By Judy Carmack Bross
Unity Temple Auditorium, photo by Tom Rossiter
Frank Lloyd Wright called it “my little jewel box”. Detractors described it as “the concrete bunker on Lake Street”.
To architect Gunny Harboe, an internationally recognized preservationist who has led projects for important landmarks such as the Reliance Building, Chicago Cultural Center, Charnley-Persky House, the Lake Forest train station and both of Wright’s Taliesin buildings, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple in Oak Park was a restoration project which he became involved in 25 years ago and never stopped finding fascinating or challenging.
Gunny Harboe speaking at Unity Temple.
interested in architecture and history, organized by his friend Grove Mower, through that Unitarian Universalist Church known commonly as Unity Temple which has had since its opening in 1908 embraced the ongoing mission: “For the Worship of God, And the Service of Man”. As he spoke of the soft reflection of light from all of the original light fixtures now back in place and the purposeful sense of anticipation as one moves from the assembly hall into the soaring sacred space we wanted to recommend that you return or visit for the first time.
Photo by Tom Rossiter
Harboe said, “Wright was undoubtedly the most important American architect of the past century. He built Unity Temple when he was just 39 and at the early height of his career.” He had visited Japan in 1905 and saw Shinto temples which influenced his work on this project. Wright came from a family of Welsh Unitarians and was proud to have won the competition. He built the Robie House right after that and by 1910 he had left his family and moved on from Oak Park.
It is one of eight Wright structures designated as a UNESCO World Heritage in the United States with other cultural sites including, Monticello, the Statue of Liberty, and Independence Hall, among the 26 in total. It was originally to be made of brick, but the church didn’t have enough money, so they economized by making it out of concrete. According to Harboe, “Wright wanted it to look like it had been carved out of granite. Unfortunately, he didn’t really understand all of concrete’s qualities as a building material.”
Harboe related that in 2000 engineers were called in to work on the failing concrete overhangs and he was asked to join the team to deal with the aesthetic issues involved with matching the concrete. He has headed the restoration of several of Wright’s buildings and writes and speaks about his architecture frequently.
In 2006, Harboe Architects’ personnel, then working for Austin/AECOM, completed a Restoration Master Plan for Unity Temple. The plan included a comprehensive analysis of the building and its systems, an evaluation of accessibility issues with recommended improvements, and a schematic level scope of work for restoring the structure to its 1908 condition. A further in-depth feasibility study was conducted in 2014 by Harboe Architects to fully understand the scope and cost required for the complete restoration of Unity Temple including extensive research and mockups for proposed treatments of all the interior and exterior surfaces.
There were two entities overseeing the site: the Unity Temple’s Unitarian Universalist congregation that owned and used the building and the Unity Temple Restoration Foundation, which had been created to get the building back to its original beauty. “In 2005, the master plan called for raising over $20M,” Harboe said. A generous lead gift from the Alphawood Foundation allowed the project to go forward.
Wright’s concept for the building was to create a space for both the sacred and secular. This concept evolved into two separate masses that respectively hold the Temple, or sacred space, and Unity House, a space for assembly and classrooms. These two general masses constitute the major spaces of the building and are connected in the middle by the foyer. The result was a bold and innovative design conceptually rooted within the Prairie School period yet foretelling of the Modern architecture movement then germinating in Europe.
Photo by Tom Rossiter
By 2009 the shotcrete surfaces, that were applied in the 1970s, seemed to be cracking everywhere, and several of the 22 roofs leaked. It took months to match the color of the shotcrete which comes in surprisingly numerous shades from gray to buff. The existing had sand, pea gravel and flint pebbles that had to be specially procured for the mix. Typically a historic building should never be sandblasted, but in this case it was how the existing shotcrete had been finished in the 1970s, so that was how it was finished again.
“The wood trim is what makes the space sing, Wright was a master of using wood trim to articulate space” Harboe said. During the work the restoration carpenters found a piece of trim with an autograph from one of the original carpenters in 1908. Another piece of serendipity: the son of a man who had repaired the exterior with shotcrete in the 1970’s worked on the recent project.
All of the light fixtures and art glass windows had to be shipped to the studios of an art glass expert in California, where they were restored then shipped back and reinstalled.
Original Wright lights at Unity Temple.
For guests visiting the Unity Temple that night at twilight, the glass surely retained the glow that Wright would have hoped for.
We were curious about how Oak Park residents view having this World Heritage Site in their downtown and asked arts educator and good friend Joe Berton. Berton taught middle school art for 34 years in Oak Park. He is married to Gloria Groom, Chair of European Painting and Sculpture at the Art Institute. They live in Oak Park.
I’ve lived in Oak Park since 1977. I was hired right out of college to teach Applied Arts, art with a purpose or function, to twelve- and thirteen-year-olds at one of our two junior highs. Of course, that class included architecture, and being in Oak Park, I wanted to include the work of local favorite Frank Lloyd Wright. Architectural preservation wasn’t on the minds of most Oak Parkers in the late seventies. Changing neighborhoods and integration was. School boundaries were being redrawn to accommodate the new junior highs. Some Wright homes were in desperate need of repair. A teacher colleague of mine rented a room at the Wright Home and Studio, where serious restoration was just getting started.
My students and I would take walking tours, from the Wright Home and Studio on Chicago Avenue, down Forest Avenue viewing more Wright designed homes, to Lake Street, where the Unity Temple is located. For my students it was a walk in a familiar neighborhood. They had friends who lived in some of these houses. The contrasts between the large Victorian houses and the striking Prairie Landscape examples were striking. Wright’s use of local materials, the strong horizontals and the tucked away entrances could be seen and studied from the outside, but the Unity Temple had to be seen from the inside. One had very little clue to what wonders one would discover on the inside of those two rather imposing greyish boxes of cast concrete. Once inside, the kids were always amazed, overwhelmed really. The sheer beauty of the worship room always silenced the group of young people. They became quietly reflective.
And now the Unity Temple has completed its restoration. Wright called it a “noble room.” It is indeed. Gloria and I love sharing that same student walk with our frequent out of town guests, taking them from the Wright Home and Studio, down Forest Avenue and ending at the Unity Temple. They even get the back story of where some of my former students lived. And in this Wright house a couple from our church choir reside. And in that one lives a strong supporter on arts in the public school. And here, at the Unity Temple, some of our friends attend service. This area is filled with true architectural gems, each one now carefully maintained and preserved. The buildings and the people that fill them are integral parts of a functioning and enjoyable neighborhood.
