copyright on a building?

[cryptique]

from the ArchitectureChicago Plus blog, via BoingBoing. The BoingBoing post mentions Wilco and YHF.

 

_{Wednesday, November 07, 2007}

 

Stop Taking Pictures of Marina City!

 

(Plus, a spectacular 1965 film on the construction of Bertrand Goldberg's masterpiece)

 

Serving on a condo board can be a thankless, high-pressure job. That's the only excuse I can think of for the declaration, equal parts loony and arrogant, of the board of the Marina Towers Condo Association:

 

"Because of the architectural significance of our building, the Condominium Association holds a common law copyright on the use of the Association name and building image. This means that under Federal and Illinois law, advertisers, movie makers and others cannot use the Association name or image without first obtaining express written permission from the Association . ."

 

Bloggers such as Marina City Online have been having a field exposing the shear stupidity of the declaration, reportedly drafted by the board's long-time attorney Ellis Levin, a long way away from his days as a progressive, independent legislator.

 

What kind of idiot do you have to be to actually insert the phrase "under Federal and Illinois law," when copyrights are a federal protection, and have nothing to do with state law? Then there's the inconvenient fact the condo owners only own the top 40 floors of each 60-story tower. Exactly how can they claim to own a copyright to "Marina Towers" when the first 20 stories of the towers, and the other structures of the commercial complex, are owned by someone else? And then there's the matter of exclusivity. Upon a quick Googlecheck, here are just a few of the other "Marina Towers" throughout the world.

• Alexandria, Virginia
  
• Corpus Christi, Texas
  
• Marina del Rey, California
  
• Oceanside, North Carolina
  
• Beirut, Lebanon
  
• Chennai, India
  
• Dubai
  

No doubt the MTCA will soon be attempting to shake them down for royalties.

 

Marina City Online's Steven Dahlman deftly dissects the sloppy posturing of the board's proposal here. He has even engaged attorney Thomas D. Rosenwein, who refutes its basic legality here. Chicago Carless' Mike Doyle, redeeming himself from his support for the Chicago Children's Museum land grab in Grant Park, has also covered the topic here. And to get feel for the eclectic mix of residents at the towers, check out the MarinaWatchDog blog, which consists entirely of comment postings - some reasoned, some impassioned, some almost inscrutably strange.

 

As you probably already know, I am also a long term resident of Marina City. I feature numerous photos of Bertrand Goldberg's masterpiece on my website and this blog, and I guess I actually qualify as a commercial interest, as I receive regular, if pitiable, checks from Google from the ads they run there.

 

The proposed change to Rule Number 5 is scheduled to be voted on November 15th. So I say to Ellis and the board, pass your rule and then - please, please, please - come after me. If you're so dead set on embarrassing the building, the board, its residents, and - come to think of it - the very notion of intelligent human life, I will be a willing co-conspirator in getting your buffoonery the widest possible audience.

 

The Making of Marina City

On a much more positive note, an unexpected pleasure I encountered when researching this post is photographer Steven Dahlman's aforementioned Marina City Online website, co-created with real estate broker Michael Michalak. As opposed to MCTA's own almost laughably pedestrian website, Marina City Online has a wealth of useful information, including a listing of recent unit sales, maps and floorplans, and an encyclopedic history of Marina City, beautifully illustrated.

 

Did you know, for example, that Marina City is located on Block 1 on Chicago's original 1837 township map, or that the site was once owned by former Chicago Mayor Thomas Dyer (1856-57)? There's even a Currier and Ives lithograph showing the site and its environs circa 1892.

 

But perhaps the most spectacular feature of the site is a 1965, documentary, This is Marina City, produced by the Portland Cement Association. The bad news is that film has grown more than a little fuzzy with time, but the film's color images are still nothing short of breathtaking. You see the site before construction begins, surrounding by a vanished city, huge cold storage warehouses on the other side of Dearborn, surface parking at the level of the river where the IBM building is now. The film was a showpiece for the trade unions, who financed the project as a calling card for their services, just as the PCA would produce the film to promote its products.

 

Every phase of construction is covered - the excavation for the caissons, the complex formwork for the central cores, rising like slender reeds high into the skyline; more formwork, this time like something out of Gaudi, for the curving balconies, the painstaking pouring of the floor slabs, and views of the building at the time of its opening - the skating rink and the modern sculptures that once encircled it, the original elevator lobbies, Johnny Lattner's riverside restaurant, the gleaming glass displays cases of the first grocery store, and the office building, now the Hotel Sax, that then included the offices of Bertrand Goldberg, himself. An enthralling time capsule of a great building and its time. See it here.

 

_{posted by Lynn Becker at 12:01 AM}

[tongue-tied]

new copies of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot will be known as the Beige Album.

[CommerceComet]

I would think the person who took the photograph would own the copyright. Perhaps the association could be successful using a trademark claim though.

[LouieB]

Wow...totally staggering....

 

This may be a good time to bring up a mind game I sometimes played on the way home from work (stupidity alert here...) If you stand in the back of the train on the Brown line it is fun to see how far north you can go before you totally lose sight of Marina Towers. You would be surprised at how far north you can get and still catch a glimpse. Try it sometime.....

 

LouieB

[ms. yvon]

lou, the thought of you doing this on the brown line on your way home warms the heart. hope you're swell!

 

as for the copyright: ha!

[Reni]

I walk/or ride the bus past them almost everyday......they are a treasure.

 

However, my favorite Chicago building is the Hancock Building - no idea why - and after a number of years of wanting to, I finally had lunch at the top of it the other day! It was fantastic. I had table next to a window facing north, so I had a view of the lake and the city. The time of day was perfect as well, as the sun cast a great shadow of the building onto the lake.

[sureshot]

i have a friend who rents a studio in marina city. small pad, but one hell of a view. the interiors are outdated as all get out tho. (place has always jokingly been referred to as the "trailer park in the sky"). the condo board is really strict about what you can do with your balcony too...either green astroturf, or keep it bare. but considering the rent is only 1 grand to live in a landmark building right on the chicago river, i guess you cant complain (try that in NY)

[CommerceComet]

but considering the rent is only 1 grand to live in a landmark building right on the chicago river, i guess you cant complain (try that in NY)

 

Yeah I've been looking for a NYC pad on the Chicago River for years.

[sureshot]

Yeah I've been looking for a NYC pad on the Chicago River for years.

 

im comparing downtown rents, you know what i meant

[LouieB]

lou, the thought of you doing this on the brown line on your way home warms the heart. hope you're swell!

I am way better today. Turned a corner yesterday.

 

I don't know when I thought of that little mind game, but as you cross the Chicago river going north on the Brown line (the only way it goes) the view is spectacular and one day standing in the back of the train (on of my favorite places) I realized that MT ducks in and out of view for quite awhile, despite all the buildings that block it on the way. Crazy...

 

LouieB