History of the Chicago Civic Opera Building and Empire State Building

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Architecture History Research Paper: Chicago Civic Opera Building and Empire State Building
The most notable aspect of life is the ability to be unique because being unique is beauty. The most prominent buildings in the world have unique designs that make them outstanding. The Chicago Civic Opera Building was built between 1927 and 1929 by Graham, Anderson, Probst & White (Stone 77). The building, which is the second-largest auditorium in North America, is located at 20 North Wacker Drive in Chicago. Its main performance space is named Ardis Krainik and has a capacity of 3563. Civic Opera Building is a part of a more massive elaborate tower of 45-story office spaces and two, twenty-two-story wings called the Civic Opera Building. The complex was officially opened on 4 November 1929 and manifests the details of art Deco. Chicago Civic Opera Building features details of Art Deco, whose buildings are made of steel and reinforced concrete. In the U.S, the construction style is prominent with office spaces, theatres, and railroad stations. The building sits as a massive chair within the larger 85 story building. It was renovated in 1993, where chairs were repainted, and carpets were replaced. The whole process lasted for three years until 1996. The Empire State Building shares striking similarities and differences from the Civic Opera Building as shown in Fig 1(a) and (b) below. With 102 stories and standing 1,250 feet tall, the Empire State Building is located in Manhattan at 350 Firth Avenue, which is on the west side of the avenue between the 23rd and 24th Streets (Tauranac 15). The New York City building is a steel-framed skyscraper that was completed on May 1, 1931, and by 1971, it was the tallest building in the world. Today, the building remains to be one of the most famous and distinctive buildings in the country as well as one of the best representations of Modern Art Deco (Yousuf). The two buildings have unique features worth exploring. This essay, therefore, compares and contrasts Empire State Building and Chicago Civic Opera Building.
Fig 1 (a) The Empire State Building (Archello)
Fig 1 (b) Civic Opera House (Ori)
The ground floor in the Civic Opera House has strong oval pillars that seem to support the building's foundation from the first floor. These pillars are available at the edges of the main entrance into the Civic Opera House. In the Empire State Building, the pillars stand as part of the main walls of the building. Another additional feature at the entrance is how they are designed. The Civic Opera House has a semicircular top of the entrance. The protruding extension has images of people seated and facing away from each other. In their middle lies a surrounding object that separates them as shown in Fig 2 (a) and (b) below. This is different from the Empire State Building feature, which has a straight door that is not protruding like the one for Civic Opera House. The interior of the Empire State Building is also unique. It has roughly six thousand five hundred windows with seventy-three elevators. All the utilities are centrally located at the central shaft, which is surrounded by the main corridor on all sides from the 6th to the 86th floor. Each of the floors has 210 structural columns that provide stability. The disadvantage of the columns is that they limit the space available. On the other hand, the interior of the Civic Opera House has a huge overhead space owing to its function as an opera house. The room is over 40 feet high (Sabine). The walls are decorated with lime and gold leaves. The entrance door to the hall is made of bronze and is huge. Some stairs also lead to the mezzanine foyer, where 31 boxes are stored. Above the boxes are two more balconies containing 800 seats each. This makes the Civic Opera House's total capacity to 3563 seats ("Lyric Opera House History | Lyric Opera of Chicago"). While Civic Opera House portrays differences from the Empire State Building, the two buildings share some similarities.
Fig 2 (a) Entrance to Chicago Civic Opera House (Tripadvisor)
Fig 2 (b) Cornered-shaped entrance of the Empire State Building (Alamy)
The two buildings' exterior designs are similar since they are built using the same style of Art Deco. The designs are reinforced with a series of setbacks that make the building tapper out. The Empire State Building becomes smaller as it progresses from the 81st floor as shown in Fig 3 below. Similarly, the size of the Civic Opera House reduces as it goes higher due to the setbacks. However, that kind of design facilitates illumination of the interior of the skyscrapers through natural sunlight. The green architecture of the Empire State Building has also significantly reduced the building’s energy usage and there has been a reduction in emissions by almost 40 percent and thus increasing its efficiency. The renovations at the Empire State Building were completed in 2020 after taking over 10 years (Yousef). The design of using setbacks has been a norm for a long time, and most buildings use it; therefore, it does not make it a unique feature. Above the fifth avenue, entrance hangs a pair of sculpted concrete eagles, a feature that is missing in the Civic Opera House ("Ly...