Five more Pritzker Prize winners have joined architects from all over the world urging Mayor Rahm Emanuel to save Bertrand Goldberg’s Prentice Hospital from Northwestern University’s wrecking ball.
Tadao Ando, Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, Eduardo Souto de Moura, and Robert Venturi have added their names to the dozens of signatories on a letter calling for the building’s preservation.
And on Wednesday, the Save Prentice coalition (whose members include Landmarks Illinois, Preservation Chicago, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and the American Institute of Architects) asked the Commission on Chicago Landmarks to put Prentice, which does not have protective landmark designation, on the agenda for its September 6 meeting.
Meanwhile, NU, which wants to build on that site, continues to float the idea that the city must make a choice between saving Prentice and getting a new research center, as if the center couldn’t be built on another piece of land, like the huge vacant lot right across the street owned by its sister institution, Northwestern Memorial Hospital. The Tribune’s John Kass took that bait today.