page_title: 860–880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments
section_title: Recognition
hierarchical_section_title: 860–880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments / Recognition
caption_attribution_description: English: 860-880 Lake Shore Drive
context_page_description: 860–880 Lake Shore Drive is a twin pair of glass-and-steel apartment towers on N. Lake Shore Drive along Lake Michigan in the Streeterville neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. Construction began in 1949 and the project was completed in 1951. The towers were added to the National Register of Historic Places on August 28, 1980, and were designated as Chicago Landmarks on June 10, 1996. The 26-floor, 254-ft tall towers were designed by the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and dubbed the "Glass House" apartments. Construction was by the Chicago real estate developer Herbert Greenwald, and the Sumner S. Sollitt Company. The design principles, first expressed in the 1921 Friedrichstrasse Skyscraper competition in Berlin and built thirty years later in 860–880 Lake Shore Drive, were copied extensively and are now considered characteristic of the modern International Style as well as essential for the development of modern High-tech architecture.
  The towers were not entirely admired at the time they were built, yet they went on to be the prototype for steel and glass skyscrapers worldwide.
context_section_description: The buildings were finished in 1951 and were featured in a 1957 article in Life Magazine on Mies.
  In 1996 they became the first buildings designed by Mies van der Rohe to receive Chicago Landmark Status.
  The glass towers have been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1980.
  In June 2005, the United States Postal Service included the towers in the commemorative stamp program, Masterworks of Modern Architecture, wherein they were listed as one of the "12 outstanding examples of modern buildings".
  In celebration of the 2018 Illinois Bicentennial, 860-880 Lake Shore Drive was selected as one of the Illinois 200 Great Places  by the American Institute of Architects Illinois component (AIA Illinois).
caption: 860-880 Lake Shore Drive
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