SUNDAY POSTER

Perhaps my favorite Old Testament quote. Some dark days during two cancers can instill some fear into anyone; this quote steeled me through a few. It had to be paired with this eternal flame. Perhaps it will work the same way for you.

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.