In certain shots, the IDS appears like a blue monolith from the future; there should be lots of monkeys, perhaps in parkas, hooting and grunting at it, waving ice-scrapers. When it topped off in 1972, it made the Foshay — once Minneapolis' tallest tower — look puny, a mere pencil-point. When the sun set, the IDS caught fire; when the stars came out, the IDS stacked rows of lights up into the sky in competition. Any big glass building could do that, but the IDS was different: It wasn't a box.
American corporate headquarters had been stuffed into boxes since modernism kicked classicism out of style and stripped off the scrolls, columns, gargoyles and all the rest of the frothy ornamentation. At first they were stark and clean, buildings fit for IBM mainframes whirring in cool rooms, Selectrics clacking away in sleek office suites. One or two could give a city new life.
(Our version was the First National Bank, now Canadian Pacific Plaza, which still makes you think of the United Nations building wearing Cary Grant's gray suit from "North by Northwest.")
Then we got bored with yesterday's future. Architects got lazy; boxes got big and blunt. Architects began to coat all the boxes with reflective glass, so downtowns were filled with dull towers that reflected all the other dull towers.
The IDS could have been one of those; 1968, the year it was begun, wasn't a high point for refined details. But the decision to make the building thin, with tapered sides — a sword's edge from one angle, a sword's blade from another — gave it grace, as well as a huge number of higher-value corner offices. The box was dead, and in its place rose a new cool-blue form that seemed like a piece of sky shaped into something solid. Architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee would design other great towers; this is the one their work always would be measured against.
Which brings us to the original box, the stone file drawer known as the Soo Line/First National Bank Building in Minneapolis. It's as different from the IDS as the Institute of Arts is different from the Walker, but its style influenced architecture in a peculiar way: People passed laws to kill it, and that led to buildings like the IDS.
Back up a bit. Recently rehabbed for housing, the 1914 building is one of those immovable objects that impresses without inspiring. It doesn't soar; it sits. It could be the headquarters for the American Rectangle Institute. The stone details make you think the architect got his design back from his boss with the notation "add some Roman stuff." For its era, it's utterly ordinary.
And we'd be much poorer if it hadn't been built. For one thing, the interior public spaces, now lost, were incredible. A bit chilly, perhaps, but all that marble felt like a fort around your deposits.