![]() Chicago visionary Ludwig Mies van der Rohe designed the timeless twin towers at 860–880 Lake Shore Drive to be balcony-free. Instead of facing outward toward their noisy neighborhoods, people sealed up their homes, turning toward their living rooms.Īrchitects followed suit. City dwellers soon found plenty of other uses for them: a place to hang laundry, grow plants, strike up a chat with neighbors, and move furniture.īut porches and balconies began to die off in the mid–20th century, due in large part to the advent of air conditioning and television. After the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the city updated its fire code to require that every apartment have at least two exits. ![]() ![]() The wooden back porch, Chicago’s folk version of the balcony, was something of a happy accident. ![]() “You could have a quick chat with Miss Jones and keep up with the neighbors while maintaining some privacy.” “They were the front porch of the residential towers,” says Chicago architect John Ronan. From their individual balconies, Chicagoans were close enough to interact with their neighbors, but far enough away to discourage extended conversations. On more modest buildings - two to six stories high - the balcony served a social function for Chicago’s working and middle classes. Eventually, they spread to the streets of dense American cities. In the 1880s, early skyscrapers were designed with balconies to elevate the upper class above the touch of the masses and foul smells of the city - especially in meatpacking districts. Today, we tend to think of balconies as private outdoor recreation for individuals, but their newfound prominence harks back to the 19th century, when they became an architectural staple of industrializing Europe. “To have a balcony during coronavirus is to enjoy fresh air without anxiety,” wrote a CityLab writer lamenting her own lack of a balcony. For urban dwellers lucky enough to have them during shelter-in-place, balconies have served as outdoor work-from-home spaces, places to grow and cook food, and a convenient way to catch a breath of fresh air. The residential balcony is a rare exception - a pandemic-proof social space. Social distancing temporarily killed off almost all of Chicago’s “third places,” the term coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg for spaces where spontaneous social connections happen, like coffee shops, parks, bars, hair salons, community centers, and libraries. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, they're a slice of pleasant purgatory between inside and outside, public and private space. Sanjeev Vidyarthi, an associate professor of urban planning and policy and a senior fellow of the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago.īalconies, in other words, are more than glorified grill storage or trophies for inhabitants of ritzy downtown high-rises. “This remarkable moment in time has forced all of us to rethink the physical space we inhabit and it’s showing what a great feature the balcony is,” says Dr. Now, balcony envy is driving even greater demand among buyers and renters since shelter-in-place orders started in mid-March, according to local realtors and developers. It’s hard to imagine better PR for Chicago’s manmade perches. Think of the joyous YouTube videos of South Loop high-rise dwellers belting out Bon Jovi from their balconies, or cheering for medical workers during nightly “Chicago Unite At Night” celebrations. Since the March lockdown, Chicago’s balconies have taken on a whole new meaning. The River Bank Lofts, as pictured from the Chicago River.
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