Bridges

Our last post in a week's look at Chicago Architecture includes a pair of bridges near the downtown area, neither one in use but each with a particular eye appeal.

Saw a Man Who Danced with his Wife

Two more Chicago architecture shots.

Billy Sunday Could Not Shut It Down

Up and down, we see the John Hancock center from the street and then from atop Big John we see the iconic Water Tower.

Let Me Show You Around

Love the sundial outside Adler Planetarium.

That Toddlin' Town

Chicago, Chicago, that toddlin' town . . . this week we will post some views of Chicago architecture as collected over several years.

Skyline

Our last look at buildings in Chicago must be this view of iconic skyline, several of the buildings in a single view, seen here from Adler Planetarium looking north.

Spaces

Back to some images of Chicago architecture, where the streets of downtown are a virtual textbook of architecture history.

Here we see two extremes. One image shows the standard Chicago Window, developed by the 1890s to allow the most light into the tallest buildings being built anywhere. The other is inside the atrium of the Thompson State of Illinois Building, full of light and packed with windows everywhere.

Big John Up Close

Two more views of Big John, the John Hancock Center, dominating the Michigan Avenue skyline. These are much more up close than the earlier posting.

South LaSalle

The Chicago Board of Trade anchors the south end of LaSalle Street. Visitors are allowed into an observation room to see the classic form of trade in several markets, especially grain and other food items.

If you walk out the front door and down one block, the building on the right is The Rookery. Here we see the flying staircase designed by Frank Lloyd Wright as part of a 1905 remodeling of the lobby. Well worth a visit.

Big John

Two views of Big John, the John Hancock Building on the Magnificent Mile, Michigan Avenue in Chicago.

Fisher Building

Walking around downtown Chicago is literally walking through a 3-D history of city architecture. All it takes is an open eye to notice. If a person needs help opening an eye, the Chicago Architecture Foundation offers several guided walks all over the Loop and surrounding areas. In the next few posts we will look at some of the buildings seen on these walks.

Today we see two views of the Fisher Building, opened before the elevated train and the remodeled to move the front door away from the el to another side. It is an interesting building right near the Harold Washington Library.

Classics

Downtown Chicago architecture features every sort of building. The first of these, shown with the Artist's Snack Shop on the first floor, was originally a Studebaker factory. Yes, they built cars right on Michigan Avenue, with the process beginning with parts of the top floor and the final product emerging down on the ground level. The other image shows the classic frontage of a turn-of-the-century building a century ago, when windows were so much more important than they are today. Windows were the major method of lighting and cooling at the time, and bay windows provide more of both of these.

Reflections

Two images collected by seeing the beauty of reflections. Modern architecture often seeks to make buildings fit into existing skylines, and reflective windows are perfect for the job.

Riverfront

One of the more fascinating and unique things to see in Chicago is the water curtain developed as a memento for the centennial of a great engineering feat. Every river in the world save one drains into a lake or an ocean. The Chicago River was reversed and now ultimately drains into the Mississippi River. The water curtain is launched from a Sanitary District memorial on the banks of the river just west of the locks that generate the change.
Nearby is Lake Point Tower, a majestic high-rise residential building just west of Navy Pier. I often have wondered how difficult it might be to decorate and furnish rooms that are all rounded.

Wrigley Building

Directly across Michigan Avenue from Tribune Towers, the white Wrigley Building is an anchor for the north bank of the river. Bathed in bright light at night, the tower stands tall on a sunny day as well.

Clock towers are interesting to me, reminding us of the time when most people did not have watches, let along BlackBerries and iPhones and so many other electronic time devices.

Water Tower & Marina City

Two towers from downtown Chicago. The Water Tower hardly seems tall enough to be called a tower today, surrounded by high-rises on every side, but 14 decades ago it was indeed the north side tower which marks the edge of the devastation of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
Several blocks away, the corncob-look twin towers of Marina City have been a mainstay of the River North area for over 40 years.

River Neighbors

This week we will look into some photos from a collection of Chicago Architecture visits over a period of years. We begin with a pair of shots of the Merchandise Mart, right downtown along the Chicago River. In the lower image, we see the Mart from the south bank of the river in its familiar configuration.
The upper image looks back toward the south, and at the building directly across the river at the fork, where it splits into south and north branches. Built in the modern reflective style, we see the Mart along the left side of the image. Buildings featuring such large mirrored surfaces are in part designed to fit into any skyline, reflecting the neighboring buildings clearly.

Chicago Landmarks

Of course any great city has its landmarks, but not many have a greater number of significant ones than does Chicago. The city that was heavily damaged in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the same city which rebuilt bigger and better than ever, Chicago still has the landmark Water Tower right on Michigan Avenue, seen here through the empty branches of a winter morning. Michigan Avenue was named for the lake, as the street at that time was a lakefront avenue. When the cleanup of the fire was used as landfill on the east side of the street, Michigan Avenue was no longer on the lakefront. Grant Park was soon formed on a portion of the site, and still remains there. Within Grant Park is the wonderful Art Institute of Chicago (on the east side of the street) and the newer Millennium Park, just north of the Art Institute. The water tower is perhaps a mile north, and perhaps halfway between the park and the tower, the white facade of the Wrigley Building has a home on the west side of the street and on the north bank of the Chicago River.

Many wonderful skyline pictures show the collection, the flow, the pattern of the entire city. But these photos, like so many others, single out a feature and show it in a portrait. Wrigley and the Water Tower are two such photo stars.

Net post as promised will be far from Chicago, in Arizona, tomorrow night. See you from there!

No Harsh Corners

Lake Point Tower, standing tall on the lakefront, is a powerful interpretation of the modern skyscraper. So much of the modern is here, of course, with little adornment and a solid, strong look. But literally right across the street from Navy Pier is this huge home to many Chicagoans with no straight walls. If a helicopter flies over this gem, its footprint must look like a distorted three-leaf clover.

Downtown, there are several buildings including courthouses and federal offices which were designed by modern minimalist Mies Van der Rohe. They are straight lines, vertically and horizontally, ground to top and side to side. Look at the Tower and follow the vertical lines; they will look quite appropriate to the designs of Mies. But left to right, no plane is straight. An interesting adaptation that stands proud on the front doorstep of the Windy City.

One more day of buildings before Rick Beato Photo goes out on the road for its first travel posts. We will be posting from Arizona for three days of baseball, hot dogs, and photography.

Spring Morning in Chicago

On a bright spring morning, we look at one of the Chicago skyline's icons, The John Hancock center. As a student of history, I always thought a great tall building should have a powerful name like "John Hancock." This beauty, with the exoskeleton that gave "Spider Dan" Goodwin the idea to climb it, inscribes a signature across the skyline as clear and distinctive as the famed signature on the Declaration of Independence.

Those not familiar with the excellent observatory might not realize that a portion of the south face was remodeled several years ago to allow viewers to be in a well-protected outdoor viewing area where the sounds of the street are clear and interesting. A nice place to visit in any season, but now that it is spring a viewer might stay out there a bit longer than they did in winter!

Another building view in the next post.