of architect Bertrand Goldberg, in the video. “In everyone’s opinion, his masterpiece. We haven’t landmarked that. We’re not a museum of architectural relics.”

In 2011, Guthman participated in a discussion of Prentice, hosted at Marina City, at which he described Goldberg, who died in 1997, as “a man that should have a place in the sun in Chicago.”

Produced by Nathan Eddy, a graduate of Northwestern, the video was screened earlier this year at the Architecture and Design Film Festival in New York.

 Watch the video (7:44): Vimeo

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