the good house: prestine marina city condo (Patreon)

Here's one for the Wilco fans and mid-century modern lovers.

So, I've got condo fever again (with no down payment, of course) and have been checking the listings day and night with envy that would put me very deep in Dante's Inferno. Lo and behold, I discovered an absolutely brilliant condo, a tiny studio, in Bertrand Goldberg's famous Marina City.

Built in 1962, and made famous by Wilco, who used the building as their cover art for Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Marina City is one of the great icons of Chicago architecture, and, along with its sister development River City, a remarkable example of Late Modern architecture.

One of the blessings of Chicago is that you can still live in an architectural masterpiece with one of the best views in the world on a mortgage of $200k. It's also amazing that in a building of this age and fame, the HOA is still only $400 or so a month.

It just doesn't get any more 60s than Marina City. The futurism, the sculptural concrete, all those goddamn parking spots, the still-alive and glamorous dream of high-rise city living in the modernist mode. It's a blessing this building survived the onslaught of hate against it that raged in the 90s. Wilco may or may have not intervened as unexpected architectural preservationists. When people come to visit me in Chicago it's one of the first buildings they want to see. Can't blame them!

 You do, however, have to kind of suffer to live here. For all its sumptuous mid-century architecture, the interior plans are extremely small. This one is only 500 square feet, and you basically can't have anything more than the basic amenities. There's a blessing in that a wall separates the kitchen from the rest of the interior, but, still, you'll need a murphy bed as the folks here figured out.

 The blessing of the architecture, though, is that the windows make the space feel bigger than it really is. The curtain wall opens the space up into all of Chicago itself. If I didn't own so many coffee table books and didn't want to have kids, I think I'd give up a lot just to have that feeling of being impossibly high up and infinitesimally small, yet still the master of the whole universe.

The kitchen is definitely a one-person kitchen. I've seen some original kitchens in this building before -- pink appliances and stainless steel countertops were the norm! This one, however, is giving bachelor pad in a derogatory way. The cabinets look like they belong in one of those Millennial-core ex-brewery loft apartments in Ohio. The porthole, however, rules.

Since this is a studio, it's a pretty short house tour. I look at a lot of house listings and something that's always surprised me about architect-designed condos is how much the modern masters loved their gray bathrooms. The gray, thankfully is more "austere modernism" than it is "real estate flipper chic" but still - an interesting continuity. The Mies van der Rohe apartment buildings in Chicago and Baltimore all have similar bathrooms. I find them rather akin in tone to the bathrooms in office buildings. All business no pleasure.

 Yeah. YEAH! The balconies are what make the building and what make the flats. Without them they'd be completely denuded, boring, and cramped. Who wouldn't pay $200k to look out at the Chicago River like that everyday. Imagine the sunsets!!!! Imagine the fourth of july fireworks!!! Imagine just, like, chilling. I know I am. Enviously.

Link to listing (with the hope that one of you tasteful architecture lovers buys this thing!) https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/300-N-State-St-Apt-3904_Chicago_IL_60654_M71029-42418?from=srp-list-card