Bertrand Goldberg’s famous River City complex in Chicago looks like nothing so much as an old bus operator’s coin dispenser, glass windows stacked inside its joined concrete cylinders. The South Loop megaproject was the architect’s try at a utopian urban neighborhood, complete with offices, shopping, restaurants, a park, and the “River Road,” a winding inner atrium lit from skylights. It’s a landmark of Brutalist design, a monument to ’80s thinking about cities, and a fixture of the Chicago Architecture Boat Tour.
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The building also tells a story Goldberg could not have anticipated: the rise and fall of the Chicago condo. When completed in 1987, River City’s 448 units were rentals designed to appeal to middle-income yuppies who found city living attractive but homeownership out of reach.