"I Want You to Feel Cheated": A Conversation with Lee Bey

Architecture criticism is everywhere and nowhere right now. On TikTok and Instagram, all kinds of people flock around keywords like #midcenturymodern. Some seek lavish vintage furniture vendors; some are excited to learn from researchers like @hoodmidcenturymodern; some are looking for marginally cooler friends. 

"Critique" today is simply a different proposition than it was when the classical form of architecture criticism combined beat reporting with an understanding of buildings from the inside out. The craft survives, however, in the journalism of Lee Bey, one of the last remaining newspaper architecture critics in the United States. 

A new urbanist who trained at Chicago Vocational School to become a printing press operator, Bey is from Chicago, and became a journalist whose weekly criticism of architecture at the Chicago Sun-Times between 1996 and 2001 defines the form, as far as it survives. In 2019, he published Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side, which acts as both a recollection of growing up touring the city with his father and a collection of thrillingly alive-looking images of remarkable buildings, all photographed by him as well. 

Bey recently returned to the post of architecture critic at the Sun-Times, where he is on the editorial board, after a break of 20 years. Lorraine Forte, the editorial page editor, first met Bey when they were both reporters at the paper, and says that when he was promoted to architecture editor, "He really built a local brand, although I hate that term. I finally convinced him to start writing an architecture column again, because everyone in Chicago, even people who don’t know architecture, follows what he writes." Bey has already provoked Senator Dick Durbin in one column, and in another, parsed the transformation of Helmut Jahn’s architecture firm after its founder’s death. 

In a Zoom conversation from—where else?—Chicago, Bey was funny and warm, clearly as much of an architecture romantic as he is a detective, and in the mood to discuss ruin porn. Our discussion has been edited and condensed for clarity.

How does someone become an architecture critic? Let’s say that you were at a high school and somebody asked you that. 

Bey: That’s a good question. On one side, in terms of one’s personal needs and skills, having an interest in architecture is helpful. Obviously. Having a bit of an eye for buildings. But also being willing to look at the social and economic forces, racial forces, and environmental forces that shape architecture. That leads to the other side of the equation, which is that you need a publication that wants an architecture critic. 

Many newspapers think, "Well, I got a real estate person writing about buildings, I don’t really need an architecture critic writing about architecture." But the good thing about the Chicago Sun-Times and the Tribune is that for years they have recognized that architecture is really a story of politics, race, class economics, preservation, all those things—which are all issues that hit home in Chicago. 

That’s the long answer. In my case, when I became an architecture critic back in ’96, when I first worked for the Sun-Times, we had an editor who was interested in architecture and who wanted an architecture beat. So, you know, we created one. Then I left in 2001, did a thousand and one jobs, then came back to the Sun-Times in 2019. So, just about 20 years later, I joined the editorial board and did not want to write about architecture as a critic. But when [architecture critic] Blair Kamin left the Tribune, and it seemed clear that they weren't gonna immediately replace him, I thought, well, we gotta do something. And so Lorraine Forte, our editorial page editor, and Steve Warmbir, the interim editor, and I got to talking and then said, okay, let’s try this once a month. So it premiered May 1st—the first column after 20 years. 

Congratulations on coming back. What is it that makes architectural criticism so crucial for Chicago and the people who live there? 

Well, you know, it’s a thing we debate about. I mean, we debate sports, weather, politics, all those things. For instance, my first column was about these two buildings in downtown Chicago, the Century and the Consumers’ buildings—two early-20th century skyscrapers on State Street that the federal government bought years ago and now wants to tear down for security reasons. I talk about the architecture of the buildings, but really the column is about the propriety of tearing these buildings down. The General Services Administration and the federal government had been historically good partners in building good architecture in Chicago. So what’s happening here? It was the most-read piece in the paper that weekend. It was great to debut that way, but the comments on social media, probably only 10 percent of them were about the design of buildings. About 90 percent were about what’s going on politically. 

Then Dick Durbin responded with an editorial about how this was actually all for the preservation of architecture that was more important, for protecting the Dirksen Courthouse, which I thought was kind of ironic. 

It was kind of ironic. Yeah. Dirksen, and the judges that are in it. He doesn’t really answer the questions. But to have the response from the senator, I thought that was a good thing. I mean, he read it, or somebody read it and decided to respond. 

What’s changed since last time around, and what are you feeling about what’s ahead? 

You know, it’s interesting. I mean, to come back after 20 years, it’s astounding. It isn’t that long to me, but it really is. I have three daughters and my youngest daughter is 21. So she doesn’t remember me being an architecture critic. 

Wow. 

And she’s a grown woman! So that shows me how long it’s really been. What’s changed? Obviously the internet and social media is one change. I mean, you get instant feedback on what you’ve written and it better be right. Because you’re gonna get roasted if it’s not. The other thing is that, when I was writing in the ’90s, throwing in pieces about sustainability and the climate and how buildings should respond to it, people were like, we don’t want to hear that, tell us about the Mies Van Der Rohe building getting landmarked or something like that. And now, that’s where the discussion is.

Preservation then was largely seen as, you know, this act of benevolence—to save important buildings. Now, we can see the embedded energy that’s destroyed when we demolish a building. Why can’t we save that? Why does that building have to fill up a landfill? The most sustainable thing you can do to a building in architecture is preserve the one that’s there. So all these questions that are front and center now, were less so 20 years ago. 

For instance, I’m going to be looking at the Lake Shore here in Chicago sometime this summer. What’s the plan for North Lake Shore Drive—not just how it might beautify this beautiful drive in the Parkland, but what is it going to do in addition to that to stop erosion along the lake?

I also find myself looking at transportation even more than I did 20 years ago. It’s really like six beats in one now, as opposed to just one specialty beat. 

How has it been to go into city politics and come out again—to drift in and out of that machine? Has that changed the way that you think about buildings? 

Yeah, it has. And for the better. The three or four years I spent at City Hall were the best education I ever had, including college and high school, because you get a chance to see not only how projects get developed, but the political levers, and who’s really pulling them. For instance, I’m working on an editorial that looks at the city’s casino bid. Chicago wants, and has been trying for 30 years, to get a city-owned casino. The idea being that the revenue from the casino can help pay off debt. 

A municipal casino. 

Exactly. And a developer would operate it, but the skim would come to the city. Having done time in city government, it gives you such a good sense of how to read the tea leaves. Reporters, we think we know it all. Then what you find is that there’s a dark side of the moon there. I was fortunate to be able to get a chance to see it and see how it operates, see what’s back there and be able to use that to my advantage as a writer. 

But it didn’t kill your commitment to and your passion for the built environment and the city of Chicago. 

It didn’t. Because, you could look at some things and be very cynical, but then you could look at it and say, there’s still a lot of power in this city to do good and to build well. And when the city does it right, it does it really well. And so you can be begin to ask the question: If you can save the old Main Post Office, the whitest of elephants, the elephant of elephants, the whitest elephant of elephants possible—a huge building that was abandoned by the postal service and sat abandoned for almost 30 years, then five years ago becomes the biggest adaptive reuse project in America—if that can happen, then why can’t it happen, for instance, for the Century and Consumers’ building? You know, why can’t it happen to Lakeside Center, the old McCormick Place building, if it needs a new future. We roll the bulldozers very fast in the city, but we also do things very well when the cards line up, and it makes you wonder—why can’t it happen here? 

One of the great strengths of your architect critic brain is the way that you have committed to seeing one place change over time. What do you think about the relationship between the local and the universal in architecture? If that’s not too abstract of a question. 

If there’s a through line in it, it’s that buildings are very personal—more than many people give them credit for. A person who’s in another country who is just struck by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan, or Mies Van Der Rohe—it’s like me as a kid in the backseat of his father’s car, looking at buildings. There’s something there that’s very, very personal because, ultimately, they’re built for us. We tend to forget sometimes that the reasons why people feel so attracted to buildings is because they’re built for us. Particularly in Chicago, people care deeply about these buildings—people outside of Chicago care very deeply about these buildings. 

What spurred you to create your 2019 book, Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago's South Side? 

Particularly in the Trump years, this sort of shorthand developed about Chicago, and particularly about the predominantly Black South Side, and also the West Side of Chicago, which is smaller: That it was just this wasteland. Even in my 30s, tourist maps wouldn’t include the South Side. 

Like New Orleans East. Getting cut off the map. 

Exactly. And it's like, don’t even come, you know? And when you do hear about the South Side, it’s crime or, you know, a kid goes to college, despite what the newspaper thinks is a one-in-a-million chance. When there are people all over the South Side going to college. There’s that kind of thing you want to push and push against. I wanted to find these buildings because, the rare times when the South Side is photographed, on social media, say, it is always the abandoned building.

When these pictures don’t interrogate the reasons why that house, that church, that old school is in that condition, then it runs the risk of confirming stereotypes about cities like Detroit or St. Louis or the South Side, which is, see what happens when they move in? They fuck it up. I’m sorry. They, uh, they mess it up. 

Southern Exposure—and this was kind of a pretzel to do—wanted to show the good stuff, but explain what disinvestment is, particularly when it’s based on race and the kind of robbery that has happened to these areas, creating these conditions. And then we want to flip back one more time and say, that said, these places are still worth rallying around. And the people who live here, you know, are really doing incredible work. It’s a complex story that doesn’t just say, look at this beautiful church. It used to be the biggest church in the city. Now it’s this. You know, and then we walk away.

In terms of style of photographing, I wanted the blue sky behind all the photographs. I photographed it during the summer of ’17 and ’18, I think. It’s already gonna be five years for some of them. In Chicago, we’re predominantly a blue city, a blueish city, but still, it was a weird time. And so I wanted blue skies. I wanted to convey hope and optimism with these photographs.

I wanted to show people buildings that were in good condition, buildings that were taken care of. Buildings that pushed against that norm. I wanted to show a variety of buildings in various neighborhoods. In my mind, I want people to think, you know, why haven’t I seen this before? I wanted Chicagoans to feel that way. And when I’ve got that during some of the book signings, I thought, good, that’s what I want you to feel. I want you to feel cheated. 

I came away from the book newly cognizant of how often ruins are the result of developers buying stuff up and not doing anything with it. It’s nothing to do with normal people. 

Exactly. Or banks that decide to undervalue a neighborhood, just because Black and brown people move in. I remember when my daughters were younger we lived in a neighborhood called Beverly on the Southwest side of Chicago—you know, a middle class, upscale neighborhood. And when we first bought the house, we were doing work on it, So, you know, to kill time, when roofers were making too much noise or whatever, we’d take the kids for a ride. And I’d show ’em other parts of the South Side. They were starting to ask questions: Why does that neighborhood not look as good as ours?

And I would say, look, you saw those roofers on that house. That roof is $35,000. But it’s in an area where I could get a loan from the bank very easily to pay for it, because the house has value which, that same roof, 30 blocks to the north, it’s gonna cost the same amount, but the house may not be worth much more than the price of the roof. So, it becomes a risk, and you don’t get the loans. So what are you gonna do if you live in that house? 

So that’s the backstory, when we see that American Foursquare with the windows broken out and no one lives there. Long before the vandals came, there was another vandalism that happened. 

What’s next for you? 

Blair Kamin and I have teamed up on a book called Who Is the City For? It’s a book of his columns. He had it already underway and then he calls me up and says, ‘Would you like to do the photography for it?’ And I thought, well, if Gene Siskell and Roger Ebert can do it, so can we. So yes, that comes out in November. It’s his beautiful words about the city, and my images. It was fun. I had to shoot very fast and there were moments when I think he was wondering, is he gonna finish? And I was like, leave me alone. You know, I shot an entire book. And wrote it [laughs].

Images courtesy of Lee Bey and University of Chicago Press

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