19-Jan-15 – She is a structural engineer, not a writer, but this excerpt (above) shows how important the history of Marina City is to the people who want to bring amphibious vehicle “duck tours” to the Chicago River – which is to say, not at all.

In her proposal to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, submitted last November on behalf of Entertainment Cruises, Sara Davis of Alfred Benesch & Company explains in detail the two ramps they need to build to lead the ducks to water – one at Marina City, the other just north of River City.

While everything else appears to be prim and proper, Davis consistently calls Marina City by its less formal nickname, “Marina Towers.”

We can let that slide like water off a duck’s back. But in a letter to the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, Davis appears to believe it took one year to build Marina City and then sometime after that, the name of the complex inexplicably changed.

“The Marina Towers ramp will be constructed within the Marina Towers marina structure, without altering the existing structure. The structure (then called Marina City) was built in 1962-63. The structure is not listed in the NHR, although it is well-known.”

(Above) Marina City in 1963, the year Alfred Benesch & Company says Marina City “was built.”

She is right about the complex not being in what we think she’s thinking is the National Register of Historic Places – we’re not even an official landmark in Chicago, for crying out loud. And we agree the structure is well known.

But for the record, construction of Marina City officially started with groundbreaking in 1961 and continued until 1968 but if you don’t count the theater building, or what is now House of Blues, the original complex was mostly in place in 1964.

Despite what you may read from time to time about Marina City being finished and opened to the public on any specific date or month or year, the various construction projects were not synchronized. They got done when they got done.

As for the name of the complex, in any context, the correct name is Marina City.

We tried to gently point this out to Davis but she referred all comments and questions to Entertainment Cruises, which has started using the right name.

But we admit it’s not entirely wrong. As early as 1962, as two large towers were growing out of the ground, they were occasionally called “the Marina towers,” but not as a formal name.

By 1977, however, the nickname had enough weight for the new condo association to call itself Marina Towers Condominium Association.

And there was an operator of the parking ramps that called itself Marina Towers Garage Corp.

But in mountains of documents that we’ve waded through and usage, formal and casual, observed for years, the complex is overwhelmingly referred to most often as Marina City.

At least she did not call the place “Marina City Towers,” which is just so wrong.