Category: Architecture

ArchBlogger does Chicago

When ArchBlogger moved from Brooklyn to Detroit some 18 years ago, he thought, "This is excellent! Mid-way between Chicago and Toronto. I'll be in one of them every month."

Sadly, apart from a few quick business trips, that mostly didn't turn out to be the case. So over Labor Day, A.B. decided to remedy that, and do a little architectural touristing in the Windy City.

The Trib, of course.

And my oh my. The architecture, of course, is seminal. But in a more general sense, what a cool, gorgeous, over-favored city this is! "Overfavored" sort of like the song -- "God shed His grace on thee." And man. Did He. Tell me the truth -- was this city always this handsome, hip and rich?

Well, perhaps.

One nice development this trip is that for the first time A.B., who lived in Manhattan and Brooklyn in the late 80s early 90s -- and adored the city -- was able to see Chicago for itself, and not framed through his NYC lens.

The new, silvery Trump Tower -- not as God-awful as you'd think -- glinting behind the Carbide & Carbon Building.

A few compare-and-contrast observations:

- Chicago's side streets seem to be wider. In any case, there's just more air and light than in New York, where even streets with low-rise buildings -- nice parts of the Upper West Side, say -- feel a bit cramped. A.B. has always said Chicago is New York with adequate parking, but now he'd add "and additional sunlight."

Parking on the lower floors at Marina City -- you know, the stacked pancake towers (and darned good-looking too) right on the river.

- The El is interesting. A.B.'s seen pictures of New York before they took all the elevated trains down, mostly in the 30s and 40s, he thinks. And it's pretty clear that they often blighted the avenues they roofed over. Fourth Avenue near downtown Brooklyn is a good example. The elevated's buried now, but the avenue still -- or at least in 1991 when A.B. moved away -- felt scuzzy and a bit abused. But in Chicago, the El seemed to add so much drama - and there are SO many exciting sightlines all around -- that A.B. didn't resent the visual ceiling it effectively creates, and the way it interrupts some views.

The El.

(In Detroit, one of many things ArchBlogger holds against the People Mover -- he prefers "People Mover-ette" for the way it trivializes mass transit -- is how it blocks glorious sightlines up Woodward and other streets. All for a system that travels an irrational, loopy circle -- not the efficient straight lines of the El -- full of little zigs and zags that oftentimes make it no faster than walking.

Anyhow, the El felt more like drama and entertainment than an interruption -- a most-pleasant discovery.

- People smile more in Chicago. And while A.B. thinks New Yorkers often get a bad rap on this subject, the Midwesterners more polite, as well. All the same, while the crush of buildings is magnificent, A.B. did not get quite the electric exhilaration that New York induces -- almost, as it were, because Chicago's too pleasant. If New York gives him a palpable "on stage" thrill, by contrast Chicago was warmer and less jangling -- not a bad trade.

- Water plays a vastly cooler role in Chicago than its snooty eastern rival. The watery expanse around New York has its points, but everything on the other side is relatively far away. Vastly more intimate and visually dramatic is the way the Chicago River winds through and defines downtown downtown, the way it throws up outstanding bridges hither and yon, and the way far-sighted city planners (impossible to imagine in today's climate of extreme hostility to government spending) thoughtfully equipped the riverbank with handsome waterside sidewalks on two or three different levels, the lowest right at the water with the waterbug taxis zipping by.

Urban planning of the most civilized sort -- and vastly nicer, at least in terms of riverfronts, than anything in New York (though to be fair, New York's use of its lower Hudson riverfront on the West Side has improved a great deal in the past 15 years).

One of the highlights of the trip was visiting William Zbaren and Robert Sharoff, the architectural photographer and writer, respectively, who produced the great book on Detroit that Wayne State University Press published several years ago, "American City."

The other highlight was taking the Chicago Architecture Foundation boat tour one sunny morning, which was 90 minutes of omigod views and fascinating, articulate history. ArchBlogger can't recommend it enough.

The Tribune Tower seen from the riverside.

Dazzling use of balconies as the dominant design feature.

On the Chicago Architecture Foundation river tour -- a way-cool experience for any visitor. At 10:30 a.m. that morning, fog started rolling in off Lake Michigan to great dramatic effect. That's the Trump Tower disappearing into the mists.

More fabulous balconies.

The fog starts to lift.

The Wrigley Building.

A.B. regrets he doesn't remember the name of this building on the south branch of the river, but he's still totally blown away by its modernist, monochromatic (or duochromatic) severity -- and the marvelous way the silver windows contrast with the surrounding carbon. Quintessential Chicago design, somehow.

A bucolic idyll on the river's north branch.