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Chicago, Illinois
I'm glad to see you, I had a funny dream, you were wearing funny shoes
The very first "Progressive Architecture" magazine I ever got was from November 1987 and featured this building, Helmut Jahn's United Terminal at O'Hare. The terminal features two very long white buildings connected by a wonderful underground tunnel, probably the most fun you can ever expect to have at an airport.
The terminal buildings themselves are holding up well enough after seventeen years, certainly better than "Progressive Architecture" which went out of business in late 1995
The United Terminal is the busiest terminal at the country's (sometimes) busiest airport. The terminal buildings are bright with white structural elements and lots of loud, sound reflective glass. A short escalator ride down takes you away from all that- the low lit tunnel has a neon light show and some slightly irritating new age synthesizer music designed to calm the hurried masses. In general it works, as long as you avoid getting knocked over by someone running late and carrying too much carry on luggage.
Helmut Jahn's other big 1980s Chicago building isn't holding up quite as well. The government offices at the State of Illinois Center on Randolph and Clark is still an interesting space but feels its age, all that salmon and light blue makes it feel like 1985 all over again.
Gustave Caillebotte's claim to fame is hanging atop the stairs at the Art Institute of Chicago, one of the world's great museums. Only a few rooms away (just to the right) is Georges Seurat's "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte 1884," admittedly my favorite painting, dominating a room that also holds Vincent Van Gogh's "The Bedroom," reason enough alone to consider a visit, if not a theft.
Meanwhile, back on a Paris Street (on a) rainy day, modern day visitors continue to stare and wonder how difficult it must have been for men with such high hats to successfully navigate umbrellas.
If you hate Marc Chagall (or even if you hate all modern art), chances remain damn high that you'll still have a soft spot for his stained glass windows, more fun than windows should (probably) ever be.
A bit farther south in a building that was absolutely infested with Mennonites is the world famous Museum of Science and Industry, founded by one of the Sears guys and located in a rebuilt piece of Daniel Burnham's White City, the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition where cracker jacks and George Ferris' wheel debuted. Today the museum holds a variety of unusual exhibits including a few trains, a submarine, planes, a "fairy castle" and some cows. Moo-o-o-o.
A United Boeing 727 perennially hovers over an partially accurate scale model of Chicago, one that would only be right if the Rocky Mountains and Seattle are only about ten miles or so west of the Sears Tower.
And while the museum was literally crawling with Mennonites (or blue wearing Amish, its sometimes hard to tell), most seemed to avoid the farm exhibits in favor of gawking at the real life plane (or "shiny metal bird" as my father imagined they might call it).
A close up of the model featuring the river, Wacker Drive and at least two Kohn Pederson Fox buildings, including the good one.
