Dec. 23--John Vinci and Philip Hamp are recognized as Chicagoans of the Year in architecture for their decades-long devotion to preserving the seminal structures that make this city a beacon for designers and visitors from around the globe.
Between them, Vinci, 77, and Hamp, 61, have restored such significant works as Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan's majestic Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room at the Art Institute of Chicago; Frank Lloyd Wright's earth-hugging Glasner House in north suburban Glencoe; and Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells' soaring lobby in the Chicago Tribune Tower. Their new buildings include the Arts Club of Chicago, which incorporates an elegant steel staircase from the club's former, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe-designed home.
"We always work with great dead architects," quipped Hamp. "We learned a lot of lessons from them."
Also in the Vinci-Hamp Architects portfolio: The controversial restoration of the Illinois State Capitol's west wing, including three sets of copper-clad mahogany doors that cost nearly $670,000. Critics including Gov. Pat Quinn denounced the doors as extravagant, but the doors won a "divine detail" award this year from the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects. The group also recognized Vinci with a lifetime achievement award.
Vinci and Hamp have "done great things for the city," said Chicago architect T. Gunny Harboe, who has led major restorations himself.
Vinci began his pioneering work in historic preservation while still a student at the Illinois Institute of Technology in the 1950s. He joined with friends to organize an exhibition about the works of Adler Sullivan. He also went "junking," prying pieces of ornament out of buildings by Adler Sullivan and other architects before the structures were reduced to rubble. "I came close to getting arrested a few times," he said.
After he graduated in 1960, he was on the picket lines, protesting the demolition of Adler Sullivan's Garrick Theater Building, which came down for a parking garage. Before Adler Sullivan's Chicago Stock Exchange was destroyed in 1972, Vinci played a key role in salvaging stenciled decorations, art glass and molded plaster capitals from its trading room. The Art Institute later used the fragments to reconstruct the room.
Hamp, who handles administration as well as design, joined Vinci in 1980 as a draftsman. A partner since 1995, he led the firm's work on the State Capitol restoration. Previously, Vinci-Hamp carried out award-winning restorations of the building's House and Senate chambers.
In keeping with the 12-person firm's philosophy of recycling the past, its offices are on the sixth floor of an old timber-framed building at 1147 W. Ohio St., just west of the Kennedy Expressway. The quarters were an in-kind payment from a developer who'd hired Vinci to convert the building to new uses. "He wasn't paying me so I conned him into this space," Vinci said.
This year, Vinci continued his activist role, speaking out against a proposed renovation plan for Mies' Farnsworth House, a modernist masterwork of steel and glass in far southwest suburban Plano.
The house's owner, the Washington-based National Trust for Historic Preservation, is considering three ideas for preventing further flood damage to the house. One calls for installing a hydraulic lift beneath the house. The mechanism would raise the house out of harm's way when the nearby Fox River floods -- a "Jack in the Box" prospect Vinci finds ridiculous.
"You don't make absurdities out of architecture," he said.
bkamin@tribpub.com
Twitter @BlairKamin
